Michael Senior, Ambrose Treacy College Principal, reflects on how fast time flies by and how to make more time for joy, rather than rushing from one task to another.
The English playwright William Congreve once commented that ‘uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life.’ Congreve’s comments could well be written about the youth of today and in particular the young men of Ambrose Treacy College. As the term draws to its slow end, I have reflected on the term’s journey and once again it has been filled with plenty of surprises.
The fun that the boys have and the wonderful unpredictability of their behaviour certainly give the school life. Many may add a qualification that they may also produce the odd grey hair! I am constantly amazed at their open friendliness, their willingness to share their thoughts, their constant smiles, and their readiness to forgive and forget. If it could be captured, you would like to bottle it and sell it to the many adults in this world who despair, fear the future and live with ingrained mistrust.
Read more: Finding Time for Joy!
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Published: Wednesday, 17 April 2019 12:29
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Written by St Catherine's School, Sydney NSW
You might agonise over the co-ed versus single sex schools question endlessly. After all, the world is made up of men and women, girls and boys, and every shade in between in this age of gender fluidity. And let's not kid ourselves. The world is not a gender-equal co-ed playing field. How will she learn to navigate this if she is in an all-girls environment?
Well it might surprise you how strong the evidence is for choosing an all-girls' school.
Gender bias1 is still a real and pressing problem for women in the workforce and women in general. And it affects schools in equal measure. Freeing girls up from gender bias at a formative stage in their education has been proved to have significant influence on girls' confidence and self-esteem. Countless studies have shown that from around nine-years-old girls' confidence dips below boys which affects the choices they make at home, school and work.
Read more: WHY CHOOSE A GIRLS' SCHOOL?
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Published: Tuesday, 19 February 2019 11:02
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Written by St Teresa's Catholic College, Noosaville QLD
Each year in conjunction with Lexis English College, St Teresa’s students welcome a group of Japanese students from Otemon High School in Osaka and spend a day at school learning about each other’s country, culture and language. Students often end the day exchanging social media contacts with a promise to ‘stay in touch’.
In 2018, a group of our Year 12 students did just that, and following graduation, celebrated the end of their schooling with a two-week holiday to Japan. As part of their trip they visited Osaka where their STCC buddies showed them around their wonderful city and gave them a true insight into Japanese culture. Despite studying senior French, and not Japanese, our students soon found that the skills they had acquired through the course of their language study helped them enormously when picking up a new language.
What an amazing experience! Let’s hope they continue to stay in touch.
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Published: Tuesday, 13 March 2018 09:17
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Written by St Catherine's School, Sydney NSW
Explicit instruction (or direct instruction) is a teaching method whereby the teacher tells students what to do and shows them how to do it. The education researcher John Hattie notes: ‘The teacher decides the learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to the students, demonstrates them by modeling, evaluates if they understand what they have been told by checking for understanding, and re-telling them what they have been told by tying it all together with closure’1. It contrasts with the constructivist (or discovery-based / enquiry-based) teaching method, whereby students construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiential learning.
Read more: The importance of explicit instruction
