#striveforthehighest

+ “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

The Educator magazine publishes an annual Hot List.

The Educator’s 2019 Hot List showcases professionals who have made a significant contribution to the K-12 education space over the past 12 months. The Hot List is a valuable opportunity to be named one of the most influential figures in Australian education. The Hot List is proudly sponsored by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.

On Thursday 11 July, I received an email from The Educator wishing to congratulate me on being selected for The Educator’s Hot List for 2019. A most humbling email and acknowledgment.

It was very exciting news to finish off the term break, especially after the recent loss of my father.

“Gratitude is the fairest blossom that springs from the soul.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

+ “Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson

Know Thy Impact

Tomorrow is my final class with this bunch of amazingly talented, funny and highly relational VCE Visual Communication Design young men!

This group of young men remind me every day that I don’t teach a subject, I teach people. A group of young people that are home to a life. We’ve experienced so much as a group over the past year - family loss, hospitalisation, self-doubt, joy, elation, success and most importantly trusting friendship. Collectively we fostered a culture of care, competence, character and encouragement. Each growing equally as accomplished design students and as fine young men.

Sir Ken Robinson defines creativity as “the process of having original ideas that have value.” These young men represent our collective creative future. I encourage them all to never stand still, be open to the other and continue to find opportunities to share their remarkable gift with the world.

Over 25 years ago education chose me. And 25 years later I’m continually reminded, because of wonderful young men like this class, why I remain a teacher and why it’s the greatest vocation in the world.

What a privilege it is in helping a young person encounter an “aha” moment where they unlock their possibility, discover their passion and know their worth. They are known. They are valued. And they will forever have a special place in my heart.

To each of these young men forever have in your hearts ~ Virtute Ad Altissima.

+ “Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai

I Am A Teacher

Each week I have the pleasure of working with young people, each on their own journey in a quest to navigate this thing called life. All learning about their particular details. This week I had a number of encounters that reminded me of this privileged gift.

On Monday a group of Year 9 boys departed to participate in the six-week immersion learning experience in Yogyakarta as part of the Victorian Young Leaders to Indonesian Program. Two teachers have given up three weeks of their time, their expertise and their family to ensure each young man has a most positive encounter with self, place and the other. Two teachers are doing this.

On Wednesday I watched our AGSV Athletics team win the AGSV Championship at Lakeside Stadium, our second ever Athletics title, with the first coming in 1968. I watched the captain inspire his team to victory, breaking the AGSV record in the discus event. A group of teachers have given of their time to instill a passion for the competition, for each other and for track and field sports. This group of teachers gave an interest in the lives of each team member, encouraging them to be their best. A group of teachers did this.

At that same event I watched as a student humbly received accolades from all those present for having his design selected as the official logo to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the AGSV. A teacher recognised his gift of design. A teacher encouraged him to enter his work into the competition. A teacher did that.

On Thursday my own Unit 4 VCE Visual Communication Design students submitted their folios and final presentations, much of which they commenced in late May. Each young man has focused on growth and improving their academic achievement based of continuous feedback from myself and their peers. Each student produced a body of work that is impressive, on brief and representative of hard work, trial and error and creative innovation. I am proud of each of them. All I do is create opportunities for each to share their unique gift with the world.

We should never underestimate the far reaching implications of a teacher’s impact on a student, which are never ending. We must never forget the power we have to shape, and change lives forever.

There is no greater responsibility than raising a child. This requires a conscious connectedness with our truth and our compassion for the other. We are called to follow the internal compass of a pilgrim, ensuring we create encounters of learning for each young person in our care that move, motivate, beguile, challenge, intrigue and inspire. This is the value of a teacher and our impact.

Each week I witness teachers at Marcellin building connections of the mind and of the heart. I watch as teachers walk alongside the footsteps of each young person’s story. This active presence includes us in their most formative years. And a story where they will find real meaning about their particular details in the connections we make with them.

I am a teacher because I have a passion for life-long learning and an inherent belief in the profoundness of young people. My vocation allows me the opportunity to enter into the lives of young people and assist them in shaping what type of person they aspire to be. By sharing so much of myself I take on the symbolic role of storyteller and sense-maker. Hopefully through my example they gain an insight into their own possibility.

+“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.” ~ Dame Jane Goodall DBE

Polaris | Refocussing the learning agenda

Recently highly regarded Canadian academic Michael Fullan OC wrote an article for the Term 1 edition of the Australian Educational Leader (AEL) Magazine published by the Australian Council for Educational Leadership (ACEL). In his article, titled “The nuance of academic achievement” Fullan explores the fixation of governments, schooling systems, the media and even parents have with a worldwide competition to increase student scores on tests for academic gain stating, “No matter how clever the proposed change the ultimate emphasis is [just] on academic achievement”. He also explores shifts to human wellbeing and “connectedness” currently growing across our globe as a result of such things like the impact of technology and issues pertaining to the rise of stress and anxiety.

For some time now I believe successive governments, educational bodies and some educators have lost their way and become all to consumed by this “high stakes” approach to learning and schooling. They have made test scores, league tables and high ATARs the panacea of “success” in learning and the measure of a return in their investment.

In his article Fullan poses this question: “What should be the moral imperative for education in modern society?” Fullan’s fundamental point throughout this article is that we (everyone) needs to “stop privileging “student academic achievement” as the only ultimate worthwhile educational goal”. And I agree with him. Instead of trying to marshal everything to increase student achievement and making student achievement the be-all and the end-all, we need to redefine the moral imperative.

Frankly I am over the “losing ground” argument often thrown up by sectors of the media about Australia’s education system. In a world that is going through exponential change to accomplish the necessary shift needed in education we need to refocus and change the content of our goals. Learning needs to become more highly personalised and embrace the fact the world has changed and is still changing, ergo we need to.

Fullan stated, “Being good at schooling and being good at life would be integrated…”. I believe that success should be defined as high performance in the areas of competence (academic achievement), confidence (self-efficacy, independence and self-awareness) and character attributes (resilience, ethics and integrity etc) dimensions.

As we approach our 70th anniversary Marcellin College needs to evolve into an inclusive faith learning community that can serve as an example of what is possible in schooling and education. So, for some, the burning question is what will our learning community look like in 2020 and beyond? What is more important to us at Marcellin is 'what sort of citizens do we want our young men to become?'. Today’s schooling systems need to engage the world and as a consequence future-focused learning needs to change the world.

Our new learning ecosystem, Polaris, is a total educational re-set and high expectations and high support are central tenants to our aspiration in recognising each young man in our care as truly whole human being. We aspire to cultivate in each young man a balance of foundational literacies, character attributes and key capability skills to navigate the world as compassionate Christians and ethical global citizens. So that each young man in our care can one day take their place in society as active contributors, empowering them to be agents of social change and human advancement.

Given the unknowns of tomorrow’s world, it is imperative we support young men at Marcellin to develop a mindset towards learning, to challenge themselves and put in the effort to master new skills, knowledge and character through hard work and commitment to their growth and learning progression. We want them to persevere, to have the confidence to take on the unknown, to take intellectual risks and learn from failures. And the most fundamental thing we know is we, as a dynamic learning community, can describe the kind of young man we want to emerge from our school – a student who is critical and reflective, open to a lifetime of learning and re-learning, who is comfortable with change, has high levels of empathy and a broad global perspective. We need to be adapting and reflecting upon a pedagogy of encounter (Horizons of Hope, 2016) that ensures that we are preparing each young man at Marcellin with the relevant knowledge, skills and necessary wisdom to thrive successfully in next phase of the 21st Century.

I will leave you with this quote from Fullan’s article, “In short, academic learning and connectedness (being good at life) should not be separated… They need to be one and the same phenomenon making for a more complete human being. The unification of the two elements is the new moral imperative”.

References

Catholic Education Melbourne. (2016). Horizons of Hope. Retrieved 17 March 2019 <https://www.cem.edu.au/Our-Schools/Curriculum/Horizons-of-Hope.aspx>

Fullan, M. (2019). The nuance of academic achievement, Australian Educational Leader (AEL), March, pp. 8-10. Retrieved 17 March 2019, <http://www.acel.org.au/acel/ACEL_docs/Publications/AEL/2019/AEL%20-%20Vol%2041%20Issue%201%202019%20[WEB].pdf>

+ “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ~ Marie Curie

Polaris | A New Learning Ecosystem

When you tell other educators you’re in the business of crafting an educational “reset” it can set off a wide range of responses ranging from genuine excitement and curiosity to skepticism to outright edurage.

The one constant is everyone has an opinion and no matter what, there will always be ideas being brought forth for how we can continue to transform education. And if anyone believes that a commitment to change in education is just for the sake of change, they are seriously misguided. It has to do with who we are as humans, a species of great endeavour, advancement and evolution.

My perspective is that all educational communities, systems and organisations are home to ideas and innovation. These innovative ideas need to be given the breathing room to evolve naturally.

In December 2018 Terry Heick published an article on TeachThought titled Want To Change Education? You’d Better Have These 6 Things. In his article Heick stated that a ‘great idea’ to transform education should probably be characterised by one or more of the following:

1. Vision - Shift paradigms. Make us see what’s possible. Dare to dream. Make it so that we can’t remember what it was like without it. So that we see everything else different because our whole way of seeing is different. That’s substantive change.

2. Disruption - It should be uncomfortable. Messy. Annoying. Make us have to do this and this all over again because of that new thing. If it only lubricates what you’ve always done, it’s probably not great, and will be forgotten the moment the next lubricant comes along. Make distracted people notice.

3. The ability to appeal to base human emotions - One great idea should spawn countless other great ideas, a conceptual copy-pasting that is joyful and addictive and crazy fun. Courage. Hope. Love. Belonging. Progress. Fear. Popularity and trend. Whatever you do, make it ‘human’ to make it stick.

4. The ability to scale! - Works on a variety of levels without clumsiness or inefficiency or degradation of performance. Full macro. Work small and big. The classroom and the district and the state and the federal level. In India and the US and U.K. and Australia and Africa. Work everywhere.

5. Beauty - As in, beautiful moments where we forget what we’re doing because the flow of it all is so human and powerful and moving that we feel like we’re flying. And that means everyone–students, teachers, parents, and communities, all witnessing this beauty and in collective awe. Beauty is an icon–a form that’s naturally compelling and instinctively pure. A great idea that helps us handcraft the minds and hearts of children should be beautiful.

6. Endurance - If it’s great, it lasts. It just might be that even great ideas die without being nourished, so that public education acts as a kind of graveyard for all of our best thinking. Seems that way sometimes, but let’s just hope this isn’t true.

I know I am bias but The Marcellin Difference, titled Polaris is what we are rolling out from 2020 and it is awesome. Is Polaris the answer? probably not. Having said that it is a brave and audacious answer to a complex problem - the future of schooling and learning.

Polaris is our ‘great idea’:

1. Polaris is our vision for faith, learning and life for a new world environment.

2. Polaris is highly disruptive and calls for all in our community to learn, unlearn and relearn their role in learning - students, teachers and parents.

3. Polaris is fundamentally a human ecosystem that is personal and born from the Gospel construct of hope and love.

4. Polaris understands the duality of each young man’s immediate needs, while having a lens on the bigger picture of their world of work from 2030.

5. Polaris is inherently beautiful, it launches up from the pedagogy of encounter with self, place, God and the other.

6. Polaris is in it for the long game. It requires high support, high expectations and a trusting endurance as we set a new direction about what is possible in learning and schooling.

Why are there more people in education less interested in standing out than they are pushing the factory machine along? Well, it is time more of us are prepared to stand up and celebrate our collective wisdom to transform learning and schooling as we know it.

Plumber, pilot or paediatrician - whatever your direction in life, Polaris will allow you to discover your worth and calling. I am proud to be part of the Marcellin community. An amazing community led by a Principal in Mark Murphy that gives each person the permission to triumph. An inclusive faith learning community open to the inherent possibility of each young man and staff member in our care.

+ “We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.” ~ Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman World Economic Forum 

The Marcellin Difference | A Case for Change

In September last year I wrote to the Marcellin community about the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the impact on the future of learning.

The future of work is going to look very different, as automation and Artificial Intelligence make many manual, repetitive jobs obsolete. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, robots could replace 800 million jobs by 2030, while the World Economic Forum suggests a skills revolution could open up a raft of new opportunities.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the International Organisation for Public-Private Cooperation. WEF engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas – including the future of education. This year the WEF held their annual meeting of global political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, China’s e-commerce giant stated this at Davos, “If we do not change the way we teach, 30 years from now, we’re going to be in trouble”. The knowledge-based approach of “200 years ago”, would "fail our kids", who would never be able to compete with machines. Children should be taught “soft skills” like independent thinking, values and team-work, he said.

At the 2019 Davos conference Fabiola Gianotti, an Italian particle physicist and the Director General of CERN, a European Organisation for Nuclear Research, advocated for a shift toward a greater interdisciplinary approach to future schooling, “We need to break the cultural silos. Too often people put science and the humanities, or science and the arts, in different silos. They are the highest expression of the curiosity and creativity of humanity."

The Independent magazine recently published an article on Monday 11 February 2019 written by Lord Kenneth Baker. Lord Baker is chair of the Edge Foundation and was secretary of state for education between 1986 and 1989. In the late 1980’s he was responsible for introducing England’s national curriculum and their GCSE exams (equivalent to our VCE end-of-year examinations). Lord Baker now recognises that the world of work has changed and as such education as we know it requires a total re-set, “We absolutely need to move from a curriculum that is “knowledge-rich” to one that is “knowledge-engaged” – not learning facts for their own sake but understanding how to put them to use to build and communicate a rich argument or solve a problem."

The Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) is an Australian non-profit organisation whose purpose is to improve the learning outcomes and life opportunities of young Australians. Their CEO, Jan Owen AM stated, “Over the past decade, there has been growing consensus that Australia’s education and training systems must evolve to ensure they are responsive and relevant to the changing world of work and needs of the future workforce”. And “Our goal should not be to ensure that young people are simply finishing school but to make certain that every student has built a ‘portfolio’ of skills and capabilities with which to thrive in the new economy."

At Marcellin we recognise that education has a much bigger role to play than equipping people for the jobs of the future. Having said that we can no longer ignore that fact that today’s prescribed one-size-fits all education structure has past it’s use by date. As such we will be publishing our new learning ecosystem – titled Polaris, later in March 2019. This significant publication will outline our vision for faith, learning and life for a new world environment. The publication will also provide a case for change, while ensuring that we are equipping young men at Marcellin with the relevant capability skills, foundational knowledge and necessary character attributes to thrive successfully in the next phase of the 21st Century. A staged implementation of Polaris will commence from 2020, in the College’s 70th year of providing an inclusive faith education for young men in Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs.

Polaris is coming.

Adriano Di Prato

+ "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept" ~ David Morrison

Recently I was invited to share What makes me optimistic. My response centred around the gift and hope of young people.

Today we staged our annual Dux Assembly - a celebration of academic excellence and community. It is also an opportunity for our College Captain to address the Marcellin family.

Each year it has been a privilege to be present when the leader of the student cohort shares their aspiration for all in our inclusive faith learning community. Prior to each Captain’s speech I work alongside them as they discern the words they wish to use that best encapsulates their ambition.

Today I was in the presence of one of the greatest College Captain’s speeches in my entire educational career. This young man challenged all in our community, especially his peers, to “call out” injustice, particularly toward women. He implored everyone present to have the courage to embrace the profoundness of vulnerability as we journey on our quest to be whole beings. He did this under the duress of losing a loved one the day before.

Caleb was brave and afraid, at the exact same time. He modelled strength and vulnerability, at the exact same time. He called out excellence and injustice, at the exact same time. And he received an applause normally reserved for a breathtaking performance from a great soprano or tenor. The applause said, we will walk with you on this journey Caleb.

My day is often filled with moments. Today that moment was the courage of young man to stand up, call out and inspire a community to look beyond self and commit to making each minute matter.

Today reaffirmed why I’m a teacher, the noblest profession in the world. Today a young man reminded me that love will always be a verb.

I invite you to encounter his words for yourself here.

+ “To be a teacher is to be a prophet. We are not educating students for the world we grew up in, not even for the world that exists today, but for the future they will live into, a future that we can barely imagine” ~ Gordan Brown former Dean, School of Engineering, MIT

Polaris noun | poh-lair-is | stella polāris

In ancient days of star navigation, sailors found their ways in uncharted territories by first locating the North Star. Ancient peoples found destinations relying solely on observations from their environment versus complicated instrumentation that was yet to be invented. The North Star provided an internal compass—that which was unmoving amidst the ever-rotating star-field. From the North Star, the course was mapped and arrival certainly promised—as long as True North was kept ever in sight.

Each of us has an internal compass or instinct that points us in the direction of equilibrium. Our inner compass warns us when we are off course and when we are on the right track. What is your North Star, that which is a priority and supreme motivator above all else? Your core values are your North Star(s). They’re often very universal and when held in sight, have incredible power to direct and focus our lives.

It can take some deep exploring to discover our True North. True North points in the direction we wish to go toward – it becomes our guiding light, not our destination. The North Star is the one constant in an ever-changing world.

We need to remember that the opportunity for transformation is present always. Marcellin College, our Village on the Hill, could become a North Star in education and schooling – a shining light of what’s possible - Polaris.