Connecting School with Life - Getting students involved in curriculum & learning design

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

One of the most satisfying things about the MLS is being able to see yourself more than like just a part of the hierarchy of like student, teacher, principal. It was being able to see yourself as like truly capable of having a very good amount of knowledge about a certain topic and work with a teacher, seeing them more as like a well of knowledge to be able to collect from.

Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you with the support of Notosh. This week is a really special episode where we get to hear from some incredible students and teachers from around the world with one thing in common: they are all doing amazing work to explore the possibilities that come when we invite learners to be much more involved in who directs the learning process, what gets learned, and and what the role of the educators is in our schools. Despite working in very different contexts and being at different stages of the process, what you'll hear is that many of the challenges and successes are the same. How much structure is the right amount to give learners freedom but also support at the right time? What skills and approaches to learning do students need and quickly develop as part of this work? How do we reduce the fear factor of these changes among parents, teachers, school leaders, and sometimes among students themselves? How do assessments and curriculum structures also need to develop to make sure that these shifts are well supported rather than working against the system? Because when you hear these students tell their stories, there is no question about how significant and real the benefits are of giving them more ownership and control over their learning. For more background on the theory and practices around supporting student agency, Check out episode 86, where I speak with Larissa Raymond and Jane Louise Collins. And for more details on the schools and programs featured in this episode, check out the show notes for links and contact details. In the first section, I talk with Amalia, Mabanu, Bruno, and Ollie at International School of The Hague. They talk about their experience with the Pathfinder program, a course option open to NYP students in Year 9 and Year 10, in which they can direct their own learning to a large extent while still meeting the assessment requirements of the IB Middle Years Programme. I start out by asking Bruno to tell us about his introduction to the programme and how it differed from the rest of his school experience.

I think that everyone experienced the start of Pathfinder in a very different way. You go from, you know, the structured learning of every day you have these classes at this time and so on, and you get everything provided for you, and you suddenly in a new year jump into your first class where the first thing you're doing is playing this like collaborative game where you have to create a machine where everyone's making, you know, different noises and it's just, it's almost a shock, but it was a really great shock at the same time. And then after those first few days where it's so different, you kind of have to start adapting to how is this new curriculum and how is this new progress going to work? Because, you know, similarly to the students, the teachers were also learning every single day and Similarly to the students continuously making mistakes, that was also something that the teachers made because it was a collaborative job where the teachers and the students were almost on a similar level where we allowed to learn from each other to be able to get further. And, you know, I think in a way Pathfinder sets you up for failure, but it's the best type of failure that exists because it's the type of failure that you fail and then you keep going and you try again and you just keep on getting better. And I think what really was enjoyable for me personally was how through working with others, you know, you failed a certain way and another person was able to succeed in a different way. And by having those different year groups work together and have— by having so many different people with different backgrounds and different ideas come together, and by having the teachers that then allowed you to You know, they kind of push forward a certain aspect of the curriculum that you didn't know, for example, and that kind of joins together in this very symbiotic way, I would say, that really allows you to go so much deeper than what you would usually in a curriculum. And I think similarly to what Morbano told as well, I, you know, I always enjoyed learning and it was always a fun experience for me, but what I enjoyed most was when I was in the class and I was allowed to go deeper into a subject than what was in the books. And I think that was what Pathfinder really progressed into, was going from the excitement and the shock of something so new and having so much freedom, and then slowly progressing into this way of doing projects and work that allowed you to both learn things that the MYP, you know, needs you to learn while simultaneously going into a depth that you can't get anywhere else. And that allowed us to explore passions that we never knew we had before and explore ideas that we would never be exposed to, but also to just, I feel like it opened our eyes a lot more to how the world really was and how we would be able to, you know, be part of the world around us.

Something I say to you, like every time, like you spend how long at school and we're just like, we don't think, like, I know that before Pathfinder, I didn't think beyond school. I just thought like, I need to excel at this. I need to excel at that. It's just school, school, school. And then Pathfinder just opened up the possibility of something else than just books and memorizing and then just spitting it all on a test and moving on. And if you ask me what I learned last year, I would not be able to tell you as detailed as if you ask me what I learned in Pathfinder. Like all the skills are way more valuable than all the like things you need to memorize.

I was always really excited about school and I, I wanted to, you know, perform well and like, especially when I was younger, I took the concept of academia and stuff really seriously and I was like, this is like really important and whatever. And I was really hyped about it, but I never like was conscious of the difference between being inside of a class and like being, I don't know, like it's a certain type of consciousness that you gain when you're in a class that like everything that you're taking in. Is adding to your knowledge of the world and like everything is way more connected to you and like it's a different type of learning to memorize something and to— I don't wanna make it sound really basic, like obviously learning in a class is a certain type of learning, but being able to connect those extracurriculars that I was naturally developing from so much and like that I was already drifting towards, like could see myself developing in. It just gave me the chance to like put that into a structure where I could develop from it as my main goal for the school year, you know? That's amazing.

It's, it's interesting cuz this is also part of what Pathfinder is about as well. We noticed that in primary school, early school is, is very much based on the development of a person and the stages of development a person will go through. And then when you hit that age of about 13 to 15, what, and even older, it's like theory, it's less practice.

Like, you use all elements of practice, and that's like— and creativity is just being shut down, which is such a pity because, like, you need creativity.

What you're doing, what your brains are doing, is you're trying to work out where you fit in in the world, in the different communities you belong in. And then all of a sudden school said, no, no, the Treaty of Versailles is important.

Not that.

I just thought that was interesting.

It connects to what you were saying about things become meaningful to you in your development. That's what's going on in your brain. You're trying to work out where you are and how all this stuff fits in and connects.

Yeah, exactly. And like, for me, so important to be able to connect that kind of thing to yourself and to how you conduct yourselves in everything that you do. And I hated not being able to do that in my other subjects. And like, you know, sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. It's a skill that you learn separately as well, but when the structure isn't there for it and it just doesn't allow you to like have that kind of space, it can be real suffocating because you just feel like you're not learning anything and it's not really adding to you. And I don't know, I just feel like I never really learned how to develop myself through a book.

I mean, it's worth saying that Amalia did some of the most astonishing projects. I mean, everyone did, but Amalia's were the most spectacular where you took an idea of writing your own script and it escalated to the point where we ended the year with an auditorium full of people doing like a full-on performance that you put on and staged. And it was, yeah, it's still, I still look back on year one and think, oh, these things are some of the most special things I've seen in education.

So maybe Amalia, would you mind just taking that as an example and just go through some of the steps, like at the beginning, how did you construct that as your kind of your learning goals around that project? And one of the things I'm interested in, and this is always the question that teachers will ask is, yeah, but how are you meeting the programme objectives? Right? Bruno mentioned it, right?

How will I add education into the project?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's one way of saying it. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, I added all the subjects into the project. For example, like the business elements behind it. So how am I gonna market it? And I had to use Excel sheets to like do the booking and all that. And I had to learn with a business teacher how to do that. That also involves computer science. Then of course, like there's the arts element with the performance by itself and just like I learned how to like be a, a leader because I had to direct multiple people.

Same with the business.

There was also math involved.

What else?

English.

I mean, yeah, the writing of the scripts involved English and I had to work with a teacher of Pathfinder to write. I had just transitioned to language and literature, so that was a year. And then like, I remember I came with forward the project and like people around me told me like, but you're only 12 years old. Like, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna do it? I was like, yeah, of course. And then like Pathfinder allowed me to really go. Until the end and actually have a full performance and production ready to perform.

And how many, how many people were in it in the end?

In the end, in the production, like around 30 people, I'd say, if I remember correctly.

Amazing. And so what's the timescale on that whole process? Like when you had the idea and then you kind of worked through it, how long did that take?

The idea came like for to be allowed to be in the program, in the Pathlight program, we had to write a record, uh, like a sort of application. And, uh, we had to have an idea of what we wanted to do then. So I came up with this idea of having and make my own production because that's always something I was interested in. And so I sent, that was the initial idea. Then it evolved into a musical and all of that. And then I got accepted and I started like almost right away. So when was that? September. And then we performed it in July.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah, it was a full school year.

And then, so just. What were the key moments along the way? Because obviously you're developing this amazing and quite intense project involving lots of different elements, but there's also this MYP piece. And how did you have to kind of, I don't know, document the process or connect it with some of the assessment outcomes and criteria from the MYP? What does that look like more practically? Or did the teachers kind of take care of that part? How did it feel from your perspective?

So I remember for the script element, like the script making element of the project, I had meetings with the teacher every week or twice a week to talk with, um, my English teacher and try to improve it. And she gave me lessons too on how to improve it and like actual English lessons. And I remember the first draft was like 17 pages and then the final draft was around 50 pages. So like the improvements, like you can just see it clearly of the drafts and what they look like. Then for maths, I think my whole Pathfinder experience wasn't only revolved around that project. I had other smaller projects around, so I could combine the other subjects into those other projects. Yeah, because for documenting, like I had to write reflections and things like that, but actual reports, I don't think I had to write.

I'm kind of glad you can't remember this because this was partly the aim is that we, we could see this amazing learning going on. And I think what we're really conscious of as teachers is that sometimes assessment can kill that because it can make it stressful and it can make it artificial. And so what we were trying to do was we were meeting in the background saying, okay, so what's happening here? What possibilities are there for learning? And then documenting what we saw. So I know that Miss Foster, your English teacher, actually did a lot of assessment based on the conversations you had. About the script and about your intention with it.

So it didn't feel like an assessment. It was just conversations. And then the teachers would grade on what you said. They would remember what you said and then base it off of that.

I think that's, that's such an important thing that teachers get worried about is like, this is great. I can see that the students are having a great time and they're doing this amazing stuff. But what about all this stuff that my boss is going to ask me about? Like, how are the students doing according to the MYP assessment criteria? So just making that connection is brilliant. Bruno, sorry, you were going to come in there.

I want to say, I mean, because we're talking a lot about how teachers would assess this work. And I think a huge part of why Pathfinder in its first year was, I mean, I found it quite a success, at least from what we've talked about with other students, was the teachers really continuously had the aim of understanding how to further progress, you know, what Pathfinder was. And I think what really helped was how how open the teachers were to alternative methods of understanding students' achievement. Because I mean, in MYP and IB by itself, you know, you usually get a number as a grade and that's often, I've, we, you know, that takes out of account effort and experience and other learning as well and creativity as well, for example. And, you know, those are very essential things that many people are going to use later on in life. And, you know, some people might do excellent, you know, get a 7 on every single exam they've ever done, but then they'll never know how to, you know, properly plan something that they need to plan or properly, you know, evaluate something. And I think what the teachers helped us so much with was the fact that they basically would allow us to go our own crazy ways in some, in some situations, have our own, you know, ideas that were sometimes really over the top. And then they would kind of be behind our backs and allow us to, and guide us down paths that would allow us to bring these ideas to as much fruition as is possible within, you know, it's still a school system at the end of the day. So we still have to perform certain tasks and learn certain things. So I think a huge element of it was, was how the teachers provided guidance instead of providing answers. And I think that's for, for me personally, I believe that, that is the biggest part of why Pathfinder was such a success was the relationship between the students and the teachers that allowed for a guided experience through ideas that usually can't come into fruition within the normal school curriculum.

Yeah.

So it was a much closer relationship than I'd had with teachers before. I always felt like in classes where I could be like more friendly with the teacher and like speak more freely, basically, that that would reflect in like how you perform or how well you pay attention or how much you get away from it. And when I entered Pathfinder, it was like an entirely different realm of that because it wasn't even just going through content together. It was like the whole thing being created in collaboration with the teachers and it gave me a whole new appreciation for that relationship because the further that I went, even after Pathfinder, I always made a big deal of letting my teachers know who I am and like how I work, because you get so much from that. And like, they're able to help you so much better when they know what you're like as a student. And like, if that's something that is being focused and reflected on and developed.

Amazing. Can I then ask you all just to think about what was more challenging about it? Because As you've kind of intimated at the beginning that it was, there was a lot of space and you didn't quite know what to expect. So partly at the beginning, but then also partly as you went through, where were the challenging moments for you? I mean, Bruno, you talked about failure, just something that was particularly challenging for you about the experience.

As I said at the beginning, you're given this almost a blank canvas and you're given 1,000 tools to paint onto that blank canvas and you have no clue which tool you need to pick up to start.

Exactly.

You have, you have no idea. And because it's such a different experience, because so your first method of going is actually kind of thinking back about what you had done the years prior and almost going, okay, well, I guess I need to do math for 2 hours today. So I'm going to pick up a math book and do that. And so you saw a lot of students in the beginning actually going back to where, where like their origins in the standard curriculum. And then. That freedom allowed us to, you know, I personally, I'll admit there were times where I was doing absolutely nothing because I didn't know how to approach this. But personally, I formed a little group with two other people that were in Pathfinder. And when you kind of started just coming out with ideas and going, well, how can we start incorporating different subjects into this? How can we start making things and creating things that we can be proud of?

And then you made it.

And then, then we spent 3 months building a table, for example, which sounds, you know, oh, you know, yeah, but we spent 3 months basically going through, we went, we did, you know, like physics on a table. We did a product design and there was this huge report on the progress. And so we made, you know, many mistakes with that. And I think the difficult part of it was once you finished a project, how do you continue on to your next one? And how can you make something that isn't like very similar to your previous one, because I feel that that creativity to just let go of something you've just been able to proudly achieve and to then start something new. I think, I feel that creativity is very much stripped from you when you do the standard curriculum and what I think we learned from it and the difficulty was how do we start something new that can be, you know, advanced and personally, I mean, Pathfinder actually is now giving me a career. I started editing a video in Pathfinder for the first time and that's—

Pathfinder?

Yeah, I started Pathfinder and, and now that's, you know, I'm going to film school next year. I've, I'm directing a film together with Amalia and I do it for work now as well on the side. And I think the big challenge is how do I get these things that are so different from normal school? How do I get video editing, which so many people, you know, I think it's just iMovie and you just splice it together.

Exactly.

How do you go from that to then, you know, make it school applied? And for example, a good example for that was the rocket project that we did. So me and those two friends, we really wanted to launch a rocket. That was our big idea was to launch a rocket. And of course the teachers were like, okay, well, how are you going to then launch this rocket while making it applicable? So what we did, what we got out of that was we wrote lab reports for physics and for chemistry on these rocket launches, and then as a further way of further exploring it, we had lessons together with our chem teacher who allowed us to, you know, really understand the chemistry behind it and then apply it. And then even further, we then created a stop-motion explainer video, which included, you know, editing, audio, and all of that, which then taught the rest of the class all these things that we'd learned. And then at the end of the day, we were even allowed to launch a rocket. And so you have this idea that launching a rocket doesn't sound like the most feasible or the greatest idea ever to learn things, but through that guidance and this huge, like really difficult progress, you, we were able to create something out of it that taught us an incredible amount. That's given me a career now. And that's allowed us to explore something in a far deeper level than what you usually learn in the standard curriculum as well.

Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, no, so, so much interesting there. Just one Small thing to pick up on what you said about wasted, that idea of wasted time. Like you were, you sometimes you were sitting there doing nothing and teachers are petrified about wasted time. It's like every single second in a student's life should be directed. They should be doing something, should be learning. And if they're not, then I failed at my job. I mean, it just isn't real life, right? And I think that what you said there is so important that it's okay to have those moments where you're You're looking around, you're exploring, you're reflecting, you're trying to understand where to go next. And that maybe doesn't look like you're doing very much, but there's a lot going on even in those spaces, right? It's interesting.

The way Pathfinder was done in the first year was that we had one classroom that put all those three year groups together and there was always someone doing something. So during that time without really knowing what to do, what was really happening was that we were walking around looking at what other people were doing and we were You know, talking about, you know, what, what are you doing? And we were learning small snippets out of every project that was going on. And not only that, you know, we had a bright and colorful room with many ideas and examples of projects that we'd done. And I think very much subconsciously, we were gathering so much information and so many new ideas from that during that time without doing anything. We might've actually been doing the most out of all. So that's, I think that was a really big part of it.

Yeah.

The thing about wasted time, like, I don't know, at some points for me it definitely felt like I was wasting a lot of time. Like I was quite, I don't know, nervous or like the whole program seemed really big and like such a big opportunity and you just don't know what to do with it. These kinds of things. And sometimes like certain things that we needed to cover were hard to come up with. But there was a part of that. That we kind of got through together as a class, I think, because towards the end of the year we were like reaching a point where everybody had to have done a certain amount of assessments and like nobody had done enough. Like we were like really crunching for time and everybody, yeah, put in kind of solutions together and we came up with all these different kinds of systems to like get each other through it. We started a small global politics class and did a unit together or like there was like certain things that people decided like, okay, with this I really don't have any ideas right now, but I do just kind of feel the need or like kind of want to get through it. So like we were able to like choose to have a class sort of format for it and these kinds of things, but also learning from each other and the other students being inspired by different ideas and even that sort of educational space was already such a different thing. Like even if I went into Pathfinder and I did nothing the whole year, like none of my own project, I would've still gained so much more than in a regular school year because that space of our knowledge and our skills and everything being shared and like really like get, like helping each other get through it and like make it a success. And the biggest part of Pathfinder for me was about that personal development and like just that sort of consciousness of how people can influence each other and help each other out and develop in that way.

Amazing. Now, this is where part of Pathfinders starting as well was about like democratic education and being part of a community. Do you remember we kept stressing that we're creating a learning community here together? And what rights and responsibilities do you have as part of that community? And I don't know if you guys remember, they are burned on my brain, these meetings we used to have out in the green space.

Oh yeah.

Where we used to try and, oh, there are all sorts of conflicts in the early days, right? Between different groups, different age groups. And we try and work out, okay, what's at the core of this? How can we work together? And it is so nice hearing you say that at the end of the year, because I actually think a lot of those relationships were forged in those quiet times where there wasn't seemingly any learning going on early on. But you, especially with Arno, were making connections across the group. And for such a diverse group at the start of the year, actually, you were really close-knit at the end. And maybe that facilitated that.

It would be really interesting just to ask you one last question about the diploma and how, what's the legacy? I mean, you've already said an example, right, Bruno? But the legacy of Pathfinder in the diploma, like, did it help you in any other ways in relation to when you go back into a very rigid and very demanding time like the diploma?

As I said, yep. So we did Pathfinder in year 10, and then we go back into MYP in year 11. And personally for me, that was a huge, huge shock, especially the first few weeks. That was, it's so different. And I think this community that you set up with Pathfinder is such a tight-knit thing that when you jump back into MYP, it's really, really difficult to, you know, get accustomed to that. And then of course we had COVID as well. So that kind of made it difficult, but luckily we started DP in, in class and I think You know, DP is, is really theory-based. It, it, there's little opportunity to fully go even further into depth because often the depth is already provided by the books or simply there's not enough time. It's an incredibly difficult curriculum. What I think Pathfinder helped with though was to continue to still want to learn more. You know, I would sometimes go out of class and with my friend who was also in Pathfinder and we were always the guys that were asking way too many questions to the teachers. Because we just wanted to know more and we wanted to understand it better because we didn't feel satisfied just knowing that this is this and this is this and that's the way it is. We wanted to know more and we want to explore more. And I think that curiosity and that continued passion to learn was, I think, my, what my biggest takeaway from Pathaner. And I think that's going to continue for me, you know, for the rest of my life because it's really allowed me to just not be scared of going deeper if I enjoy it personally and I want, I, I, if I wanna learn it, I'm gonna go for it and I'm gonna do my best to learn it as well.

Yeah.

Amazing. That's brilliant.

I could add to that. I think another thing that was a really big takeaway for me while I was in the DP was that Pathfinder made me like able to separate my learning and like who I am from my experience of the DP because It's like the DP person for me was insanely tough, like completely losing it. Like, it can be really difficult and I think being able to separate like failure and like, I don't know, the regular system just not working out for you from like your ability to still be a really clever, like smart, um, a good student, like I knew that I was still like doing what I wanted to do to learn and knowing that that was something that I could prioritize for myself and be okay with that was like such an important thing for me.

Amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing that because that's, yeah, it can be quite traumatizing school for a lot of people in that kind of way. And I'm glad you've had that experience to connect with a richer experience of who you can be as you kind of expand out into the space that's given. That's brilliant.

We definitely saw a different Mubano to what we expected. Because I remember actually all these guys' applications, we made them do for Pathfinder and what we're expecting. And yeah, Mubano, you really struck us in like how you create connections across the group with people we did not think we would put you with. You made a connection with people and brought them together. And it was a different side of you that we didn't we just didn't see before, but we've carried on seeing it through DP as well about how you connect with people. And yeah, I mean, I think that's your— if people have superpowers, I think that's your superpower.

And I think the progress into DP, I think, is also shown really beautifully with Amalia as well, because I mean, year 12 is a tough year and she's currently working on a film, you know, like it's— I mean, yeah, show off, Amalia, go for it, because it's really cool.

I mean, the thing, like, one of the challenges I had with Pathfinder at the, at the beginning is that I was Like Bruno said, I was presented with a blank canvas and with all the tools possible. And on top of that, with limited amount of time, because a year, okay, it sounds long, but it's not. It goes by so fast and I wanted to do so much because I had this amazing opportunity to be in this program and I wanted to do this, this, and that. And I didn't have time. And so I had to manage my time into basically creating an extra hour per day. And fitting in everything in there. And that's a skill that you need for DP, like creating extra hours in a day. You need to have this skill because if you don't, then you're just gonna like drown with all the work that you have. And on top of it, like, I just have a passion for film. So like, we know. And so I created this extra project on top of that. And at first, like, you, like, I think you told me, like, you were like, oh my gosh, you're doing year 12 and this. I was like, Yeah, why not? And then she was like, you're not ready.

I was like, it's gonna be fine.

It's gonna be fine. And then like now, like this week I'm feeling it a bit. Like I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh, really? But I think it's gonna be totally fine because I'm prepared. I'm ready. Like I've been through that before. Well, minimized, but I still did something similar. So I know I can be ready for that. I know I did it back then. I can do it again.

Amazing. Well, I need to know what that secret is of finding that extra hour in the day. I could do with that for sure. Ollie, can I just ask you just about the evolution of the program? Yeah, because I remember we spoke before about the fact that it was the kind of advocacy work at the beginning was quite hard going with some of the parents who were like, I'm not quite sure if my child's going to be missing out. And so yeah, maybe if you just reflect on that, but then also where has it developed to? How has it changed?

So I think actually where we were kind of taken aback at the start about how positive people were. We were, we were thinking, okay, what we're going to pitch here is throwing together a group of students from different year groups, having that blank sheet of paper for a curriculum that you mentioned, and 'cause who's going to teach us to do this? And so we thought that's going to be quite a hard sell, but leadership were straight on to it, helping us knock down the obstacles. We filled the auditorium with parents and students interested in doing it. I was literally chased down the corridors by teachers wanting to, to take this approach. So actually it was really positive. And I think it kind of goes to show that actually the idea that school should be about helping young people identify and maximize their passions and talents is as close to a universal idea as you could get. The problem is, is when the reality kicks in and people start to think, well, yes, we want that. But ultimately you also need to get a diploma afterwards. And there's this fear of missing out from what is in this curriculum for the rest of the school. And I know this was particularly strong for you guys as students is that even though you were doing these amazing things and you could eventually see that you were doing these amazing things, when people see their peers doing something else in class and covering these different topics. So there's this fear of missing out and parents have that as well of saying, well, yeah, great. Can they do this and everything else that everyone else is doing? And so ultimately that meant that in terms of sustainability, yeah, the program wasn't really sustainable. We needed to adapt to connect students a lot more with their peers and with the mainstream curriculum. So where we've gone to now is that we, we don't do mixed year groups, which is a bit of a shame, but it does mean that students can connect more closely with their peers from the year group. So they have, they start and the end at the same time of the day. They have the same lunch breaks, the same mental program. And we also have given teachers more license to plant key parts of a curriculum into a project. So they might even use it as a starting point. And we actually use this to solve the problem of having that blank page, not knowing where to start. So a teacher might say, okay, we're going to start with the concept of change and explore all the different things that are related to the concept of change and then grow projects out from there. And then you can be sure that, okay, you're covering a key aspects of the curriculum, but also giving students the freedom, creativity to build a project around that. So the process has just become a little bit more formalized so that we can provide guarantees that we're building in that, that essential curriculum whilst also maintaining that freedom to grow a project from it. And that actually has worked really well. We, I think we struck the right balance because it's an in-demand program now in the school. There's still that, that freedom and that agency and probably more structure as well to help students. So they feel a little bit less lost when they drop in and think, okay, well, where do I start with this? Because I think Bruno said that it's a learning curve for teachers, or you almost, and yes, it was. And we were trying to work out how do we best facilitate choice and voice, because agency isn't just choice and voice, it's also enabling people to make those choices and have a voice. And so that's what we've kind of learned, hopefully, with a new structure.

Brilliant.

So, so people, so you've got a full cohort of the Pathfinder students that runs alongside the, the standard curriculum in MYP 3?

Yep. So we, we have Pathfinder as an option compared to our mainstream MYP in years 8 and 9, and then it can be taken as optional classes in, in years 10 and 11.

Nice.

Okay.

Um, so we're actually at an interesting point as a school where we're— we need to decide what the what the future of Pathfinder is at school, because it's still in pilot status technically. And although everyone wants to keep it, there's, there's a question about, do we keep it as a separate stream? Or do we actually connect with other sort of initiatives and innovation in the school to use it as a place to transform the whole school's curriculum? So to, to build science, design, math, English units, which gives students more agency for the whole school. So that's, that's really exciting. So there's the possibility Pathfinder might not exist because it will be integrated with the rest of the school, which I think will be really cool.

In this next section, I chat with Natalia, Bryant, and Mark about their time in the Mastery Learning System at Avenues. MLS is a program that has been running at Avenues since 2014 that allows students the opportunity to engage in a field of activity or study of particular interest to them. By providing support and guidance as they pursue their passions. Mark opens with an overview of the structure and some of the inspiration behind the program.

Great. Thanks, Tim, for inviting us. Brian, Bernie, and Natalia Maria are here with us today, and we're really excited to be sharing the program with you. So the Mastery Learning System, for, for me, as like a journey in, in the work of trying to like change how we quote unquote do school has been something that I've been working on for 15 years. Um, my beginnings with it, like actually sort of predate my coming to Avenues in terms of working with more open systems with students. And so when we're talking about the Mastery Learning System, which you'll hear us sometimes refer to as the MLS, the program is a relatively simple idea, right? We've carved out large slots of time and space for our students in the school day in order for them to pursue their interests and their passions. We've also set this inside of the context of what students need to, quote unquote, learn in school, right? So when we're talking about learning design, right, or theories of learning, right, there are 3 elements that we're concentrating on. What is the content that our students need to be learning inside this space? What's their incentive for learning? And then what's the environment that we're actually putting them in here. So starting with each piece of that, which will give, I think, your listeners a good context for what this thing is, uh, the content that we have— students are coming in for 10th grade, and we're expanding into 11th and 12th grade over the next few years. We have, uh, Avenues, something called the Avenues World Elements. And the World Elements, for educators out there, are basically large-grained learning outcomes that we're working with, with the students. So you'll hear Natalia Brian talk to you a little bit about those. And those are like learning outcomes that regular classes share, right?

Yeah.

So you have things about energy, sustainability, and ecosystems in science, right? And in their regular classes, they're doing things with those elements. In the MLS, our students are taking those elements and the content, and they're finding points of interest and connection and are exploring on their own, but with the guidance of a science teacher, right, inside of the space. So the content that we're doing actually matches in terms of the learning outcomes, the same ones that our students are doing on the regular side. So number 2, like, so what's this incentive piece that our students are working with, right? It's, it's without question interest-based learning, right? In fact, I lean in on the term self-determination and like self-determined learning. A lot of our work is deeply connected to the DC and Ryan work. On like, you know, connecting students with autonomy, competency, and relatedness inside of these environments. We also connect across to research by the researchers Reniger and Hidi. They're from motivational psychology and their focus is on like 4 phases of interest development. And so we have our students coming into these elements themselves, right? Trying to figure out like, okay, what's interesting about energy? What's interesting about identity? What's interesting about cultures? And then beginning to read widely. Read deeply into academic literature often, and then devising project work that will hit those outcomes. So in some ways it's like project-based learning that we've actually handed over to the students and said, well, here are the outcomes, here are the elements, what do you want to do? And we've got our teachers here to support that and help those kids both explore and then dive deep. So it's kind of like, what we're working on here is that classic T-model, right? Like, there's that joke about the American education system that it's a mile wide and an inch deep. And we're looking for both the breadth and then the depth. And that's, I think, one of the really innovative things about our program. Third thing is the environment that we're providing, right? And so we are literally extracting students from their regular science class, their regular English class, the regular history class, the regular art and design class, and we're bringing them into this space together. And so there's all sorts of like amazing synergistic moments that begin to happen as students are like talking about things, working in book clubs together, and then devising project work.

So that sounds amazing. Just, just to clarify before I— I'd love to hear about some of those amazing moments from the students themselves in a moment, but just to clarify, so they're coming out of 4 high school courses to make time for the Mastery Learning system, yeah, for MLS.

That's correct.

And then the elements from the overall Avenues Elements curriculum, they're choosing particular elements that they are drawn to, right? That rather, there's not a sense of covering certain elements, or is there?

In the 10th grade year, we've, in conversation with our curriculum designers and our content experts, we've selected a series of elements. So Natalia and Bryant have been working on and their classmates have been working on 12 elements, right, over the course of this year. But because they're large-grained, you know, these, these learning outcomes are large-grained, there's such beautiful flexibility that the students have to really take them in all sorts of different directions and go deep on them. So the way I describe it to others is that the students— it's not a one-to-one correspondence, right? Like the students on the regular side are going to be having a tailor-made class created by a teacher. And that teacher is going to drive all of the learning. Over on our side, we've taken those same elements and outcomes. So their kids are working on exactly the same outcomes by the end. But they're going to do it on their own way. So the first question you always get is like parents are like, well, aren't the kids going to miss something? It's like, well, what does it mean to miss something, first off? And that teacher is designing something very specific.. And in the design of their regular class, there's gonna be some things that they choose to go down that, you know, other teachers in the world teaching that same subject wouldn't choose to go down. So our students might, yeah, they might quote unquote miss that thing. But for our students, our students are gonna be going deep on certain things or even wide in certain areas that that other class isn't going to go. And that doesn't make it less valuable. It's just that they've gone down different pathways there. And I think that that's a good way of, of thinking. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, But at the end, the goal is to hit the same learning outcomes so that, you know, the students in 10th grade can go into 11th grade with all the things that they need in their back pocket.

Wow, amazing. Thank you. And so let's talk some specifics then if we can. Natalia, maybe over to you first. Could you just give us a little bit of an overview of your particular pathway and the way that you've connected some of those elements? What particular projects or directions have you gone in with with that 10th grade course?

Uh, so like you said, and like Mr. Gutkowski said, a big influence over like what exactly we focus on in the MLS has to do with the elements. But also there's like a lot of room to decide exactly what you wanna focus on. So for example, I have two projects that I'm gonna talk about right now actually, um, which were probably my favorite projects of this year. So the first one, what we call the Kusama Project, and my group and I, which is a group of three, We've been working on this pretty much since the beginning of the year, and it was in order to cover our elements for art class in English. And it consisted of two things. The first was to learn about the artist Yayoi Kusama and how she shows her identity through her art. And then the second was to create our own piece of art that shows aspects of our identity. And along with that, we wrote a research paper and an artist statement as well. So that was probably one of the biggest projects of this year. And I was able to learn a lot about design and engineering and focusing on using materials that I've never used before, especially since we have access to a design and engineering space in our school, which I had never really used. So that was like Mr. Gorkowski was talking about, something that they probably wouldn't explore in regular design art class, but something that we were able to pretty much become experts on at this point in the year. The second is a little different. It's relating more to world course, which was, which is kind of like history class here. And it's about the South Korean economy and how the entertainment industry has influenced the South Korean economy in the past, let's say like 20 years. And so I was able to learn about not only about current events in South Korea, but also South Korean history, 'cause that's really impacted where the economic system and the political system is at today. So those are—

Fascinating. That's amazing. Can I just ask, I'd love to, I'll come to you in a moment, Brian. I'd love to hear about yours as well, but just Natalia related to when you said there about, so two things. One, you said you work working in a group, so I'd love to hear about that briefly. But firstly, when you said about connecting some of the elements from English and arts, was that a choice to put those two together? Yourself and with the group, or was that kind of given to you and then you make the connection in whatever way you want between English and the arts? Or did you say, right, I'd like to pull the elements from the arts and make the connection with the elements from English, but equally you could have perhaps gone with a different set of elements?

Right. Actually, it was very easy. I started with the Yayoi Kusama project back in September, and I started with my South Korean project. Around February, and I was actually able to see connections between the elements that I was working on. So the history elements in the South Korean economics project, and then also within the Ayakusama project.

That's good. And then how did you negotiate that with, so if you're working in a group on the project, what process do you go through then to negotiate that project and those outcomes with the other people in the group? Because I think there's an interesting question for me about individual choice as you're developing mastery, and then that idea of having to negotiate some of those outcomes with other people. So you're not only getting to say, I want to do this because, you know, this is what I really like. You're actually having to say, what are we going to do together? How are we going to achieve our own mastery in different outcomes, these different elements, but do that in a way that we can all connect with this project? How was that process for you?

Right. That's a very interesting question. And especially since we began this at the beginning of the year, none of us had any elements done, of course. So this was the first project that we all made in the MLS, which was also a learning experience cuz we had to adjust, but we kind of created it together. We knew that we wanted to cross elements between different subjects. And since we wanted to focus on Yayoi Kusama, we decided that art would be a really good element to cover. And we also kept in mind that we had requirements in the MLS for having a research paper done. And so since Yayoi Kusama has such an interesting life and we felt that we could really explore that and I guess show it to other people, we decided on writing a research paper about her, which also helped with our English elements, which include writing, beliefs, and identity. So we covered writing and identity in that project as well. So I think it was just kind of collaborative. We, for the beginning, for the first like 2 weeks, we were pretty much just in like conversation about what exactly we wanted our project to be. So for example, we knew that we wanted to do a research paper because we had already, had already done a lot of research on her life, but We didn't really decide to make our own piece of art until a bit later, and then actually deciding what that piece of art was going to be, especially since it had to do with our own identities, which is something really personal. And since we're working in a group, we would have to, you know, compromise on that. Deciding on doing that project was just kind of conversation between the three of us trying to see where we could connect our own experiences with life. Pretty much to create this piece of art.

Yeah, no, that's a great answer because it's, as you say, it's not, you don't just get to freely choose, right? You have some constraints, you have some requirements from the elements, and then you also have what the other people like and want to do as well. So yeah, thank you. And then Brian, can we come over to you? It may be because I've got some questions for both of you about the process and how that felt, you know, in terms of the difference between that and regular school. Let's say, but before we get into that kind of process stuff, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, your projects and how, what, what direction you chose to take that may be different to Natalia?

I mean, yeah, so I applied into MLS with a project on epilepsy. So in 2017, my sister was diagnosed with Rolandic epilepsy. And a common theme I kept seeing was there's no way for her to carry her emergency medication. Without there being some sort of transition with, of her giving it to someone. And you know, this causes her, you know, a 12-year-old, a lot of stress about, yeah, who has that medication? Who has it? Where is it? How do, how do I feel safe with this person who doesn't really know what to do when I have a, if, if she would have a seizure? So I developed over that summer and continuously until MLS, a wearable product that houses her pill, has a QR code that has her personal information, and developed this system for her to, you know, feel safe and for her to know that someone can help her in this helpless state. And then I also wrote a research paper about epilepsy and how it affects cognitively and also physically. And then on a completely different note, we had a speaker come in to talk to us about You know, one of their passions, it's something they have mastered, and this was forging. And the Chinese teacher who has a mastery in forging decides to show us his creations of knives and swords. So I took this in a peculiar way. I went to where he, he learned and I got to use the tools and make myself a bottle opener and then a kitchen knife.

Wow.

And you know, I just, was so surprised. I took an experience like that. I applied into Mastery with this product and this research paper, and I found something completely different that I was completely passionate about and took these two different directions that are completely unrelated. But, you know, I took the elements of design and history for the knife, and I also incorporated like 9 of the other elements in my research paper and my wearable product.

That's amazing. Yeah, as you said, I really like that for one of them, you brought something with you, which was a real clear, like a really passionate interest because of your own family situation. And then you've also been totally inspired by an unexpected experience to then go in a, in another direction together. And it's, there's space for both of those things.

Wow.

That's really interesting. So thank you both of you for both of those things. That's really, really interesting. So just in terms of the process, then if we get a bit more into how it felt and what did you notice for yourselves about that process? Because clearly you're coming in from 9th grade, so you'd seen a direct contrast then between 9th grade Avenues and then this new MLS. And obviously you're still taking, let's say, regular courses in 10th grade at the same time as well alongside MLS, right? So it's not the only thing you're doing in grade 10, right?

Yeah, we also have language and math and then extracurriculars.

Yeah. So just as a reflection, then both of you, what differences did you notice about how it felt, the expectations on you, the kind of skills you needed, maybe, you know, as a learner? I mean, some of those things might have been really enjoyable and other things might have been more challenging. So a very open question, but yeah, what did you notice about the differences particularly that stood out?

Right. So usually in regular school last year, although it was like COVID, so it was a little bit different, but this year especially I think I can really see how the classes are guided by what the teachers think would be interesting and useful for us to learn. So they create like the lesson plans, the assignments, and the projects, finals that they would use to grade us. But in the MLS, it's pretty much completely up to us and we're able to have a lot of control over what we learn throughout the entire year, especially for these very important subjects like English, history, art, and science. So the skills that I needed to learn to be in the MLS were very different than the ones that I use when I'm in regular school. A lot of it is being able to follow directions or being very timely, which is something that we actually use and is a cross between both systems. And in the MLS, since it is so free, we really need to work on not only managing our time very well, which is probably the number one skill that you need to be an MLS. But also being able to speak up for yourself and like put yourself out there, especially in terms of reaching out to experts in the field or even just being in constant conversation with your teachers, which is super essential for you to get the grade that you would like to get and have your project come across like you want it to. So I think that's probably the biggest difference between the MLS and regular school. I'd be like, I have been able to grow a bit more confident in my ability to know what I have to learn and be able to present that to groups of teachers that I might not even know, but have their help on that and be able to talk with them and see them less as this person who's going to dictate what I'm going to learn all year and more as like a, a mentor and a talking point that I can use to develop the projects that I wanna work on.

Yeah. Amazing. No, that's really interesting. And that, and how about you, Brian? Is that similar for you?

Well, yeah, very similar for me. The, the whole thing about coming into the MLS and seeing that, okay, you're not given an assignment was hard for me cuz I'm someone who's used to knowing what they're supposed to do and when it's due and getting it done. But, you know, having the sort of open time constraint and, you know, you have to get done by at some point. Like my whole thing is I was coming home every night like doing nothing because I had no idea what to do with my time.. And then I remember coming up to our December, like, record conferences, which is like these big celebrations of our work from the beginning of the year till December. And I'm like, I've done all this work in school and I've realized that I've blended it into what I'm doing at home, which is amazing cuz normally I separate my school and my home lives, but seeing the blend of my passions, really taking it from home and school and just becoming one, like, sort of station, like Like it's one place to me now. And something I thought was really interesting is I remember in the beginning of the year, I wasn't sure if I was right for the program. Like I was coming home like, no, I don't like this. It's not the thing for me. But closer to now, I started like after December, I'm like, yes, I fit in this program cuz it's the way I work best. And like Natalia said, you know, advocating for herself. But something that I thought was really amazing is my grandfather came to our, my last conference. And started saying that from like the years past of MLS before I joined, he's like, you've had no insight into what you've been doing. And this year he's like, I see you're passionate in the things you're doing. So the 5 projects that you've been doing, you're passionate and you have insight into each of these things. And he's like, it just shows how much deeper you've taken in each project.

That's amazing. And it, yeah, it sounds like a lot of growth for both of you in some similar ways, maybe some different ways throughout the process. And just, Natalia, you mentioned that idea of mentors. Like, at what point does somebody step in? You know, obviously you have teachers who are supporting you, mentoring you through the process. Is there an example you can give where, you know, that mentor has kind of involved themself in your project in a really useful way, or you've gone to the mentor that teacher to say that we're struggling with this, you know, could you help us? What, what does that relationship look like?

I think there are two very important examples of that. The first is my mastery teacher, which is Mr. Ashour. And although he doesn't teach any specific class, so there are both mentors and there are content specialists for each class. So he doesn't specify in like science or English or history, but he does help guide us, especially when we're trying to plan our projects and trying to manage our time. So I've been able to learn a lot with him as my teacher, actually, especially about the way that I'm learning and the way that I process information best. So through our conversations, I've been able to realize that I'm a person who processes information by talking to people about it, which has actually been very helpful for me because I've been able to use that in a lot of my other classes as well, being able to talk to people about what I'm doing, um, in order to understand better myself. And then another very important example actually is the design and engineering teacher, which was Mr. Farnsworth. So my group came to him when we started to think about building the actual tunnel, which was our final art project for the Yayakusama project. And so he has been working at this school for a very long time, pretty much as long as I can remember since I was in middle school. And since I never really loved design and engineering, I hadn't really been able to work with him very much, but We did know that he had expertise in the materials and the tools that we needed to learn to use in order to develop our vision. So we were able to reach out to him and pretty much be in constant conversation with him. I honestly didn't think that we were going to work together as much as we did. We spent like a month with him pretty much almost every day in the i-Lab working on this project, and we were able to both, you know, have his knowledge and his expertise in, um, these tools, but also get to know him better as a person and as a teacher. I honestly think that's— those are two very good definitions of like what a mentor is. Being able to kind of just be in conversation with them and have them work through things with you alongside of you, because this project actually was challenging to the design and engineering teachers themselves as well. So it was kind of like we were all learning together and using each other's knowledge in order to, you know, work towards this difficult goal that we're trying to achieve.

Amazing.

And just to jump in, I can tell you one of my favorite moments of actually the MLS this year was going down to the iLab and seeing your team working not just with Mr. Farnsworth, but Ms. Schwartz and our art teacher, Mr. Atkin. They were all down there and there was a real problem and all 6 of them were around, like, brainstorming, like, how are we gonna bend this piece of plexi, this mirror plexi, without breaking it? And, and these are the sorts of problems— like, here, here you have people with master's degrees who've taught in college, and they're wrestling with this work. And it was such an important learning moment because Natalia and her team are at the table, and everyone ones putting in their input about what they felt like the best way of doing this was, really struggling. And for students to see that productive struggle in adults and to be like a part of the solution finding, that's a game changer, right? Like not, not the adult as the, the be-all end-all of knowledge and skill and expertise that we often pretend that we are inside of schools, but to really like let kids deal with the complexity and the mess of ambiguity that exists in our lives, right? And, and to be a part of that conversation.

Fantastic.

Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Let's go on, Natalia.

Just like a very quick thing. What Mr. Gutkowski said, I just think like one of the most satisfying things about the MLS is being able to see yourself as a student that is more than like just a part of the hierarchy of like student, teacher, like principal or something like that. It, it was being able to see yourself as like truly capable of having a very good amount of knowledge about a certain topic. Even as much as a teacher maybe at some point. And honestly, it feels very satisfying to be able to work with a teacher in a way that allows you to not only see them as like this all-knowing figure of like, you're going to tell me that I have this homework due on Wednesday and I have to do it on Wednesday, but seeing them more as like a well of knowledge to be able to collect from.

That was just Brilliant. Yeah, we get good at pretending that we are these all-knowing figures, right? And we're really not. So that's good. I'm glad to see that's coming out. The truth is out. That's good stuff. So Brian, is there anything you wanted to reflect on there just in relation to some of maybe that role with the mentor, but also maybe some of the challenges, the more particular, you know, were there some particular moments where you, I mean, you've already reflected on the fact that you even doubted whether you were the right kind of student for MLS at the beginning, but were there any other particular moments that you feel you kind of came through maybe with the support of one of the members of staff?

So similar to Natalia, I was working very closely with the design team on my actual product design. And something that we were wrestling with the idea of is material. So I was like, okay, I'm tying the sustainability element into my project, but what does that mean for a company to be sustainable? So I decided, you know, let me research it. So I found this rabbit hole of something called ESG sustainability. It's a set of criteria that a company follows to say they are ESG, they have the ESG criteria and they meet it. So I'm like, you know, why doesn't my company meet ESG criteria?

Why not?

So I took that deep dive, or as Mr. Kassky would always say, the rabbit hole that, you know, us as mastery students dive into as deep as we want. And I was wrestling with this, like, you know, what materials are sustainable but functional? And I just remember like watching me and Ms. Schwarzschild from like a third person struggle with this idea of, you know, fashionable, functional material that will in the end not impact the environment as much as a plastic or a rubber, which, you know, from, for a reflection piece was, I think, in my opinion, growth. I saw that, you know, there is no one fix, there is no one idea that will work. And in Natalia's case, it was like watching them bend the plastic and how, you know, how careful each little move would be or else, you know, could the whole thing could go sideways. And I think that moment of growth for me was watching me struggle with this, you know, small idea of material. And then, you know, looking at the large scale, I have seen my father who works in tech and engineering and watching him wrestle with the idea of, well, what does this company need? And what does this company want? But what can I do as a person looking at a big picture?

Yeah. And as you say, in a way it's a small thing, but in a way it's a massive thing, you know, materials, material scientists working on this. And as you said, all these ripples of, is it sustainable? What the impact, the wider impact of the waste or the circular economy and all these things.

Yeah.

Really fascinating. Thank you. And maybe just to kind of wrap it up, Mark, if we come back to you, just from the wider perspective of the way that MLS sits within the rest of the school, because obviously, as you said, you're expanding it out into Grade 11, Grade 12, which is brilliant to hear. What are your reflections about what are the relations there with the wider school community, or the way the parents are perceiving it? Is that developing and changing? It's so it's not just a little ghetto off to the side, but actually becoming hopefully maybe a bit more of a core element to what the school offers.

Yeah, our hope is that as we continue to grow the experience, right? And again, remember, I've been working in this area for a long time. Yeah, it takes time, right? I mean, because you're exposing people to new ideas that run counter to much of what I know as a teacher I was trained to believe. And The idea that a student could take these elements and learning outcomes and then actually achieve them on their own or with a small group with the teacher now as a support. I mean, like when I was getting my master's, I mean, that would've been heresy, right? Like I think people would've said, oh, there's some, probably some truth to it, but we're beginning to explore like how far can we take that out? And we haven't found the limit to it, right? So part of the work that what we are doing, and this is, this is actually part of it, Tim, so thanks for inviting us, is sharing this vision with the world that we're creating, right? We developed some expertise, and the students, they didn't talk about it, but I mean, like, there's a whole project management end to this about, like, how do you propose a project, how are you being assessed on the project, how are you maintaining and working across the timeline to kind of hit your goals in a way, right? It begins to shift radically what school looks like. And one of the things that we've worked on, and at Adminis, we've had this support, right, from the highest levels who want this type of innovation at the school. We've had to manipulate tried and trues, right? So like the idea, like I said earlier, we're extracting kids from these 4 core classes and then bringing them into this space.

Well, why?

When you listen to Natalia and you listen to Brian talking, right, like the depth of these projects is extraordinary. These things take time. The traditional system's like a really efficient beast, right? You can drive content and there's a notion of rigor in the world. And I think it's one that's the driving notion of rigor, which is that we're gonna pile content into your, into your plate and into your head. We're gonna move that at breakneck speed. We are gonna punish you with content and then we're gonna give you a test at the end and see how you do. And we know a lot from learning science, like That's not the ideal way of learning. It's disconnected. It doesn't have any connection with the real world, certainly not to student interest or autonomy at all. There's another notion of rigor, and I think it's the one that we're working with. And I think the minute you say it to people, people recognize the truth of it, right? And that notion of rigor is that time and space and being able to create room to breathe and to actually get deep on things. That's a notion of rigor that we don't talk as much about in education, right? We're hyperfocused on that other thing, which is piles of content. But we know even from like the college perspective, we hear over and over and over again from professors and from colleges, kids are showing up by our door and they can't do what we're asking them to. It's like, well, because the model in college is a different sort of thing. Like they want you diving deep and falling into the rabbit hole. We don't have time to do that in the traditional system. And so a lot of what we've had to build out as an argument is how is this rigorous, right? How is what we're doing rigorous over on this other side? And then showing that vision and sharing that vision out with others. Because when you hear, you know, Natalia and Brian talking, you're like, wow, this was a profound experience that they have there.

In this next section, I chat with Michaela, Lauren, and James at Northern Bay College in Geelong. James has been working with his teaching team in Year 9 to develop units across the curriculum that create more opportunity for student input and engagement through the use of ethical and real-world connections. He starts out by telling us about the intentions behind the changes.

I think fundamentally what we were trying to do was to create science units. Initially, well, the aim is to go across the whole curriculum, but starting with science that are building, not just building scientific understanding and scientific skills, but are giving them a context that makes them important. It makes them matter. And helps build students' ethical capabilities and their ability to think critically rather than just remember pieces of information. And so we, we looked at our unit on chemistry, which was a unit that none of us were particularly happy with in terms of the engagement that we saw from the students. So we rewrote the unit around a driving question of, is it worth the risk? And made that risk, we decided we'd focus on nuclear power so we could still do that work on atoms, isotopes, and elements. And radiation, which was the core science knowledge in the curriculum, and then linked into teaching ideas of duty, intentions, and consequences, because we felt if students were going to evaluate if nuclear power was worth the risk, they needed to have frameworks to do that that weren't just the scientific facts. And the ethical ideas around what we should do versus what we have to do, what we intend to do versus what actually happened were the— we felt were the right lens to look at nuclear power. And so we did some explicit teaching around that. That along the way, paired with the more traditional, I guess, scientific understanding and lessons of practical activities and those kinds of things as well.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Maybe Michaela, if we start with you, if you could remember back to your Year 9 science, maybe it might feel like a long time ago now. How was the whole process of the Year 9 science, particularly the big picture science with the, when you started looking at ethical thinking and the nuclear power unit that you did. Just talk to me a bit about how that felt. What was different? What did you like about it? What you maybe struggled with?

We did a lot of stuff on ethics. Yeah, ethics and what's right and what's wrong. I think the learning was more fun last year. Like just overall we learned more interesting things. Whereas this year you have to remember it and then you have to remember all these random things that I don't remember. It's just very complicated now. I mean, at the start of the year, we were sort of doing like science stuff. Like we didn't necessarily go into, in a way, the history behind who discovered what or like that sort of stuff. But then when we started looking at like nuclear weapons, we did look at like the history of like the first atomic bomb being you created that and what happens. Like we didn't just look at the science facts that were around the event, we looked at the event itself. It's really when we're doing hands-on work that it gets exciting or fun even.

And so it made it more real maybe, but were you, did you have more responsibility for what you were learning? Tell me about—

I probably did because a lot of The tasks that we tried to do were research-based tasks. We were given a certain topic by our teacher and we had to go and Google facts about it or do that sort of stuff. I'm not sure about Lauren's class 'cause we were in different science classes, but in my class we were split up into groups so that we weren't with our friends or people that we knew. We were with different people that we wouldn't necessarily talk to on a daily basis. We were given a question and we had to go at that question and at that certain grammatical rules and either make a poster or get a child with us' attention, read that sort of stuff. And then we'd share it with the class and like sometimes the class would give us constructive criticism about what we could improve or what they liked, like that sort of stuff.

And did you choose together and as a team what you were researching or was it fixed by the teacher?

Some occasions it was fixed by the teachers. So we had guidelines and rules that we had to stick to, but we were allowed to in a way research what we wanted to as long as we met the guidelines and met the actual topic. It was relevant to what we were learning.

And how did you, how did you show that you had learned that? Was it just a standard test that you would normally get or was there a different way of assessing what you'd learned?

So, halfway the way, while we were waiting, we looked at Bronnie. As Lauren said earlier, we liked ethics and what's right and what's wrong with stuff like that and stuff. We actually had to wait for an hour and a half for a concert to ride and think so about whether or not nuclear power or nuclear weapons was ethical or whether or not it was right or wrong. So, and then that was what we got marked down with. Assigned to the knowledge of nuclear weapons and that, but also the way that we structured our ISK.

Yeah. Yeah. And did you have to, were there sometimes when you had to explain the concept to each other in your group?

Not entirely. Like, I don't remember if we had to sort of concept to our group, but I think we did to our other groups. I mean, it was certainly a lot more helpful towards our classmates if they weren't hearing this part of it because I think that a lot of it was because we were actually retaining a lot of the information that was thrown at us in a sense, instead of not remembering properly and having to actually have the teacher explain it.

Good. And would you like more of that kind of way of, of learning science?

Yeah, it makes science more interesting to go to, cuz I don't, I'm not someone that enjoys reading for hours with nothing to remember at all. So if there's an easier way of visualizing, I feel like it would be more entertaining to do, maybe even easier to remember.

Thank you. Michaela?

Yeah, I appreciate what we've learned world-changing throughout, not just like being around, but trying to live throughout all of events because it does show more out of the Bible group and the whole lot more than what I am currently learning. I'm, we're currently looking at physics and science and I remember barely anything.

Yeah.

But we remember nuclear stuff from last year. Yeah. It was, I mean, anyway, trying to learn the language and learn words anyway, made it a little Relatable. We were able to relate maybe the language to a TV show that we had watched or a video game that we had played, but we were able to relate it to something that we would do every day with access to hearing aids because we're being exposed to it at school as well as at home or in other environments.

Yeah, so it kind of became real. In your life or connected to your real life rather than this detached set of words and ideas you just have to remember.

Yeah.

Thank you. And then, so just from a teacher perspective, 'cause you were obviously helping to write. Well, one question was, were the students involved in that process of writing the units as well, or were they just— were not?

So the students, the students weren't involved in writing this unit. They were involved in the choices within it in terms of the delivery, a lot of choice within tasks and activities as to where they took it, opportunities to collaborate or work independently. So their choices were more, I guess, in the delivery and then free rein in terms of the presentation of their final opinion piece and how they chose to do that. That was largely as a literacy support for our low literacy students. The current work at the moment though is, is on co-design with students and looking at how we can reflect on this unit and the other units that we do in science and bring students into that co-design because that's where we want to get to. But that's, that's definitely a work in progress still at the moment.

Yeah. And what did you notice as a teacher? Because we've had obviously Michaela and Lauren reflecting on it, but as a teacher of that unit, what did you notice about the way they interacted differently or just kind of brought themselves into the learning?

I think what we saw initially was some real hesitation to engage with it just because it was something different and it wasn't what they were expecting from a science science class, and so that took a while for him to get used to and that discomfort of trying something new. But once we actually started drawing those connections between law supported the science learning, they, once they could see that bigger picture, the engagement level was significantly higher than what we'd seen in the previous term and the quality of work that was produced by the students at the end. If you wanted to look at it in terms of the amount of writing or the quality of that writing, the quality of the arguments that were produced. Were significantly better than what we'd seen previously. Notoriously difficult to get Year 9s to turn in work in science, particularly in the first half of the year. So what we saw was a significant uptick in just students being willing to attempt work, students discussing ideas together, students arguing with each other, but arguing constructively, which is always the big asterisk when you have students discussing things. And we're seeing, we're seeing the same thing again as we deliver this unit now to our new cohort of Year 9s and We've just been looking at, yeah, some of the ideas around writing arguments and how we structure those. And students, really, really nice oral language developing amongst the students and being able to talk about the ideas and discuss things, which is obviously key to them being able to write effectively at the end.

Absolutely. And the science knowledge, how would you reflect on that? Because that's obviously often people's concern is like, well, you're spending all this time on ethical thinking or, you know, oracy development or writing development. Is the science learning being affected by that?

We believe it's having a positive impact on, on the, the learning of the students and on the engagement of the students with science in general, which I think has always been traditionally a challenge in our context. But in terms of the academic side of things and the level of the students, we saw a comparable level of achievement on those assessment tasks in terms of just the straight content understanding as we saw on, on more traditional tasks. And if anything, what we saw was more students reaching the expected benchmarks at the level than we had previously with more traditional ways of teaching and assessing. So we had a real focus on mastery as well. So that, that process of editing and proofing and rewriting, because we felt what was more important was giving students the chance to master the content and master the concepts rather than a single snapshot assessment, which wasn't a fair judgment of what they could do. Yeah, brilliant.

That's good. And then just lastly, you mentioned it briefly already, but where would you like it to go? I mean, if you were looking at it 2, 3, 4 years down the path, what would that look like?

That's a dangerous question for me. So, I mean, this year, what we've done is we've taken the same approach that we took to this unit, and we've done it for 2 subsequent units. One on body systems. So our biology unit, which normally teaches the very traditional, like, here are the different systems, here's how they work, research a disease, and that's the end of the unit. We anchored that on the immune system and viruses this year with the question of why does it matter if I don't get vaccinated? And again, drew on that ethics and, and sort of, we talked about biases and those kinds of things with students to come to that idea. And they, we focused on science communication as well. And so they had to create an advertisement as their assessment task around some aspect of COVID or viral disease as a scientific communication piece as their assessment. So again, trying to get it more in the real world and more, more tangible and more practical. And moving forward, what we're looking at doing is a significant amount of professional learning with our Year 9 team around co-design and around what that looks like and working with Jane Louise and Larissa in a mentoring capacity to implement the CUBED framework. So the know, understand, be, do, and really focus, particularly focus on that be and do component. Of what are the dispositions and what are the skills that we want our students to have and how do they contribute to the big picture understanding and ultimately having that as a coherent thing across the whole Year 9 program rather than just in one subject. So that's ultimately the answer to where I wanted to go is that this is a coherent approach to how we plan curriculum across all of Year 9 rather than just sitting in one subject. So that idea of the example of Michaela saying that her retention of information for the science area was stronger because it was connected to historical approaches or ethical approaches to approaching a problem. So that's where we want to get. We're a fair way off from that at the moment, but we're making steps along the way. So, which is exciting.

Lastly, we get to hear from Charlie, Josie, Dylan, and Nathan at Prahran High School in Melbourne. The school opened in 2019 with Year 7, and right from its inception, the team have involved students in the leadership, systems, and structures that are core to the school, including the development of curriculum. I start by asking Josie about how she got involved in the curriculum discussions at the school.

So it kind of started in Year 8 for me. It was because of Charlie, actually. We had kind of heard about teachers kind of meeting after school and talking about how they would want their subjects to run for Year 9 and what they would be teaching and what they would be offering. And so I found that really interesting, and I wanted to kind of offer what I wanted to see, and I wanted to obviously see in Year 9 something that would benefit me and benefit my learning. So I kind of came along and we started talking about you know, my interests and what I would want to see going further and stuff like that. And then for Year 9, it was more just offering occasional opinions and just talking through processes and talking to my friends about like VCE, because that was obviously coming up. And so we wanted to see kind of that taken, you know, very seriously and in a really great direction. And then for Year 10, it was more about joining leadership programs and stuff like that. So it like being ambassador and doing art and design stuff. And so kind of just being more involved in the school in general and less kind of just about my year level really. And that's kind of how it's been going this year. But yeah, that's just—

wow.

That's brilliant.

Yeah, no, thank you. Just that— no, there's loads in there. So I'd love to maybe if we can pick up on some little bits of that individually. So like firstly, that piece of how did the invitation come to you to go and join these secret teacher meetings after school? Was that a formal invitation from the school to you or was that something you thought, well, I'm super interested in putting in my opinion, so I'm gonna go and join those meetings?

Well, it kind of started from Charlie, so it was more just kind of a peer conversation. And me myself, I'm quite opinionated, so I didn't know I was very interested in this at first, but then kind of slowly getting into it, it was really interesting and it was valuable to me to be able to give my opinions and really give what I was thinking and feeling. So it really just a conversation.

I don't know how we got it.

Charlie, you tell us a bit about where that came from.

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure either Mr. Fiedler or Mr. Chisholm asked me to be on this like panel, you can call it, of deciding and like kind of critiquing what our, you know, curriculum would be like. And I just asked diversity to come along on the panel so we can have obviously more voice and obviously more diversity in gender as well.

But yeah, also nice. And Dylan, was that— were you also on the same panel?

Yes.

Yeah, I was a part of that too because I had previous involvement with leadership.

Okay, so I'd love to come on to the leadership stuff in a minute, but in those meetings, just talk me through what were the questions that were asked. I mean, how specific did you get about the types of things you would like to learn?

Yeah, it started with some sort of really broad thinking, just a huge brainstorm on the board. And it was really collaborative between students and teachers. So we had everyone just adding ideas to that. And from there, we kind of narrowed it down to a few key things that we wanted, like, like student agency. We wanted a greater amount of choice, more sort of project-based learning.. And we started to kind of look at some other models, existing models for Year 9 that were put in place by other schools. And again, that research was taking place in collaboration between the students and staff. Amazing.

So that gave you some kind of inspiration about what other people were doing. And so, so were you getting down to the level of the specific concepts and topics you were going to learn, or was it more about the experience of the curriculum and how it would be taught and how you would learn it?

It was a bit broader, so, but what then happened is that the principal team produced a sort of preliminary model based on some of the things we had discussed, and then we then provided feedback on some of the more specific elements, some, some of the more specific ideas for courses and things like that.

Yeah, amazing. And how much of that were kind of elective courses? Like, obviously you've got your core subjects Were you able to influence, for example, some of the types of courses you took?

Yeah.

So as Dylan said, like we got into little groups with the teachers and students and we brainstormed different specialisations or electives that were suitable and that like we wanted to see in year 9 for us. And obviously it was appropriate and we like picked and chose what we wanted. And obviously the teachers went through it. But it was very refined process that we did this. Like it was a weekly thing every Tuesday, I remember, but it was very broad as well as narrow. And there was a lot of diversity and choice with this.

Cool.

Can you give me some like specific examples of the types of things you chose?

Yeah. I remember some of, there was a big topic of R1 with having like a fashion, a fashion elective, which was then like brought on into year 9. And I remember that being a big hit with with one of our teachers, Ms. Roberts, teaching it. And yeah, I remember it being brainstormed on the piece of paper and how we spoke about it, and it was just really cool to see it reciprocated in Year 9.

Fantastic. So maybe let's move then to how did that feel once you'd kind of been involved in the process of establishing the ideas and the groundwork for how— then when you actually were experiencing Year 9, tell me a bit about that. Like, did a lot of ideas come through to you? But also, I think more I'm interested in was what ways when you were actually in Year 9 did you have to still put in your kind of voice and your agency into the process of learning?

Yeah, well, kind of when we got into Year 9, it never really stopped developing since it was the first time the subject had been run for all the Year 9 specialisations. It continued to developed and refined. And so we always kind of got to give our opinion, or we got to review what we were doing almost to kind of give our teachers a bit more clarity on how it was going or how it could further, you know, how something could further be investigated or anything. So it didn't stop after the subject had been made. We could, during projects, we could say, actually, could we try going this this way, or could we try, you know, testing out a different, you know, whatever it was, whether it was science or fashion or something like that. There was a lot of kind of freedom in just getting to give your opinion. So they were so open to us giving our opinions and thoughts.

That's brilliant. Could you maybe, Dylan, maybe tell me a bit more about the— I think Charlie, you mentioned project-based learning, or, you know, the way that you were learning some of the subjects. That experience of actually being a learner in that classroom in Year 9, like, how did it, did it feel really different to, for example, when you were in Year 8 or now when you're in Year 10? I don't know, maybe it's followed you through to Year 10, but just, I want you to contrast that with a different kind of experience that you had. You know, what was different about it? What did you notice about the actual process? Because I'm kind of hearing you say that you could put, you could input your ideas, but I'd love to hear a bit specifically about like, at what moment could you input your ideas? How was the teacher kind of inviting those ideas? Did everybody feel as free or, you know, was it just the people who were more confident and opinionated could put in their ideas? What was that general experience like? Dylan, do you want to?

Yeah, so it, it really was quite different. So science, humanities, and the arts were kind of combined into this singular project-based learning subject that we call Impact 9. And there were obviously opportunities to do things like science in electives, but otherwise it was combined into this project-based learning subject. So one of the other things that changed that was quite significant was that the Friday was completely reserved for Impact 9. So rather than, you know, going from maths and then to English or French or whatever it is, you might be spending the whole day working on a particular project or something like that. And I mean, some things worked out and some things didn't work out so well, especially considering it was a difficult year with all kinds of other things going on. But one of the things, for example, at the start there was kind of a feeling that there's a bit too much freedom and kind of not enough structure. And one of the other things was we want to be doing something a little bit more practical and focused. So it felt like there was kind of a lot of sitting around and not doing very much going on. And I think that that was like a big issue for the first term. And I mean, how did that, how did that feedback come to the teachers and the— I mean, I think the school is sort of constantly running focus groups with students. I can think of a few that I was involved in where we sort of just talked about Impact 9, but also there's kind of informal feedback going on all the time where you might have a conversation with your teacher about how the session went, and that's all part of just how we sort of communicate, students and teachers.

Yeah, that's great. I think your your point about structure and freedom is one of the key areas for every school around the world who's thinking about doing this work. Getting the balance right between those two things is exactly— that's on the money, right? That's exactly where they struggle. So could I ask you a bit more about that in terms of what kind of structure did you feel like you needed a bit more of? Was it about the specific content discipline ideas that you were supposed to be learning? You wanted more structure to help you learn those, or was it more about the structure of the project and what you should be doing next, like an activity type structure? What were you feeling you needed more of?

I think perhaps it was perhaps a more specific aim because there was from the beginning, beginning, a sort of activity-based structure where you would go from one stage of the design process to the next. But our initial project was kind of quite a vague invention design type thing. And I think it felt a little bit— there was a bit of a lack of direction. But in terms after that, it was a little bit more focused and we were able to sort of choose a focus, choose a stream. So there could be a science stream and a fashion stream or a food stream. I remember we focused on sustainability and those were the three sort of streams you could go into. And in each stream there was an aim, a more clear project that we were working towards.

Yeah, brilliant. Just on any of those, Josie or Charlie, were there any other reflections you had in relation to that idea of how much freedom you had against how much structure you felt like you needed?

Well, there was— I definitely kind of felt that there was quite a strong need for balance almost. And it's quite hard because it was the first time that this project had run. And I know it's a different type of learning. So I think we learned kind of better when things were slightly more practical and it wasn't just giving us stuff to do in our own time, you know, where you sit and you type and you research stuff. I think it was better when we got to physically go out and kind of really learn stuff in the environment of where you need to learn these new things. Or, you know, like when we were learning kind of history about Indigenous culture, we went to sites where Indigenous culture was so kind of big and clear, and it was, you know, very powerful. And I think— I know for me and my peers, we reflected on after that, we talked about it and we said it was really great kind of seeing all the work that we had done in school with the writing and the research really balanced with the practical side of things where we really got to be like immersed in it and we got to see it for ourselves. So I think it was, it was sometimes a hit and miss. It was sometimes kind of, you know, it was experimenting, and sometimes it was just perfect where you really got to see everything and you really got to experience it in this way where you could take it all in, really.

Brilliant.

Yeah, amazing. Charlie?

Yeah, definitely like agree with what Josie said and definitely practicals were more hands-on and felt more like alive in a way and made us feel more connected to what we were learning. As well as like there again, and like typing and doing that work was obviously necessary, but just doing those like extra excursions outside of school to really enhance what we've learned.

I guess moments where those things you've been learning come together with the context of the thing that you are learning about, and they— you perhaps may have a moment of connection and realization that this is deeply relevant to, yeah, the real world. Amazing. How did you feel that your teachers were dealing with this? Because like, if I'm honest, a lot of schools don't even go into this space that you're talking about, right? The fact that Mr. Chisholm is sitting here listening to you talking about the fact that it was hit and miss this, like that, for schools to go into that space where it's like slightly experimental is, is a scary place for schools. Right. And so that's, so my point is a lot of them just don't go there. Whereas the fact that you are there is amazing, but it's quite challenging for the teachers to be in that kind of slightly, mm, not quite sure, not so confident about this cuz they've been traditionally very confident in leading a discipline-based class. And like, did you have any noticing about how your teachers coped with it, enjoyed it, you know, or your relationship changed through the process perhaps?

Well, from what I saw, I definitely feel like if the students gave feedback from what I know a lesson would, would have been, they definitely built on that and adapted to our needs and what we wanted to do. And definitely like, yeah, the communication, like teacher to student communication was really good. Like they wanted to improve and they wanted to adapt and they wanted to get better to make it better for us, but also make it enjoyable for them. And that also leads on to how, like what I saw as well, like they seemed really passionate about what they were teaching us. And it was, it wasn't just like all boring and just core work. It was like fun and interesting.

But yeah.

And sorry, can I add on to that?

Please do.

Yeah, go ahead.

This is kind of going back a bit, but, um, I know for Charlie and, um, and myself and maybe Dylan, we actually got to hire teachers or like be in the process of hiring and kind of offering our opinion. So I think that was something that we were really looking out for, kind of seeing if those teachers really kind of had that enthusiasm that, you know, and you knew that they were going to bring that into classes and you know that they were going to be excited about teaching us. And I think that was something that we were really looking for. And then when it kind of got to older years, I know lots of my teachers were so excited to teach VCE and teach these specialisations because it's so close to kind of what they've been teaching for years. Like my art teacher, she's qualified for VCE and stuff, and she was so excited to teach us this. And so I think it's like, you know, it's a two-way street. They both enjoy teaching it and we enjoy hearing it so much and learning. So it's, it's definitely clear their enthusiasm in kind of teaching us this stuff.

Thank you. Mr. Chisholm, did you want to—

yeah, can I—

I just want to add about Year 9 as well, that we can't talk to current Year 9s because they're not here. We've got— but, but I can tell you that the Year 9 program, Impact 9, and what we're doing in Year 9 has evolved so much this year in the second year because we get better at stuff when we learn and have done it, but because of these streams and more and the students because of the feedback as we went along the way. So what we're doing in Year 9 this year is undoubtedly better, and our Year 9s are telling us some things. There's something around science which they first know we've talked about, we want to refine that even more. We're going to lock that in for next year, and again, it's because of the work with the students. So I remember last year, I think it was Dylan and a couple of others saying to me that they noticed that the teachers got better as the year went on and they're really aware of that. And, you know, I struggle with the term experimental because I don't want to experiment. We're not experimenting, you guys, but this is actually an innovation that's hard and the teachers found it really challenging, particularly last year in that hideous year. But I remember Dylan or some of the kids saying they felt that the teachers had gotten better. So that really sense of learning together over the course of the year doing something that is innovative was a really beautiful part about that. And this year is much more solid, you know, it's just a better program because of the work that you three did with us last year. We need to make sure that's balanced to make sure that you're achieving. And they were, and they did, but because of their feedback, what we're doing is even better.

Yeah.

I think that's really interesting. If I could just reflect on that briefly, cause I think one of the things that's really interesting about school is we, there is this tension. I completely agree about that word experimental, right? We're not experimenting with your lives. Like you only get one chance in year 9. And we're going to make it the best it can possibly be for you as students. But at the same time, I think there's something really alive about doing something that is a little bit on the edge of people's confidence, right? Because everybody's alive, they're talking, as you've said. And the danger is when you get better and better of that over the years, you actually lose that aliveness because it's like, oh, we figured it out now, you know, maybe in 2 or 3 years. And I think one of the challenges is not to lose sense of being on the edge and being alive because that's what learning is ultimately. And it's so interesting to hear you guys living that. It's cool. Yeah, very cool. So perhaps maybe we could just end because what you guys are doing is amazing. I think, you know, there are many, many schools around the world and I get the privilege of working with a lot of them who are just beginning to think about these things rather than actually really stepping in and saying, yeah, this, maybe this is going to be a bit scary for the teachers or for the students, might be a bit confusing to start with, but we're going to do it anyway and we're going to push through and it's going to be amazing. You've kind of already done a lot of that learning. If you were speaking to maybe another student in another school or another teacher or leader in another school, just to say why they should take this step into doing something like Impact 9 or just inviting students in, what would you say was your most rewarding experience or kind of the thing that you got most from it that you would like to recommend that other people get to experience?

Well, this may be a little cringe, but it's kind of personal to me, but you kind of feel quite confident within yourself and almost like kind of powerful, you know, within a school, you kind of have so much agency and you have so much control over how you're shaping your school.. And I think that's such a unique, quite amazing feeling, kind of being able to offer such, you know, like sometimes intense opinions. You get to literally decide if someone works at the school. So, you know, it's quite cool and it's, yeah, it's a very unique feeling and it's quite powerful. So I think, you know, for the tours and stuff and speaking to people, you know, you kind of become more confident within yourself. And I personally hate public speaking. But I know that's kind of, that's been challenged and I think it's, it's quite cool seeing how that develops and stuff.

No, that's great. And how would you, I mean, you've said it in public speaking, but how has that helped you? So that feeling of being more powerful or having just being more empowered to make a difference. How do you feel like that might help you in the future?

Well, even just the small things, like when I got a job and then when kind of a customer would even be slightly rude, you know, I had had that kind of sense of confidence where I was actually able to, like, you know, say please stop or, like, stand up for myself even. And I think you, like, you see that in small doses, but it's definitely there. And it's not exactly about, like, changing things, but more for me kind of just being more confident and more active about kind of defending myself or kind of putting myself out there. And that's what I definitely see more.

So yeah, not cringy at That's beautiful. Dylan?

Yeah, I feel like through all the sort of development and growth that we've done, I feel like we've built really strong relationships with our teachers because I feel like we can be— we can voice our opinions and we feel like we can approach them. And I think our teachers feel sort of confident and flexible and they value our opinions. And I think even now, as we get into VCE, which is a bit more kind of strict and structured because of the way that the state curriculum is, I feel like the way that I work in class with students and teachers is sort of collaborative. Like, you know, our maths teacher will ask our class, okay, how do you want to do this assessment in a way that will actually help you to learn.

That was absolutely spot on. I love that idea that it's rippling into other places, even the more structured VCE. Charlie, do you want to go?

Yeah, I feel like I've definitely gotten like more and shown more and like achieved more pride with my school and how I explain my school and how I express my school, as well as that can be reflected on in my future with whatever my job will be in the future. And then like also the, the adapting side of things. I feel like I've gained more skill in adapting to new things because like we said, the hit and miss of things not working, but then adapting and making it better and refining it.

And then, oh yeah, no, that's, that's brilliant. I mean, that's real, right? That's how we all have to work in the real world, is we have to start something, adapt it, refine it, and that in itself is a brilliant learning experience. Yeah. Can I ask one more slightly provocative question?

Yeah.

Can I, do I have your permission? So you, all, all three of you seem like highly eloquent and remarkable people, right? So I want you to just think about, think about somebody who you know in year 10 who is much quieter and much— you're right. I think, because I think this is, this is for me, a really important question because often the people who become the spokespeople for this kind of experience are people who are already quite confident and eloquent, but this is for everyone, right? But so I, I'd also just love you to just think of somebody who's maybe a little bit shy, a little bit quiet, a little bit less confident, and you can't speak for them. I'm not asking you to do that, but I'm just, just saying, did you notice anything any other effects that this kind of experience had on other people who are perhaps more disengaged from learning before they started or shyer and not wanting to participate as much?

Well, I can't speak for like a big group of people, but I know within my friendship group, I think people almost got kind of FOMO in a way, you know, like all these people are kind of like all of our friends are kind of volunteering to help and offer their thoughts and stuff. And I think it's just kind of that domino effect of if one person does it and then one person follows, and then we just kind of all ended up doing it. So I think it was, yeah, slightly just kind of out of wanting to be a part of, you know, what everyone else is doing. But I think I definitely saw that within some of my friends who were a bit more shy, and it was definitely just the push of other friends and kind of still slightly having kind of that comfort of someone, you know, but still doing something that was out of your comfort zone completely. So yeah.

No, thank you. That's great. Mr. Chisholm, did you want to comment on that?

That is a really interesting provocation and it's really important to me. And I guess what one thing that is in my mind, we have, there are a lot of students involved in a range of things. So, and in fact, we haven't even formalized yet. Formal leadership roles like school captain things which will kick in next year, but we've really talked about that with the kids around what that looks like, and I understand exactly where your question is coming from. We want leadership and agency for all students, and is that perfect? No, but we're trying to be intentional about that, and I can think about there's some other kids in your year level who are less confident and less eloquent than you, but we've actively sought them out. I can think of a couple of examples in particular to say participate on teacher selection panels, but in a couple of cases have done it with a learning support staff member or something, because they weren't as comfortable as you three would be to do it. So Tim, I think it's a really important question.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And I guess it's also about offering different types of engagement, right? Because as you said, Josie, not everybody loves public speaking. So, you know, there might be different ways to engage. Yeah, good stuff. No, thank you. This is amazing. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

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