“It’s all about repurposing, reusing and making natural wonders so what better than having a train of thought. We have an old train carriage that came from these amazing people in Marom Creek. They had a train and they offered it to me. They allowed me to work on it out in their space and then we brought it in here and we plugged it into the building. Now it’s a learning space called the ‘Train of Thought’ and on there we have kids working on technology, podcasts, video editing, etc. They sit at old desks from the 1950s so there’s a link to the past. We have a little science lab we will be increasing in the future. We have a big warehouse space we’ve just secured which we will make into a nice area. We are repurposing parts of the town that were derelict. Our neighbours, David and Jenny Keeps saw what we were doing so they wanted to support us. They leased their building to us so as a result we have our school flowing into other buildings….Then we’ll do some really cool things….What if you had a classroom that actually floated up and down the river? We are looking at an environmental science lab that is a boat.
Every Friday we take the kids down to the coast where we do what we call Onland learning. When everyone went Online learning I think there’s a real problem there. I want kids connected and I want our teaching to be really interactive, not through a screen, so we went Onland. We take the kids to the beach every Friday and the whole day is exploration learning, challenge based learning. We created this program called Thriver which is taking ideas from Survivor TV show or the Scouts. The kids learn construction, how to hammer, how to build, how to cook with fires, how to tie ropes. The whole school is focused intentionally around different ideas of how to educate kids. Year 9 will be a project based learning where they will end up presenting to a shark tank of investors. We want people to come and listen to what our kids can do and offering investment into their ideas and mentorship. Year 10 we want to do expeditionary learning so we want our kids to go away for 40 days, around the world in 80 days, so 40 days of a trip, come back and unpack it, go away for 40 days, come back, unpack it. Then you move into Yr 11, 12, 13 which is what we call the Living Academy. These are our visions.
I know from a teachers perspective but also from students, a 12 week term is gruelling and you get to the end of it exhausted. We’ve intentionally made our terms 6 weeks long and every term has a keystone theme to it. When they leave school we want kids to know more than what they got in their HSC or certificate. The first term is all about Identity, so from Kindergarten all the way through you’ll continually recycle through this idea of identity and progress to where the concepts become more mature. The second is Nature, understanding your place in nature, your own nature. Life and Living is Term 3, Civilisation is Term 4. This term we are doing Phenomena and next term will be Service where we are learning how to do things for others but also service can be servicing yourself like a car. How do I service myself to make sure I’m healthy and connected with myself? All these ideas are threaded together and we have amazing staff. We have the most amazing teachers. All teachers are amazing but we have some really interesting and creative teachers here.
We are about to involve a real focus on performing arts. We look at holistic learning. Our focus is emotional intelligence (EQ), Intellectual (IQ) because we still want an academic rigour that runs through this program. The kids have to learn English, Maths, Science concepts but then we put it into context through experiences. We have the Physical (PQ) so we use the ovals for sport, go canoeing on the river, we bush walk and the last one is the Expressive Domain (XQ) so how do we get kids to compose, to sing, to talk or dance? If we can create all of those elements together as a student progresses through our school then they will build this understanding of who they are as a learner, not someone who is trying to take in information from teachers who are transmission devices. We want teachers to be supporters, encouragers, challengers and mentors.
There’s so many things happening. We are putting in a dark room for Photography. We have these young Tutors. People who have left school and are in their gap year are here as Tutors. They are working alongside us so we are hopefully encouraging some of these brilliant kids who have left school to want to be teachers. We are about to start an Artisan Program where parents who have skill sets can come and work with our kids. We have a parent who’s a Lawyer commit to us for an hour and a half every week and we are lobbying for a Koori Court in Lismore so we want to do good things, big things and show kids that they can change our society with commitment, involvement and a network.
Lismore has one of the highest population of creatives outside of Sydney. How do they get access to enthuse our kids? We want to work that model. We have parents who work with photography, with sewing, parents who work with podcasts and technologies. Through this the parents are growing with confidence as well. We want that connectedness and involvement.
It’s bizarre to be back here in my family home. This home was built in 1945 and the Crethar’s said this used to be a Greek School when it first started. So now it’s come full circle and it’s got a real vibe of children. It’s great to be in Lismore.”