Showcase: Assumption College

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to episode 106 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project. My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Jordan Backup, Rachel Lawrence, and Lisa Sharsteyn. Thank you for your ongoing support. You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. This podcast is our first of what we're calling the Spotlight series. Every so often, we'll be reaching out to schools who are doing intriguing progressive practices that could inspire and influence others to do the same. Each has a twist on how their school was operated and we're bringing in students and teachers to talk about. They're not all perfect and I think they'd all acknowledge that there are things that they'd change, but there's so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities today. Today, we are joined by students and faculty from Assumption College, a Catholic co ed seven through 12 secondary school located in Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, featuring 1,200 students, some of whom board on campus. Assumption is doing a lot of fascinating work that would interest people involved in progressive education and reform measures. In the last few years, they transferred to what they call the MIMAP program, which stands for Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. Instead of assigning students to traditional classes, students have the option between many different classes that are then mapped to traditional graduation needs. This means that students that have an interest in the arts will have a drastically different curriculum than, say, engineering. To learn more, we're talking today with Kate Fogarty, the principal, Von Cleary, the deputy principal, Kendall Aglinskas, professional practices coordinator and learning leader, and Belle Luscott and Billy Carlin, both year 11 students. All of these folks have been at assumption before and after this new self directed style curriculum began.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Chris. It's lovely to be with you and to be able to share a little bit of what's been happening here at assumption. So assumption is a Catholic day and boarding school in Australia in Australia. Catholic schools are also government funded. So we're not, you know, a private or independent school. We are within the, the system. And we have about 1,350 students and about just over a 100 teachers and about another 80 other staff on-site. Do have day students, predominantly day students, but about 70 students who are boarding who live here on-site. So we're just to the North Of Melbourne. We're in a country town, Kilmore. A number of our students come out of the suburban areas, but the vast majority come out of little country towns in about a 100 kilometer radius

Speaker 1 of us. So a lot of them are on the bus for an hour or so before they get to us each morning. It's a very interesting model because it reminds me a lot more of a, like, a liberal arts college as opposed to a traditional school.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We're we're a big school. We're on an enormous campus. We've got, four Australian rules football fields or cricket pitches, which I know won't be familiar to a lot of your listeners, but are big, big playing fields for our students. 12 tennis courts, you know, a a big hockey pitch where where we've got a big sport and cultural program. We run a farm. So we have an agriculture program as well with large animals and small animals from snakes through to big cows and everything in between. So, yeah, we've got a lot going on. We're we're we say we're a juggernaut. We're a really big school, and we go twenty four seven. Very and you you raise snakes? Yeah. I know. I've got a couple. It is a thing. Yeah. It's, it's the kids studying to be vets, apparently. Yeah. To take a slight pause here, here's an overview of the mind map curriculum from Assumption College.

Speaker 3 MyMap acknowledges that students learn at different speeds and have different strengths. It provides learning opportunities across six semesters or three years that align with four levels. In MyMap, the four distinct colors of our college crest represent the four levels of learning. White is the first level, so it represents the foundational courses assessed against level eight of the Victorian curriculum. Yellow courses provide a more enriched experience and typically relate to level nine. Light blue courses align to level 10, and dark blue courses are designed to extend students and are mapped to level 10 of the Victorian curriculum and beyond. In addition to subjects that align to one particular level of the Victorian curriculum, some courses will be multi level. For example, a subject such as visual communication and design could be offered to students across both the white and yellow levels. Other subjects may even align with two learning areas. An example is the science of sport, which connects both physical education and science. Subjects like this are designed to prepare students for future courses that have similar knowledge and skills. In this example, VCE physical education and VCE physics. Complementing our academic program is MyBean, a three year program where the social and emotional development of each student is fostered. MyBean explores topics such as personal relationship building, learning to learn, food, nutrition, and education, safety online and in person, vocational pathways, and mindfulness.

Speaker 2 So about six years ago, Vaughn, myself, and and and Kendall and a number of the other leaders of the community were watching our student data, really plateau and, not you know, they didn't seem to be progressing in their learning. We were running a very traditional curriculum, And our cultural data that we're receiving from large scale surveys was showing, particularly in those middle years, you know, the 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds, they were just getting more and more disengaged in their learning. So we, looked at all of that data, spoke to a number of, institutions around the place and organizations, and really reflected ourselves and thought we need to do something radically different here to get our students back on track and really invigorate and and be able demonstrate growth for these kids and provide them with interesting and exciting pathways. So we put in place some sub teams who were looking very closely at various areas of the school curriculum. So that that included everything from we were looking at a stage, not age learning. We we saw some real possibilities there. We were looking at the data that we had available and really how how well or not we were sharing that with students and helping them to understand their learning journey, and we were looking at just how much breadth we could offer and and and really still keep, you know, hone in on those key skills that the the Victorian government, our state government, but also what we knew in our hearts needed to be a part of our our kids' our curriculum. So it really we we put everything on the table. We tried to be as courageous as possible saying we don't have to do things the way they've always been done. We we we kept using the mantra of students at the center. This this whatever we do has to meet the needs of our students and help them really engage in their learning in new ways, so that we could, you know, really help them to be the best that they possibly could be.

Speaker 4 So, Chris, just to also add in a little bit of, a background. One of the things that we found, you know, at assumption is that the, the narrative that was, quite common in the staff is that the kids were not motivated. And, know, in many ways, you know, the way that our traditional curriculum was set up, you know, I meant that students really struggled to engage with, you know, with classes and curricula that perhaps didn't suit their needs. So one of the things that we wanted to do is to try to create a program that actually met, you know, the needs of the students. And hence, the origin of, of my map, you know, really is the work of Dan Pink and his work drive, you know, focusing on monetary autonomy and purpose. It really is a take on, you know, self determination theory, from Ditchy and Ryan, where we wanna do to create, environment that met the needs of the students. On top of that too, a lot of the research that we looked at, such as stage environment theory, from Echols and colleagues, you know, basically the kind of the the way secondary schools are set up, we're not conducive to meet the needs of students and other factors such as identity formation, relationship building, etcetera. Again, we're just not being met by, you know, what was a very traditional curriculum. So what we have is a, a four year program, where the students come into secondary school from, over 50, different primary schools or elementary schools around the state. And they, start a semester program that we call quarry. Inquiry means to seek. So our seekers, are curious learners, who basically engage with, all the different learning domains. And by the end of their first semester, they're ready to select a personalized, learning program, you know, based on their strengths, interests, and needs at that point in time. So what the students can do is basically, select their own personalized. Program. We ask our students to select an English of their choice. They've got, you know, about 10 different, types of English, to pick from, a religious education of their choice and the same thing we've got, you know, over a dozen of different options. And they, also engage in a, a mass pathway, program, which is basically a digital program that's personalized for them. In addition to that, between the middle of year seven, right through to their senior pathways, students get to pick about 25, different mastery courses. And these mastery courses, are not aligned to a traditional year level. They're actually aligned to, a different color. And our college colors, include sandstone, white, yellow, light blue, dark blue, and a major is as the colors intensifies, so does the learning experience. So our students can engage with, different, learning domains with different colors,

Speaker 1 at, a level of their choice. This is fascinating because it's it's really exploring changing systems that in most environments are not being tackled, especially implementing multi age learning and changing how we view curriculum and choice. To quickly understand about how you establish those classes, let's say that you have 10 English classes on a variety of topics. How did you then come up with those 10?

Speaker 5 I guess the the really the biggest thing when we were going to transition to MyMap was, the importance of collaborating as teams. And, you know, we needed to make sure that everyone was on the same page and everyone had vying to that vision that we had because, you know, I think that was something that some of the teachers were a bit hesitant about, but I think coming together was a really important part of that. So for the English, faculty, for instance, we had a lot of meetings with all of us there. You know, a lot of the time we do have meetings with everyone, but, a lot of the times they meet kind of in little team groups or things like that. So coming together as a large team for three or four weeks in a row, you know, was a time commitment for all of us. And we just spoke about what was working well in the current program, what text we really enjoyed, what the kids were really engaging with. We did a lot of, Google Forms with the kids to get some feedback about what was working well, even better if, and just some dreams that they had. You know, if you could choose to study anything, what do you think you'd like to study? And so we heard from a lot of students about, you know, quest narratives or adventure stories or science fiction, which we really hadn't covered in the curriculum before. So that was really interesting to us and fantastic. So when we started to kind of look at this, the progression from year seven, our tech selection and what units we were studying right up to our mandated VCA curriculum and what we have to do at, our senior secondary school, We kind of tried to sort out where those gaps were. So looking at what genres were we potentially missing or, what, periods of history were we potentially not looking at. Have we got enough female voices? Have we got enough male voices? You know? Have we got people from different cultural backgrounds? Do we have indigenous Australian texts? You know? Have we got Australian narratives that we're hearing as well? So, we really tried to look at those and had, for English, a book club. So everyone kind of went, okay. Cool. Let's go speak with our experts, the librarians who read very regularly. Let's speak to our students about what they're reading and really enjoying. And we were just passing around books and thinking, Well, where do these fit in? So the kind of 10 subjects came from, mathematic based. So we have, for instance, at a yellow level, so a traditional level nine, something called adventure. So it's all about quest narrative. So they watched the film Rango with good old Johnny Depp there with the chameleon. They read a lot of, like, these quest narrative stories where they're seeing this this adventure happen and then recreating that. And we found those sorts of things were really engaging to our students, and they just were able to have that choice with what they were studying rather than, you know, everyone being told you're reading this book. You know, the whole year level is doing it, and there wasn't a lot of choice in that. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, that was kind of, I guess, how we came up with those as well. I think what what I enjoyed of watching this process of these new courses being developed was that staff were able to bring their own passion. So suddenly, we had science courses or, you know, humanities courses or whatever it might be where staff are able to share their passion with students too. And very often that you know, when when teachers can teach from their point of passion rather than from a textbook or from, you know, a curriculum that's been handed to them from somebody else, that brings another level of aliveness for the students to what's being, you know, what's being learned together. So we had, you know, subjects being thrown up as suggestions to the there was a committee who were ultimately deciding, you know, was did was that meeting the standards, the government standards? Was it you know, did it fit in with a line of progression from the from the junior level learning right through to what needed to be done for the students to receive their final certificate? You know, did everything fit together? But, you know, the it was so surprising to us the vast the the variety of subjects that our staff were able to take from their own passion or from what they'd been working on with kids and seeing a spark of interest in and then create still sticking to the government prescriptions, these amazing subjects. And, you know, we've seen a wholesale change of students flooding into the science subjects in a way that we couldn't have predicted, because the these subjects are now tailored to pathways, and they're tailored to interest as opposed to let's just do year eight science. So that's been really pleasing to us, that that that sort of an outcome has come, that people's passion's been reignited from staff right through to students.

Speaker 1 And I would guess that because there's more passion from the teachers, it's then a more intriguing class. Because there's there's certainly things that I currently teach that I'm not passionate about. And although I might try, it's still it's still pretty meh experience. So then you also have this color system that corresponds with the difficulty level of the courses. Is choosing that difficulty something that students choose to gauge and then tackle based off what they wanna accomplish? Or is it a recommendation from the adviser that's sort of negotiated upon?

Speaker 4 Chris, it's, at the end of the day, it's ultimately the students, choice. We wrap, a series of of layers of support around the students. And, you know, we've used the metaphor of journey of, you know, via my map, you know, with our students. You know, we, we say the adults in the kids' lives, are their tool diets. So sometimes they need to nudge push, maybe sometimes hang back as students in regards to, you know, the sorts of subjects they should, pick. You know, we have, you know, learning mental teachers that are walking alongside the students along the journey. Because they're with the students from the start of year seven, they ultimately know and love these students in incredible depth and engaging the parents as well as well as the subject teachers. You know, ultimately having the students having choice, you know, give gives them, the power to make good decisions for themselves. And we know that, you know, not every decision that a student makes is, you know, perhaps, you know, ideal for them or perfect. And that's okay. We're teaching this, the, the students to, you know, make decisions to self regulate, to have ownership in their learning. And, you know, if they do make mistakes, that's okay. They they see out the subject and they pick something different the next time. So I think ultimately, you know, in 99% of the cases, they're making good decisions and,

Speaker 2 you know, giving them those choices that works out in their favor. But one of the portions we haven't talked about here, though, is we we are, of course, doing some standardized testing of the students. We have a national standardized testing program, but we do do some additional testing. And one of the real keys to this program working well was the work that we did with learning mentor more mentors, so our staff, to work with each student so that they understood their own data. So they could see where their progression points were against a standardized set of data. So they could read their own school reports from their teacher properly and understand what was being fed back to them. And so that they so that they and their parents so we included the parents in those discussions, and that happens a few times a year. You know, they're not going in and just saying, I wanna do a whole lot of sport, and that's all I wanna do. There are there are adults walking with them and helping them, you know, make make wise choices, but also, you know, as as Vaughn said, nudging them where they need to be pushed a little bit ahead or perhaps even, you know, held back in a subject or perhaps, you know, literacy is not going so well. How about you take two Englishes this semester rather than just the traditional one? So, you know, there is there is a lot of very rich conversation happening around the the individual student and what we know about them and where their passions are, but also what what what a whole range of other sources of information are telling us about their learning. I would imagine then as a result of not restricting the challenge

Speaker 1 that many students who are very passionate about a subject, but perhaps historically were labeled as not being able to accomplish a difficult course, are then able to rise to that occasion because they have an interest in it. And, of course, in the exact same way, if you really don't like something, you can just take the easy course and get it out of the way. Apologies for a brief ad break, but I wanted to share a second about our upcoming Conference to Restore Humanity twenty twenty two. If you're listening to this before July 2022, I've got great news. HRP is hosting a virtual conference soon. Conference to Restore Humanity is an international invitation for k through 12 and college educators to engage in a human centered system redesign, centering the needs of students and educators toward a practice of social justice. Through a conference designed for virtual learning, participants will engage in a classroom environment that mirrors the same progressive pedagogy we value as students. After selecting a track, educators will be placed with like minded cohorts over four days to imagine and build new ideas together. We had keynote conversations with doctor Henry Giroux, founding theorist of critical pedagogy, doctor Denisha Jones, educator, activist, cofounder of Black Lives Matter at school, and the Circle Keepers from Harvest Collegiate High School, a student collective focused on social justice. Plus, our tracks push a new narrative for education, with topics including anticarceral pedagogy, disrupting discriminatory linguistics, designing for neurodivergence, and promoting childism in the classroom. It's from July 25 to July 28, and as of recording, early bird tickets are still It's a $150 for four days with discounts available for the BIPOC, AAPI, trans and disabled communities, as well as group rates. Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits. See our website, humanrestorationproject.org, for more information, and we hope to see you there. I I would like to turn to the students who are joining us today. Can you describe, like, what what is a day in the life like for you all? What are you experiencing? What does this look and feel like?

Speaker 6 So, essentially, we school starts at 08:45 when we all make our way to homeroom. We get our name marked off at homeroom. It goes for fifteen minutes, miss, will talk us through the whole day. If there's any announcements, we'll do the morning prayer. Then we'll move on to period one. Three classes for each subject each week. So we'll have period one, recess, period two and three, back to back, lunch, and then period four.

Speaker 1 So there's only four periods in the day and then. And for of those four classes, so these are all fairly unique, I I think. What what's like one that stands out to you as being especially interesting?

Speaker 6 So I do systems engineering, which is

Speaker 1 yeah, just like mechanics and stuff. I find that really interesting. Really? And and and kind of turning the same same question to you, Val. I like to do a bit of everything,

Speaker 7 and I found that's kind of where MyMap has led me. So I did a bit of everything in MyMath. And now even when I'm in year 11 doing my, like, senior school studies, I've chosen a bit of everything. So I do I do two Englishes, English and literature. I do two maths, so methods and we call it further maths. And then I also do a science, chemistry, and a PE. So I kind of like having a variety.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I was looking at your schedules before the podcast, and you are you're basically virtual opposites. And what's interesting about all of this is that both of you were enrolled at assumption prior to the school shifting to this my map philosophy. What was that transition like? Was it simply a traditional school day transitioning to something with choice, or was it something else? I found that it was a pretty easy transition.

Speaker 7 So even though we'd all completed two years of that traditional learning where you got told what to do and you had to pick, like, you had to do everything ranging from, like, drama and dance to PE and humanities. When you had to transition to picking your own subjects, it was really easy because even in those traditional based programs, you did have your favorite subjects and the stuff you knew what you didn't like and you knew what you liked and you had interests outside of that. So it wasn't easy. It was an easy transition because you kind of just followed with what you'd previously known you'd you enjoyed.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. And I'm assuming it's the same for you, Bill. Easy transition over to that? I I noticed that even when the the transition was fairly easy

Speaker 6 because the days were still the same. Their periods were changing. The time wasn't changing. But I've got in the actual classes, it was a lot easier to focus because you're doing things that you enjoy. Everyone else in the class was doing things that they enjoy as well. So there was no there was a lot less behavioral issues.

Speaker 1 Even the teacher was more engaged in the class, I found. Yeah. I say this not to take anything away from what you all are doing, but that concept just seems so common sense. When you really cut back on all of this, if you provide students choice in what they do during the day, of course, they'd be more interested and engaged in learning. When we remove some of that bureaucracy, and I suppose industry, from the classroom curriculum and change these systems, this idea of, hey, we should just let students sign up for the classes that they want to sign up for, of course leads to better results all around. Let's talk a little bit about the mentoring and class selection process. Let's say that you're interested in English or maybe engineering. Do you have to take a certain number of classes in certain subject areas?

Speaker 6 Or are there mandated classes? What does that look like? Yeah. You have to do an RA and English and then the math pathway program. The math pathway program is also from year eight ten, and then everyone's pretty much does their own thing. The teacher helps guide us, and we follow our own path in that. In terms of the what we have to do, is it is it seven seven electives?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Roughly per year, Billy. So over the three and a half year journey, it equates to about 25 different mastery courses of of pure choice.

Speaker 6 Ample selection, but very, very small limitations on what we have to do,

Speaker 1 which is which is really awesome. And in in the English as an RA, you also have a choice. And I would imagine that the English and math portions are required because of standardized testing, which makes sense. And to me, that's that's inspiring because that means that these reform measures are possible in places other than assumption college. I mean, that's a very common problem in most places. Let's talk then about choice in terms of difficulty. Are you all taking the hardest classes possible? Are you mixing and matching your courses?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Acceleration was a big part, like, in decision making. So I'd found, like, I knew I was more advanced in, like, certain areas, mainly speaking, like, English. And from a traditional classroom, it's where everybody's at the same level. So you could be in a classroom where the majority are at, for instance, in year eight, year eight English. You've got kids who are year nine or above, but you've also got kids who are below. So I found through MyMap, I could, like, push myself in certain areas. So I was surrounding myself with, other students who were at my own level, which made a massive difference in my schooling because you could not only was the classes different and it was more engaging because you were doing stuff that challenged you on a daily basis, But it was also it was really good to be able to work with kids who were at your own level, bounce ideas off people. The teachers were it made teaching easy because you were teaching a core group of kids who were all at that same level because they'd all picked to be there. It reminds me a lot of some of my experiences in school.

Speaker 1 Like, I guess, like most educators, I was a pretty decent student. I took mostly honors or AP courses. But I just really disliked science, so I took the typical science class. And I never felt like I was in more of a holding cell than that course, because the lack of choice meant that almost no students wanted to be there. Students were there because there was nowhere else to go. I was fortunate in kind of a a twisted way that most of our assignments at school were able to be done at home. And frankly, I was true at multiple times because I just didn't like going to school in general, let alone those science classes. A lot of learning just felt like someone was just trying to control the class through a lot of constant work as opposed to any sense of wonder or discovery or even fun for that matter. It's very interesting how then curriculum and discipline and choice all tie together. Question for you, Kendall, seeing this from a teaching and learning angle. From your perspective, is that transition for teachers the same? Because I would imagine that this may appear overwhelming to transition to these types of courses to some that have taught in a very specific way?

Speaker 5 I think we were quite shocked at the, lack of issues we actually had in transitioning, with the staff. I think we were very prepared in the way that we went about, I guess, getting these different groups around the school to kind of buy in. We did a lot of small team discussions, so really getting those core groups of people who we knew were gonna be really important voices in their offices or in the faculty area to jump on board. So we really sold it in that way. And when the transition happened, you know, as Kate mentioned before, there's staff members now that are teaching, archaeology that was never even a course, and that's something they did at university and really loved. And we've got kids that are, you know, just flooding to those courses or journalism, for instance, or things like that where, you know, in a traditional system, you wouldn't have had that opportunity to do. So I think that buying from staff was was really key. We had a lot of hesitancy in terms of the timing and, you know, teachers, our one big thing is always time. You know, where's the time to do this? And I think they, were a little concerned about the time to write courses because pretty much all of our courses were going out the window with the traditional curriculum, and we were creating these really, great new, MyMap courses. So while you might have kept a couple of units here and there, largely, they were being rewritten. So I think the hesitancy in that regard was definitely present, and we put a lot of emphasis in 2020 in our first year on, you know, the time for staff and really taking back our professional learning and giving them the autonomy to just meet as teams, work collaboratively together to create these courses, and the time to also, you know, play around with what was working in those courses, what wasn't, and adjust them as they went. So, you know, now we're seeing that in a few years you know, a couple of years down the track, and that's really, evident within the class rooms and how engaged the students are as well. Another thing that was really important, Chris, from a change management perspective is the fact that, you know, when Kate and I, you know, were talking to staff about this, change program,

Speaker 4 We're really, really open with, explaining the. And our staff and students and parents have been absolutely outstanding in actually understanding the, you know, the philosophy behind the program. You And, know, once that was explained and understood, it meant that the staff themselves could, you know, develop you know, causes of their choice. We also sent a really strong message to that community that we are going to eradicate the hierarchy of subjects. So the first time ever, you know, the visual arts teacher was given the same amount of time in the curriculum, then a high performance basketball teacher, you know, then a message teacher or an English teacher. So it really did say to our staff that their own learning domain that they're passionate about is is of equal importance. And I think that, you know, really send a strong message to everybody that, you know, they're all valued. So that was a significant part of our, I suppose, support for our community.

Speaker 2 And I guess the other part of that, you know, as we were preparing staff is there there was a bit of anxiety around you. What do you mean I'm going to have, you know, 13 year olds and 16 year olds in the same class? How is that gonna work, and how am I gonna manage these kids who are different levels? Within about a week, not even within a few days of us starting, that question just completely disappeared. And all staff was saying was the group of students in their class who were there to do the subject. So that anxiety around what what a multi age class is like was taken away completely, you know, for the staff by their experience. And the students, I know we had a handful of students and families who were quite worried about that too before the start. And that, again, those voices just fell away within the first week or so because these kids, as Bell said, they got into their classes. They were there with like minded students who were pitched about the same level, in their learning, and they had these passionate teachers and these awesome new subjects. You know? You just have to cast your eye. I encourage people to look at our website and cast your eye over the the names of the subjects, and they just, they're very exciting. They're all still matched to our, state curriculum. So they're, you know, they they all provide a pathway. But they actually because they're they're much more particular topics, you know, they they really just were engaging. So the students I think students by and large have stopped noticing what year level, you know, that they are in. They've still got their friends who might be from the group who they first entered the school with, but there are a lot more multi age friendships. There's certainly multi age learning going on in every classroom, every moment of the day. That that weird distinction of, you know, batching kids by their age for their learning has more or less been eradicated, which just, you know, as reflecting as an educator who's watched the system for, you know, a number of years, it just makes such sense. You know, batching kids by their age for a whole range of reasons lets a whole lot of kids down. And this really has you know, as you keep using the word eradicated, eradicated a lot of those problems because students are with like minded students, with a teacher who's, you know, an interesting topic, but they're they're learning at a level that is pushing them in their particular subject. They can double down in a particular area of school learning. They can let go others that don't have an interest or a pathway for them. They can really tailor a curriculum that's gonna take them into,

Speaker 1 you know, keep it broad. So, you know, they've got lots of options or tailor it very specifically into an area that that brings them great joy and passion and and advancement in their learning. Yeah. The conjunction between choice and difficulty level, choice and discipline, multi age learning, it all comes together. I mean, how are you supposed to learn what it means to be a 16 year old if you're always surrounded by people who are, let's say, 14 years old? It's just not a natural learning experience. I mean, if you're 25 years old and you entirely exclude people who are, let's say, 35 years old, that would be really weird. And I wanted to ask about how all these different things are coming together. I think someone who listening in might see this almost like through rose tinted glasses, like nothing is wrong, that there's no issues with this new system. Are there difficulties that you all are facing?

Speaker 4 Chris, I you know, it's an interesting question. And, you know, to be clear on us, I think we're all pinching ourselves, you know, you know, two and a half years later that, you know, we seem to have transitioned, you know, so seamlessly into this program. We've obviously had COVID thrown at us in during this time. And I think, to be honest, Gracie, if something was in a, derail us, it would've already happened. But during COVID where we did a lot of home learning and mind you, you know, Victoria was one of the most locked down, you know, jurisdiction jurisdictions in the world that we didn't have one complaint from a teacher or students about a lack of appropriate work. And, you know, I I think we've we've found a sustainable model and a sustainable framework that's gonna be great moving forward. One of the brilliant things about a program is that we know it will evolve over time and it's not gonna remain stagnant. You know, any good curriculum will, change. Yet we know we've got some subjects that may fade away from the framework. We've also bought in another 15, you know, new subjects this year, that are engaging students. We see it will develop and mold over time. As I said, I think we've got a sustainable framework. So, you know, cross our fingers. You know, let's hope that our community can, you know, be still doing mind mapping in the future. And I think the, you know, the level of engagement with the research and, you know, having really good answers about why we're doing that has meant that we've all focused on the goal of a student centered education, as Kate mentioned. And I think I imagine there's some administrators or principals listening who are going, how on earth did they afford to do this?

Speaker 2 We're not a wealthy school by any stretch. We're very, very, very middle class and even low low middle class in terms of our families. And we we are actually running this slightly less expensively than we did the traditional curriculum. So our average class size is just over 20. And really what's happened there is it's evened out the class sizes across the school from year seven to year 12. So in the past, where you might have had some really big groups at the junior levels, like thirties, 27, 28, 30, and then much smaller groups up up higher because you're offering more specialty subjects. In offering these specialty subjects across the whole curriculum has reduced our our cost of staffing. The the the little extra cost that comes in that has obviously been a bit over the first few years is making sure we've got spaces set up for all of these different classes. But what it's really taught our teachers is, you know, you don't need, you know, you don't need the textbook. You don't need to rely on the textbook. You can build a really good, you know, rigorous curriculum around a whole range of things. That specialty equipment, you know, multi cross faculty subjects work really well, and that has really been another inspiration for a lot of our staff that those cross curricular subjects where resources can be shared, has been, has increased their capacity to offer a a bigger range of subjects. And one of the favorite ones we've got going is paddock to plate where the agriculture and the food technology courses are are running together. And, you know, kids are literally following their sheep from little babies right through to the great meal that's had. And, you know, and the science team have done some really amazing work with across all the faculties building cross curricular courses. So, in fact, you know, in terms of sustainability long term, I don't see any significant issues in that space. I guess, really, for us, it's feeling like the sky's the limit, and we're really looking at now how do we build more relationships with other organizations outside of assumption so that these subjects have even more real world pathways. And whether that's through to university or through to the TAFE sector or through to business, or the community sector, you know, we're we're open for anything and and actively exploring, you know, all of these options for partnerships in in really new ways compared compared to what we did when we were under a traditional curriculum.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's that's great to hear because a lot of this type of stuff tends to be reserved for those who can afford it. And your school does charge a tuition, but it it is relatively at least least quite low. I I wanted to conclude with this because this model, I believe, is worth spreading. There's there's a lot to learn from this. From the student perspective, you know, why would you all say that schools, other schools, and other teachers should consider this model?

Speaker 6 One of the main things I've noticed with the MyMath program is the connection of Craig with teachers. I've had same teachers since I've been in year eight all the way now through to the DCA. And I I've created a bond with them that helped me push myself and to yeah. Just to help me succeed in the subject. And even if it's not about the subject, we still get along as as friends. However, I still do have the respect for them as a teacher. And and they're helping me now through VCA to try and guide me through the very tough years of year eleven and twelve. Even even if it's just giving me an idea of what I should do for a project or setting me on the right track to, yeah, just and then setting me on the right track to succeed all the way through. So, that's that's my main thing about my math that I've enjoyed.

Speaker 7 But it is the most engaging school program on offer and that not only does it engage students and make them enjoy coming to school each day, but it also provides them with immense opportunities going further as you reach senior school pathways, whether that's acceleration or anything. So that yeah. It makes kids want to come to school, but it also benefits them in, like, ways that are just incredible.

Speaker 1 Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast. I hope that this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope education. You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.