Wominjeka or “hello“ as described translated into Wurundjeri.

This week was to be a fantastic week of learning run by Indigenous educator Robert Young. Unfortunately due to CoVid we have had to postpone this event but we are going to show a steely resolve. The Department of Education has a strategy called the Marrung strategy which was set up to improve opportunities for indigenous students and families. It is an impressive document –and it also includes the following paragraph which is important for everyone.

“We should not forget that Victorians from non-Koorie backgrounds have much to learn from Koorie communities. As the longest continuous culture in the world, Victoria’s Koorie communities have a considerable depth of knowledge and experience we can draw upon. Marrung; built on a partnership with Koorie Victorians, has drawn on this knowledge and experience to collectively position our community for a changing education environment.”

My primary years of education (back in the 70s) contained very little information about first nation people and almost nothing about first nation perspectives. Hopefully by working alongside indigenous educators and embedding indigenous perspectives this will continue to change and evolve.

Anyhow, even though we have had a few set-backs on this project we are going to push ahead with resolve.

Expanding the use of Compass

One of the key goals that was articulated in our Annual Implementation Plan was to leverage Compass to share student work. I am pleased to announce that our Grade 1 team will be trialling this process during the last couple of weeks of term. Doing this has enormous upside as it enables parents to have a first-hand record of the type of work that the students are doing at school. This in turn enables great three way interactions between teachers, students and parents about the learning.

Melany Edwards, our Grade 1 Team leader, has done all of the background work and she has led the IT set up and trial. We look forward to seeing how this goes and then expanding the use of Compass across the school. Thanks for your work on this Melany.

On a completely separate matter, portfolios will go out as usual before the end of term.

An upcoming event

I would like to flag an upcoming event that landed on the table of our School Improvement team late last month. In a nutshell the proposal is to showcase the art work of students of Years 3 to 6 by running an Art Show. It is proposed that the event be held in the evening, where students will invite families and friends to see samples of their work and projects they have completed over the year. The theme of the exhibition will be ‘Reconnection’ as it will be a chance to reconnect families with the school community and to engage the students with their learning. The exhibition could also be available during school hours for students across the whole school to visit. The event will be set up in the Performing Arts Space and the plan would be to also include some music and interactive digital displays.

I understand that this type of event has been held at IEPS previously and they have been most successful. I would like to thank Larissa Lamers, our Art teacher, for floating the proposal. Of course the event will need to stick to the prevailing CoViD guidelines; but once again we will show resolve and resilience and do what we can to make this happen.

Brett Millott.

brett.millott@education.vic.gov.au