School+-+Delacombe+PS

Delacombe Primary School

Our school is in a neighbourhood renewal area and has approximately 250 students. We have a diverse student population which includes newly arrived students from Sudan, a significant Koori population and 16 students on the Students with Disabilities Program. We have beautiful school grounds – big, open and green. This school has a strong presence in the community, geographically being the centre of the community. The past seven years has seen areas of social disadvantage once spread over a broad section of the region become specifically localized to focus on our community. This negative trend has seen our community fall into the lowest one percent of social disadvantage in the state. Many of our students receive Education Maintenance Allowance (approximately 60%) and many of our students come from extreme disadvantage. Some areas of our community tend to have a large number of single parent families (up to 40% in some areas) on low incomes. Socio-economic Indicators for Areas (SEIFA) is a measure used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to measure social and economic disadvantage in Australia and is made up of four indexes. Of the five areas in our community two record disadvantage on all four indexes and in one case severe disadvantage in all four indexes. As a school we are challenged by low Attitudes to School data from our middle years’ students and significant numbers of students receiving lower than expected literacy and numeracy outcomes. Last year’s National Assessment and Performance of Literacy and Numeracy indicates over 58% of our grade 3 students and 68% of our grade 5 students are a year or more behind in their numeracy and 47% of grade 3 students and 52% of grade 5 students are a year or more behind in reading.

Our school has also had a considerable change in leadership over the past 4 years. Added to this, we are a National Partnership School. This year we had an extended diagnostic review. The review was very, very thought provoking and challenging. But it was also quite affirming in that we have begun lots of things to put our school back where it has come from. In 2009 we had a Numeracy coach and this year we have a Literacy coach. My role as Assistant Principal includes Welfare, Integration and Literacy. So my coaching course is really part of a succession plan for the school. As the Literacy coordinator I have always been the resource person or the expert so the role of the coach is very different for me. I'm still grappling with the changes in my role let alone the staff who have now had two coaches before me.

In terms of our course I have been very confused about where we have been heading. As a person who likes to have some of idea of this, I have been quite concerned with my lack of direction and therefore my understanding. I think I'm getting it but there have been days (particularly after day 1 and 2) where I really questioned why I was there. My talks with Julie have been clarifying however I am still struggling with the role of coach. I am having trouble separating the leadership role and coaching role especially when I don't really understand the coaching role. A dilemma. I am reading a lot and this is helping but I can't seem to get anything settled in my mind. Maybe questioning myself all the time will improve my coaching and questioning of others. Day 8 is looming and I'm still not sure of what I'm doing. I keep looking at it all and it just stares back. Maybe that's my stance, complete disequilibrium! Thank goodness Maureen said we should all be at different points of our learning.

Hi Marnie - have offered a few questions for thinking through on the discussion page. Also thought these readings might be of interest in terms of your own adult learning experience. (maureen)

Some principles of adult learning - how do these sit with your personal preferences?

Designing for deep learning instead of surface learning - can you see any connections between this and the way we designed for learning in the program?