Term 1, Week 7

Head of the River is on next weekend and if you have not been up to Lake Barrington before, please consider coming along on Saturday 26 March to cheer on our rowers.

Back in 2018, I distinctly remember going out in a tinny with the rowers one cold dark morning. The coach gave me a run down on rowing at the School. One thing seemed clear: we never won at rowing, or at least this century we had not. The coach did not believe this was going to change any time soon. We were too small a school to be competitive. We did not train enough. We gave senior students the option of going on an overseas trip in early December.

As I sat and listened, I was acutely aware of how little about rowing I knew. What I did know was that research from the last fifty years has consistently found that teachers’ beliefs and expectations of their students impact profoundly on their students’ growth and development.

While there are too many studies to name here, one which has always stuck with me saw hundreds of students asked to write an essay. All students received feedback. For half of the students, an extra sentence was randomly added at the end of the feedback with these words: “I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you”. Fast forward one year and students who randomly received this sentence were performing at higher levels than those who did not receive it.

As parents and carers, we are most often our children’s first and most enduring teacher. While our relationship as parents differs to that of teachers, the power of our beliefs is also incredibly significant. I was reminded of this recently when an alumna shared with me about the impact her parents had on her entrepreneurial journey. Lauren Holder, a recent graduate (Class of 2019) started her business when she was in Grade 5 and since then the business has evolved and grown to now generate more income than most parents earn in a year. Lauren reflected on just how powerful for her encouragement from parents had been. Instead of shutting down her business ideas they told her to persevere. Lauren observed, “I have had friends come up with their own business ideas but who never chose to progress further after their parents told them it was a bad idea, or that they wouldn’t make any money. I had lots of bad ideas until I came up with a good one. I may have never reached that good idea if they [my parents] hadn’t continued to remain positive and encouraging.”

Like most adults, young people are full of self-doubt about who they are and what they can achieve. They are acutely aware of their weaknesses and from their teachers, coaches and parents alike they need to regularly hear, “You are better than you think you are”. It is easy to do this with young people who appear motivated but it is even more important to communicate positive beliefs and expectations to students who appear to be struggling and unmotivated.

Most of all students need to know that they matter. In a world of hyper-comparison and fuelled by social media, it is all too easy for young people to lose sight of the fact that they are uniquely and wonderfully made. As an Anglican school, we continue to reinforce this message to students as it aligns with our belief that every student is intrinsically valuable and infinitely precious.

Through our words and actions all adults have the opportunity to reframe for young people who they are and how they imagine the journey they are on.

One of the ways we communicate to young people our belief and high regard for their efforts and progress is by the simple act of turning up. Over the next few weeks I would encourage you and your families to do just that – whether it be visiting Poimena to see the extraordinary art of our TCE students, attending the TCE Drama production in Week 9 or even making your way to Lake Barrington to support our rowers over the next two weekends.

I am very proud of how each of our students are progressing in many areas as it is their progress, rather than their performance, which is what we want to measure. I am sure that is what you too will be noticing when you come along to one of these events. I look forward to seeing you there.

Richard Ford
Headmaster

The journey or the destination?

It is hard to believe we are well through two thirds of Term 1. As we move from the end of summer into autumn, many of our summer sports are coming to a close and some are already over. I would like to thank all the many coaches that have helped make the season a success.

As I have mentioned in the newsletter before, Launceston Grammar is moving towards accreditation under the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF).  At present, standards around child safety vary from state to state, and indeed some states have no child safe standards at all.  Last year the School also re-examined the educative process around consent education.  Whilst consent had always been taught as part the  Health and Physical Education (HPE) programme, we partnered with Laurel House to deliver a pilot programme which included 6 one-hour lessons to all of our Grade 9 cohort, as well as sessions in Grade 10 with our HPE staff, presentations to our Grade 11 and 12 students, our staff, and our parent community. It is interesting to note that consent education will become a mandatory part of the curriculum  in all Australian schools in 2023.

Similarly, with child safety accreditation there is no mandatory standard currently in Tasmania, however that will change moving forward.  Launceston Grammar is utilising the ACF as it is what is considered by many as a gold standard programme to ensure a child safe culture exists in our School. As part of this all staff, and those that have significant interactions with students, have undertaken a 2 hour online training course which provides a certificate of completion which is valid for 3 years.  Our brother and sister schools in Hobart, Hutchins and Collegiate, as well as organisations as wide ranging as Surf Life Australia and Rugby Union Australia also use the ACF process to ensure a child safe culture exists in their organisations.

We thank those volunteers who have already undergone the training and as new volunteers come on board our Directors of Sport on both campuses and our Community Engagement Team will liaise with these volunteers to help assist in that online training.

It is an exciting journey, and as part of the process we really encourage student voice and agency within both campuses and are working with our student body to help grow their knowledge around issues of consent, personal safety and space, as well as the power of their voice which we will always listen to.  At the Senior Campus I have been very pleased that students feel comfortable making suggestions about what we can do to make our School better as well as what they really like at the School as it is.

It has been great to welcome so many new staff to the campus this year and see the ideas, energy, and vision they bring to help consolidate and enrich so many areas of our campus.  I know many of you will have met via video our new Heads of House and Head of Grade 7. Today I would like to introduce you to our new School Chaplain, Reverend Matthew Pickering. You can hear Matthew talk about his time at the School so far in the following video.

Finally, back to the heading at the start of this article, the journey or the destination. Philosophically as an educator this is something I often ponder.  What is more important?  As Picasso said, “is it more important that a student knows that 2+2 = 4, that Paris is the capital of France, or that they are a marvel themselves that will never be repeated?”  Much like we stop to admire the beauty of nature do we stop enough to appreciate the beauty that is us?

Is crossing the line first more important than maybe failing, but in doing so learning so much more about ourselves.  An article in the Camden Times in the 1920s suggests; “that when a person wins we see part of their character, but when a person loses we see all of it.”

In saying this make no mistake; I am a very competitive person and like nothing more as a coach than to see my team come first. However, I prefer to lose well having learnt more about myself and given my best, that win poorly with a lack of gratitude, humility or understanding of those helping in the process. Hence the title of this article the Journey or the destination.  In a great book I read recently “The Big Panda and the Tiny Dragon” the panda was asked the question, What is more important The Journey or the destination?  His answer was simple,  …the company.  So for all of those who are accompanying our students on their journey toward their many destinations, know that you shape and mould them so that when they reach the end of the journey, whatever that may be, they are better people for it.

Good luck to our competitors over the weekend and  next week with state finals coming up in many sports.  I hope you have a relaxing weekend with your children and get to talk with them about their journeys and  destinations.

God’s blessing

Nick Foster
Head of Senior Campus

Welcome to another year of learning and growing at Launceston Grammar!

We are a community of learners, and we aim to place high quality, evidence-based teaching at the heart of everything that we do.

At Launceston Grammar, we nurture compassionate, courageous learners who are curious and creative. The following article provides an update of what this looks like in practice and explores the teaching and learning goals for the Senior Campus in 2022.

Underpinning this is research that supports our belief that every student, and in fact every person, can learn. We are all beginners with so much that we don’t know! Understanding neuroplasticity – the idea that our brain continues to grow and change throughout our lives with new paths forming and old paths fading – empowers us as it shows that with effort, we can learn anything, change our behaviour, and reshape our brains.

Meaningful learning requires:

Active student involvement

When students understand the neuroscience behind learning, they learn more effectively; some estimates suggest gains of +7 additional months in a year. This is a form of metacognition. We hope to create a community of self-managing students who embrace their agency and take responsibility for their learning. In addition, we are aiming to increase student voice throughout the school this year, so they are creating their own learning environment.

What does this look like at Launceston Grammar?

• Explicit opportunities to “learn how to learn”, such as study skills seminars for TCE students
• Professional development for staff on educational neuroscience to promote metacognitive talk in the classroom
• Prefects leading at assembly
• Student-led working parties on key teaching and learning matters, such as increasing digital wisdom
• Students launching interest groups
• Student choice within the classroom, such as providing options within assessment

Embracing humility

It takes courage to learn. To acknowledge not knowing. To embrace the unknown and put in the effort to know a little more and be able to do a little more. In his book Embarrassment and the Emotional Underlife of Learning, Thomas Newkirk states that by its very meaning, to learn, we must “suspend the natural tendency to want to appear fully competent”.

What does this look like at Launceston Grammar?

• Students asking questions in the classroom
• Harnessing old traditions while also heralding and learning about new transformations; for instance, embedding our Learning Management System MyGrammar into the classroom
• Acknowledgement when teaching new material that our first attempts at new skills are likely, at best, to be only partially successful
• Developing open mindsets and empathetic active listening in the classroom to demonstrate that we know we are not always right; this may take the form of a class debate or consideration of a range of perspectives on an issue

Inquisitiveness

We are encouraging all learners to be inquisitive, and to particularly be curious around literacy and numeracy. We want to continue to foster love of reading and one place to do this is our newly refurbished Learning Hub.

What does this look like at Launceston Grammar?

• Groups of students reading in the Learning Hub
• Teachers expressing curiosity for educational research and cognitive science and embedding this in the classroom
• Collection of literacy and numeracy data through online testing

Care

Care for ourselves and those around us will help foster a community of compassion and build an inclusive learning environment. We want all students to access meaningful knowledge, skills, and understandings at their current level, and make progress.

What does this look like at Launceston Grammar?

• Students respectfully teaching each other in the classroom to build mastery
• Students engaging in peer-to-peer feedback
• Approaching teachers directly when students or parents have questions or concerns learning so they can action feedback
• Engaging in physical brain breaks in the classroom [photograph example here]
• Staff creating and contributing to Individual Learning Plans where appropriate

Effort

Creating new connections in our brain takes energy – estimates suggest around 30 per cent of our food intake goes to fuel our brain activity! This speaks to the very nature of learning: it is incremental, and it inevitably involves challenges, effort, and persistence.

What does this look like at Launceston Grammar?

• Class discussions around the inevitability of confusion, struggle, and effort when creating new connections
• Meaningful formative assessment to ascertain progress in skills and knowledge before a final assessment which speaks to how successfully the skill and knowledge has been learnt
• A focus on effort, mindset, and progress rather than grade output

As a teaching body, we are working in a cooperative and collaborative relationship with all students and our wider community. We hope to productively work together to help all members of the community grow and progress. We feel privileged and lucky to be a part of this school community and be able to learn together this year.

Sarah Shepherd and Natalie Stewart
Co-Directors Teaching and Learning

2022 marks the first year that Launceston Grammar will enter teams, of up to eight students, to participate and compete in the illuminate Enterprise Challenge. This is a nationally renowned entrepreneurship and problem-solving education program and will be hosted for students of Eastern Australia during the week of Monday 1st August to Friday 5th August. We already have one team confirmed but there is scope for a second!

The illuminate Enterprise Challenge is a week-long immersive experience, that provides an opportunity for high school students to be the confident, creative, and capably young people they have the potential to be in an authentic learning environment.

Facilitated by skilled facilitators at every step, with support from the local community, students work in teams to explore what it takes to get a new project or business idea off the ground, developing key skills in the following areas:

• Communication (Speaking, Writing and Presentation Skills)
• Understanding (Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Digital and Financial Literacy)
• Solve Problems (Creativity, Problem Solving and Reflection)
• Work Smart (Collaboration, Organisation and Perseverance)

The entire challenge provides an authentic experience of the working world while still being educationally relevant, allowing students to grow and stretch at every stage. Students will be provided with opportunities to present industry-relevant submissions with opportunities to develop, reflect and refine all components with support from illuminate Education Australia’s facilitators who design and deliver every component of the program.

The digital delivery features a mix of video presentations, collaboration through a communication platform hosted in Australia, and ‘offline’ tasks to give students an engaging series of activities throughout the week.

The best way to give you an insight into the week is by watching a quick highlights video

With over 17,000 students across Australia having completed the program, along with international recognition for their work, the illuminate Enterprise Challenge is an incredibly impactful experience that will students, teachers and the wider community inspired for years to come.

Student expressions of interest should be made to Mr Ellison via email: CEllison@lcgs.tas.edu.au

Christopher Ellison
Coordinator of Enterprise Learning

Reflections on Launceston Grammar

I think of myself as a custodian of our Chapel and that is a great privilege.

In order to be a good Chapel custodian I need to focus on at least three things.

Firstly, I have the responsibility of knowing the stories represented in the windows, plaques and furniture. There are as many stories as you would expect from Australia’s oldest School. Here is just one of them.Vernon Jones served our School for 58 years. He and his wife, May are remembered in a pair of Chapel windows that feature Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. This week I referenced the window in a sermon about serving others. Imagine my delight when a student introduced herself as the great grand daughter of Mr and Mr Jones.

Secondly, to be a good custodian I must ensure the current students know their Chapel well. In Christian studies next term our Grade 7 and 8 students will be undertaking a Chapel Discovery activity. Among other things they will answer; How many Baptism fonts are in the Chapel and what is Baptism? Who was the tenth Chaplain of the School? What does the window on the left when you walk in represent? (Broadland House) and why is it there? etc.

Thirdly, I need to honour my ordination vows by teaching the Bible with clarity and passion, praying with earnest faith and working to build a community of peace and quiet.

Not every student will be a Christian of course, but the Chapel will always be theirs and I have the honour of being its custodian.

Reverend Matthew Pickering
Senior Campus Chaplain

The Royal Society of Tasmania is hosting a public lecture by Dr Indrani Mukherjee: Understanding Early Earth Environments.

The transition of a simple cell into a complex one, billions of years ago, is the reason we share the planet with millions of species today. Indrani Mukherjee’s research focuses on “what drove that biological transition?” The approach involves a nuanced understanding of ancient marine environments, via novel and cutting-edge geochemical techniques.

Indrani earned her BSc Honours and Masters in Geology at the University of Delhi where she was also awarded the university gold medal for securing the highest marks in MSc. She completed her PhD at UTAS in 2018 where she is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher in Earth Sciences, and was awarded the 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Award.

Find out more HERE