Farewell to our 2018 Cohort of Year 6s - you're a gorgeous bunch of kids

It always gives me great pleasure to speak to our graduating students – you’re a gorgeous bunch of kids many of whom we’ve known since Prep and Year 1.

We are nearing the end of our ninth year since opening on 27 January 2010. A school that is nearly a decade old has taken its place in the community and the students graduating can look back and see how being a student here has contributed to the fine young people they have become. Looking back and reflecting on the past is a useful activity. You can see what has gone well and where your learnings have been. Your relatively short histories can inform your futures if you think about your life and what you’ve learned and what you need to do next.

We cannot imagine the world of your future – it starts to look more like science fiction every day! Things I talked about 7-10 years ago with graduating students have already come to pass.

There is a common catch cry that goes something like ‘the future is here now’. And when I look at what you are doing in your classrooms I believe this to be true. You have been swiping and typing and coding and creating your way into the future since Prep and Year 1, and you are now on the cusp of one of the most revolutionary periods in human history – and that is the automation of much human activity. The automation of many of the jobs and activities that have been traditionally available throughout the world will change all of lives – but particularly yours over the next 10 years as you finish your education and move into the world of work and paid or volunteer employment.

https://davehenson.co.uk/about/

This new world where machines and robots perform more and more sophisticated tasks will bring innovation and excitement and new possibilities to your lives. It will also bring new ways of working and living together as we explore the new laws and ethical standards and the impact of technology on our environment and the world’s developing nations.

Tonight, I’d like to share a story about this man. His name is Dave Henson. He is British war veteran and Paralympic medallist. His attitude to life and learning and what the future holds is inspiring and full of lessons.

Dave went to war for his country in Afghanistan. While on duty he sustained significant injuries in which he lost both of his legs and on return to Britain needed to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. As with many soldiers his whole identity was wrapped up in being a soldier, in defending his country, and in helping others defend their country and the ideals of our communities. When he returned home he suffered terribly with the loss of his legs, the loss of his vocation and the loss of his meaning in life.

As his legs healed, he cast about for something else to do. It was during his rehabilitation that Dave found a new passion for sport, first competing in a series of open water swims with his family to raise funds for military charities, before taking up Sitting Volleyball. Using sport as a catalyst for his recovery, Dave quickly met milestone after milestone. He stood side by side with his brother, Tom, at his wedding. He was promoted to Team Captain in November the same year. But it was when he was given his running blades that Dave found his true passion.

Dave’s recovery continued with pace. He learned to ski, he returned to work assisting other injured servicemen and women and was part of an exhibition team that competed in the Warrior Games. Dave later returned to the Warrior Games as the Captain of the British Armed Forces Team, winning medals in the swimming pool, on the volleyball court and on the track.

Outside of sport, Dave married his partner and started a Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering graduating with merit in 2014. He then returned to study to learn more about the body and, in particular, how the body can interact with machines and robotics. His ultimate aim was to improve prosthetic limb design, and in particular to develop prosthetic limbs you can control with your mind.

Dave even foresees a time when amputees will be able to feel and touch with their prosthetic limbs, and believes this could happen within 20 years.

When I was little, I used to watch on TV a program called ‘Six Million Dollar Man’. This was a program about an astronaut with superhuman strength due to bionic implants. It was a fantastical idea. He could run at speeds of nearly 100 km/h, and his eye had a 20:1 zoom lens and infra red capabilities, while his bionic limbs all had the equivalent power of a bulldozer. I am pleased to say there was also a bionic woman with an amplified bionic ear which allowed her to hear at low volumes and at different frequencies from most humans and over uncommonly long distances. She also had extraordinary strength in her bionic right arm and in both legs that also enabled her to run at speeds exceeding 100km/h per hour. Incidentally, next year you will be able to see a movie based on this series called ‘Six Billion Dollar Man’ – clearly there’s been significant inflation since the 1970s.

Dave Hansen’s work and the work of scientists like him is making six million dollar man and woman look more possible every day.

Prosthetic limbs that can feel, touch and interact with the human mind will happen in your life time.

This is your future – a world where technology is helping to achieve things that were science fiction not long ago. Your education and the choices you make will enable you to contribute to this world.

Your choices will impact all areas of your lives, actually all our lives. You have a choice to make the best of your high school years or fritter them away. You have a choice about how hard you work, the effort you are prepared to put in, how you manage peer pressure. You have a choice about how you respond when you are harassed by someone or you see an injustice affecting someone else. Your stance on violence, racism and sexism is your choice. The value you place on your own learning and the learning of others is also your choice.

These habits of mind have been at the forefront of your education at our school. We want our students to develop, not just as learners and inquirers, but as thoughtful, caring human beings, ready to take the first steps towards making their world a better place.

Teaching you about relationships, effort and choice has been at the core of everything we do at Peregian Springs SS. The ultimate reward for your teachers, teacher aides, our school leaders and I is when we see you happy, managing yourselves well, even in trying situations, and achieving your very best.

You have had the benefit of world class teachers in every year you have been at Peregian Springs. I’d like to thank Andrea, Justin, David, Chris, Sandy, Irina, and Kent for the work you have done with our Year 6s. You continue to stretch yourselves in the educational sphere and teach with innovation, passion, courage and care – again this year you have challenged your students to learn well; you’ve set high expectations; you have tried new strategies and new approaches to learning; kept them on the straight and narrow; cared about each and every one of them; and have worked hard to instil a love of learning they will take with them to high school and beyond. Every child in front of me this evening is a better person for your dedication and commitment.

And this is true of all the teachers and teacher aides you have worked with this year – Mrs Hobson, Mrs Ellison, Mr Rickert, Ms Deady, Ms Johnson, Mr Huxley, Mr Hutchins, Mrs Francey and Toni, your teacher aide.

Without realising, you have learned an enormous amount from being at this school – not just about English, Maths, Science and History but also about the more important attributes of how to be a better person in this world, in this country, in this community. Graduation from Year 6 marks the end of an important chapter in your young lives. We hope that your time here has begun to prepare you for the complex future ahead – a future in which you will realise that you have the power for making something of yourself, and for contributing towards a better community and world.

Every Year 6 group offers us something special, enriches our school culture a little more. You have grown up so quickly and we can’t believe you are about to go to high school – and I’m pretty sure your parents can’t believe it either! But what I love about each of you is that you still get involved, still run around at playtime like mad things, still love a sticker when you’ve done something amazing. We are going to miss you very much. We have been impressed with the maturity you have developed, the level of conversation we can have with you, your developing sense of humour and the ability to appreciate irony, a skill that tends not to develop until early adolescence. We have been equally impressed by your developing leadership and sense of responsibility and just as importantly – your sense of fun.

No matter where you go to high school, we will be watching your achievements and hope that you remember your primary years with fondness. Thank you for being such great kids!

What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

The Reggio Emilia Approach is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education which values the child as strong, capable and resilient; rich with wonder and knowledge. Every child is steeped in deep curiosity and potential and this drives their interest to understand their world and their place within it.

The Reggio Emilia Approach originated after World War 2 in the town (and surrounding areas) of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy. The women of Reggio wanted progressive and cooperative early childhood education for their children.

The approach is not a method. It is a unique context to Reggio Emilia. Outside Reggio Emilia, schools are 'Reggio-inspired', that is, they are using an adaptation of the approach specific to the needs of their community. Typically, the Reggio Approach is applied to preschools and early childhood settings but with an understanding of the general principles, this educational approach can be adapted to other years of primary school as well.

The fundamental principles of the Reggio Approach are

• Children are capable of constructing their own learning - they are driven by their own interests to understand and know
• Children form an understanding of themselves and their place in the world through their interactions with others - the adult is not the 'giver' of the knowledge; the adult facilitates social collaboration and works with children to search out knowledge through investigation
• Children are communicators - communication is a way of discovering things and asking questions. Playing with language becomes an continual collaborative process
• The environment is the third teacher - the environment is recognised for its potential to inspire learning. It should be open and light, free of clutter with a multitude of materials and authentic resources and tools that can be considered for their unique purpose. The space encourages collaboration, communication and exploration and is cared for by the children and the adults
• The adult is a mentor and guide - the role of adults is to observe children, listen to their questions and stories, find what interests them and provide opportunities to explore their interests further
• An emphasis on documenting children’s thoughts - children's thoughts and progression of thinking is documented in many different ways i.e. photographs, visual representations, transcripts; all designed to make the thinking visible and show the learning process

Credit - https://reggioemilia2015.weebly.com/the-100-languages.html

The Hundred Languages of Children is a well known aspect of the Reggio Emilia Approach. The belief that children use many different ways to show their understanding and express their thoughts and creativity permeates the idea that there are a hundred different ways of thinking, of discovering, of learning. Drawing and sculpting, through dance and movement, through painting and play, through modelling and music are languages, or ways of learning, are all a part of the child. Learning and play are not separated. The approach emphasises hands-on inquiry learning that enables the child to use all their senses and all their languages to learn.

Be nimble...be quick

I love Seth Godin's stuff - he states the obvious and then you say to yourself 'Why didn't I think of that?' While he writes primarily about marketing and business he is essentially a futurist, and we need to be listening.

Godin's latest blog post 'You will not be surprised' says it all about artificial intelligence. The automation of human activity is facinating. However, Seth says 'not so much'. Why?

'because it's incremental. Every time a computer takes over a job we never imagined a computer can do, it happens so gradually that by the time it's complete, we're not the slightest bit amazed. We now have computers that can play chess, read x-rays, drive down the highway at 55 miles an hour, understand our voice, scan documents for errors, do all traditional banking chores, correct our spelling, plot a route on foot or by plane, find the cheapest airfares and pick a face out of a crowd. At any time since 1970, if you went to live on a desert island for a decade, you would have been blown away by what happened when you got back. Day by day, though, human-only tasks quietly disappear. After the replacement, computers do some of these jobs better than we ever could, but, as they're evolving, we take each of these perfections and advancements for granted. It's too gradual to be awe-inspiring.'

We need to be careful we're not simply watching the story unfold. We need to be in the story ensuring we can think and act flexibly, ingenuously, ethically, nimbly and quickly.

This learning starts at home, then in school - it starts in our homes and school.

In lots of ways our school looks and feels like the primary school I went to in the '70s; and in many more ways, it looks nothing like it.

On any day I observe children using technology (both old and new) to solve problems we never heard of thirty years ago. There are Spheros for art work and directional knowledge, Edisons for measuring perimeter and area, iPads to explain everything and collaborate with their friends who are also explaining everything, Bots for spatial learning, whiteboards to draw and look at their thinking, ear buds for quiet problem solving, drones for learning careers of the future, Minecraft for mapping, history and just about everything else. Yes, nothing here that looks like the seventies.

Artificial intelligence isn't coming; it's here. Are we just going to watch it and say 'wow, that's amazing!' Or are we going to participate in its evolution? If, we are, we need to be nimble, and quick

Common courtesies, good manners - hundreds of years old but still the same

Manners matter... they are an opportunity to think generously about another person. They are used every day to make a good impression on others, and when used selflessly, can help you to feel good about yourself. No matter where you are, practicing good manners is important. Good manners (and smiles) draw people closer to you and can pave the way to solve many conflicts.

At Peregian Springs SS we teach children to use Common Courtesies or good manners explicitly and often. We believe firmly that being polite and courteous means considering how others are feeling whatever the situation is. Our Common Courtesies include greetings, polite requests and social expectations, such as being on time. It's old fashioned, you may say, to teach manners. And yes, it probably is. 

I went looking in the historical archives for the manners taught in Australian schools a century or more ago. I'm always enteretained by however much we change, there are always some things that stay the same :)

Kids love our school

I love Thursday mornings - it's when I do a school tour for families thinking of enrolling in our school. Sometimes we have lots of families complete with grandparents and younger siblings in prams and sometimes when I'm lucky it's just one parent. But no matter how big the group I love to be able to meet newcomers to our school, to have a one on one chat and be able to connect with new children who are often feeling a bit nervous.

I also love the stories new families tell about what they've heard about our school. And I always listen with trepidation when they say 'and we've heard about you'... :)

Last Thursday one gentleman told me how he was walking past the school one weekend and two boys about 13 and 14 came towards him on bikes; they were 'long haired' and up and down the guttering, and in his words 'didn't look likely they would have anything good to say about school'.

As they rode on one said to the other 'didn't you just love it there?'

'Yeah' replied the other one. 'It was ace - Peregian Springs is the best'. Our new family member was so surprised that two very unlikely looking lads would be speaking so highly of their primary school.

And it's true - our kids do love their school and every minute in it. It is such a wonderful legacy to leave children with fond memories of their first formal learning at school. Thursday mornings is often when I get to hear about it.