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Kylie Speer 00:00:00 Kylie, hello and welcome to The Educator TV. I'm Kylie Spear and joining me today is Helen Finlay, principal at St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School. St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School has been named as one of the winners of The Educator 5-Star Innovative Schools for 2024 Welcome to you, Helen. Congratulations to you and the team, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Helen Finlay 00:00:35 Thank you, Kylie, thank you for having us well.

Kylie Speer 00:00:38 Firstly, Helen, you won the educators Australian primary Principal of the Year for a non government school earlier this year, and now St Peter's has been named a five star innovative school. How much are these awards linked, and do you feel your innovative mindset has played a part in enabling this success?

Helen Finlay 00:00:59 Well, the awards are absolutely linked. You can't separate them out. I think, as a principal, certainly, it is my job to cast a compelling vision, but without a team of very, incredibly capable people to put the legs on that vision and then actually sometimes take that vision even further than you'd even hoped or dreamt of. Without that, it would stay exactly that a vision. So I really think that what we try to do here is is cultivate an environment where people feel like they can do innovative thinking, where they can think outside the box, where they can reimagine how we've always done education. And I think you need to always come back to that question, are we doing it this way, because that's the way we've always done it, or are we doing it this way because we put the student needs firmly in the center of all our decision making? So I think there needs to be a bit of a permission to, well, I call it my Get Out of Jail for each card, have a go at something. It's okay if it doesn't work out, because that's what we're trying to teach our students as well. Bit of fail, you know, failing and then pivoting and trying again, like that, permission to try new things. And there's a quote that I read a really, a really interesting book when I sort of was first embarking on my principal journey. And the quote that really stuck out for me was that micromanagement sometimes, sometimes you'll get adequacy, but certainly it really fosters excellence. And I think that's really stuck out to me, that the minute people feel micromanaged, and I have been in a situation myself where I was micromanaged and I was just so nervous that I was going to make a mistake, that I was just delivering exactly what I've been asked to deliver. I certainly never sort of thought about going beyond that, because I was just so nervous I was going to make a mistake. And then on the flip side, I had a principal who was just like, you know, trust your instinct, have a go. Yes, it might fail, but that's okay. Then you can try it another way. Just gave me permission to think outside the square, and that's when I flourished. So I really do try and think about being that kind of principle and creating that culture of innovation.

Kylie Speer 00:03:13 St Peter's has moved away from the IBS primary years program, which is seen as a leading program to launch your own teaching and learning framework called Project rise. Research driven, innovative, student centered, extraordinary. What was behind this innovation and how will it benefit students?

Helen Finlay 00:03:35 Well, Project rise is been a passion project put together by a long process and a big team. So I guess it came from knowing that the IB is all about inquiry learning, which is an incredibly important pedagogy in primary schools or in schools, but we also know that children need those core skills in numeracy and literacy, and they're best taught through an explicit, direct instruction model. So it was a mad I guess. We were trying to put two pedagogies together, and then we really wanted a learning framework that was completely holistic, that would look at well being, how we're communicating, how we're engaging our stakeholders, how we're assessing, how we're reporting, and we felt that really the only people that know our context well is us, and we really had the expertise here to put together something that was bespoke for St Peter's woodlands. And the other thing that I'm very, very passionate about is really good quality professional learning. And I felt that the only way that I could ensure the quality was there was by having the choice to put my resources with the kinds of people that I wanted to partner with. So someone I really wanted to partner with was Dr Ron Richard, who's famous for his work on cultures of thinking and project zero with Harvard University. So having that little bit of freedom to reach. Out and say, Look, I want to get in partnership with you, and we've been in partnership with him for three years. Then there's a cath Murdoch, who is renowned worldwide as an expert in inquiry learning, so engaging her services and really making sure that the kind of people that were delivering our professional development were people that were, you know, had were hand picked because we knew that they were going to deliver what it was we wanted to deliver. So a really important part of our teaching and learning network was to actually engage very early on with families and our community, number one, to find out who, if there was anyone, that was really super attached to the IB PYP framework, because we needed to understand what people were looking for. And the other thing I asked was, when your students leave the gates at SPW, and they leave the gates at the end of their time here, what are the kind of qualities that you're hoping they're leaving with? We call them EQs, the enduring qualities. And through that, we distilled a set of six enduring qualities that we were hoping students would leave the gates with, so things like we wanted them to be resilient. We wanted them to be problem solvers. We wanted them to be collaborative. We want them to be responsible citizens, to be empathetic. And so through them, we got, I guess, with those EQs in mind, which sit alongside of our core values of wonder, courage, respect and service, we adopted a backwards by design approach. Okay, if students are walking out with these enduring qualities that just a part of them as learners, what sorts of things need to be taking place on a day to day basis? What needs to be embedded in our culture to make sure that that's exactly what they're leaving our gates with so that was kind of where we started, and what we ended up with as you, as you said, was a project, rise, which actually also won for innovative curriculum design at the Australian educator awards. And that was very exciting this year.

Kylie Speer 00:06:55 Another of your programs, DARE diploma, which stands for Dream, achieve, reach experience for your year. Sixes is in its third year, and involves micro credentialing and working with external organizations. What types of topics do the students explore, and what do they gain from it?

Helen Finlay 00:07:16 We're particularly proud of this program. It spans, as you said, over a year, and we really got the inspiration from the Duke of Edinburgh. So we wanted the children to collect a series of experiences over the year. So one of the things that the parents love is the home skills. With home skills, the children will plan, shop for and cook two, two course meals over the course of a year. They're expected to be part of the household chores, so not just cleaning their room and making their bed, which, of course, is important, but things like packing their lunch for the day and doing some chores around the home. They partner with Dr Tim Jarvis on the fork Tree Project, and that's a project that has set the very audacious goal of re greening a section of the fluoria Peninsula. So they team up with him and go out and help plants and trees to try and re green that. On part of that project, we've teamed up with the serve life savings. So they learn CPR and First Aid. They go into the city and they learn about homelessness and do some work with the homeless shelter. As part of the year, they have to complete 20 hours of community service, which is just wonderful. We work with a company called Australians together, where they're learning about what's their role in reconciliation, working with some Ghana people and really understanding more than cultural awareness, which is very much a part of what we do. But okay, so we understand the cultural importance of this land, but what is our role to really sort of get to that point of true reconciliation? They do a very long walk from Hallet Cove to Glenelg as part of just being resilient. They spend four days in Canberra, which is just amazing, and then a week, which we call city week, going in each day and exploring different things, like Parliament House, they go to the local news studio, they visit firefighters, they visit a homeless shelter. So there's just, I mean, that's just to name a few of the experiences, but one of the most exciting things we've just had the big exhibition is over that year, instead of your traditional homework, they work on a passion project. So that takes a whole year of planning. They journal it as they go, and then we have an exhibition at the end of the year. So I've seen children who've spent a year like research, getting an old motorcycle and restoring, spending the year restoring that somebody else's passion was sailing. So they spent every weekend teaching others how to sail, and took beautiful photographs and presented each of the children with a photographic Journal of their learning to sale. Other children have developed recipes over the year and printed out a recipe book. I mean, you name it. It was whatever they're passionate about. But I think the thing that was so important is when you go around and you talk to the children, some of. Them had started off thinking this was their passion, and then three months into it, they thought, well, hang on a minute. It's not and they had to rethink. That's an important skill, right? We all have to do that. Sometimes we go off on one path and we have to rethink and pivot. Others will talk about the little failures along the way. That meant that they had to rethink and perhaps try a different tapped so it's really just teaching those fantastic skills that they would take through to not just senior school, but beyond.

Kylie Speer 00:10:27 This past year, you've also added another innovation, a support group called the village, which connects the parents and carers of neuro diverse children. How successful has this been?

Helen Finlay 00:10:40 That's been the most beautiful initiative. I mean, raising children is not for the faint hearted. It's not it's not an easy gig, let's face it, and it's something much better done in you know, in good company, when you have a neuro diverse child, often you feel really quite lonely and isolated and certainly very frightened, and it's really hard to understand what that journey is like for others. So the idea of the village was exactly that, let's get these let's get parents together that are walking that journey. Sometimes it's to listen to a guest speaker, but other times, we head up to the coffee shop up the road, and we all sit around and we just talk. And I, myself am a parent of a child who had a neuro diversity. They're very successful adult these days, but it was really hard to chat it through with people who didn't quite understand the journey that I was on, such a simple initiative that other schools could do so very easily, just a couple of times a term. And as I say, sometimes it's as simple as we gather at a school and we walk up in a group and have a coffee up the road. Other times, we might hear from a guest speaker, but it's all about just creating networks so they don't feel like they're doing the journey on their own. And it's it's something I'm particularly proud of.

Kylie Speer 00:11:53 Within the school. You have also created a teaching internship. Why did you feel this was needed, and how does it differ from the current system for newly graduated teachers?

Helen Finlay 00:12:05 Well, I actually came from a system of schools in New South Wales where and the St Philip's Christian colleges, and Graham Moo and the executive principal, had an idea a number of years ago, it's about seven years ago now, where he thought, Look, we're getting teachers straight out of school and then straight out of university, and they're not really fully prepared for the rigors of the classroom. So he actually went into partnership with the University and really developed something called the clinical teaching models. So from the get go, when they're in first year of university, students are actually assigned to a school, and they're doing two to three days a week in a school for their whole of their degree, which is just phenomenal. So I'm actually working on that at the moment with Flinders University and the Anglican schools here in South Australia. So that's very exciting. But in the meantime, I knew that we still have this problem of teachers who graduate go straight into a school, if they're lucky, a lot of the time you have to do a lot of like TRT or temp working, where people are away. But if you do get straight into a school, they're finding that in those first couple of years, is a burnout and there's a dropout rate that really bothers me. And when you chat to teachers and say, you know, what were the things that you found really difficult? It would be things like the programming they found quite challenging. Parent, teacher interviews were pretty daunting. Reporting was pretty daunting, just those sorts of things that are part and parcel of working in a school. So I thought, well, without the clinical teaching model where I'd like to get to what, what is it that I can do for new graduates? So our internship looks like this. So we've got a new graduate that will come into our school, and for four days a week, they are literally a floating teacher. So if someone's away, someone's doing PD, and we need a teacher in the classroom, that's what they do, which is not that that unlike normal and fresh graduates, but the key is one day a week with a mentor teacher teaching side by side with a mentor teacher. But the fact is, because they're attached to the school, they're doing all the PD with the school. They will help write reports alongside their mentor teacher. They can sit in on parent teacher interviews. They just get to learn, like the day in, day outs of what it's like to be at a school, and because they're with one school, they've got the team of colleagues supporting the people they can turn to. So by the time they're in their second year, I mean, they're just so employable because they've just, they've had that wonderful, rich experience, but also they feel incredibly supported. So this year was our first year of having an internship, and she has done such a magnificent job that she's on class and next year as a full time member of faculty. So it's been incredibly successful for us. And she said, just that support, she feels ready. So yeah, it's been brilliant.

Kylie Speer 00:14:58 And finally, Helen. As the principal of one of Australia's most innovative primary schools. What are your thoughts on how primary education is regarded, and do you feel there is room for more innovation across the industry?

Helen Finlay 00:15:13 Great question. I've got another favorite quote, and that is about the fact that if you want to improve high school you need to improve primary school outcomes, because we're the quiet achiever in Australia's social and economic history. And I guess why that quote resonates is we know that high schools aren't places that are necessarily equipped to plug the gaps or to catch children up if they've missed some of their vital core skills. So primary schools are where we're teaching, yes, those core skills in literacy and numeracy that are the foundation of just about all learning that will take place in their senior years. But it's also a time where we're teaching those valuable learning dispositions, where they learn to be engaged, they learn to like school, they learn to be hopefully, critical thinkers, reflective, to be able to to, I guess, set goals, achieve goals. So it's really setting up that relationship with the school. And in fact, they talk about the fact that if you have a child that's disengaged from kindergarten to year two, you may well have lost them for the rest of their educational journey. And that's how important those first foundational years are. So I do feel like we're the unsung heroes. And I tell my staff that all the time, particularly at the beginning of the year, we are the unsung heroes. It's incredibly important with what we're doing. Is there room for more innovation? Absolutely yes. And I think it comes back to what I was saying before we really need to keep asking ourselves the question, are we doing this? Because that's what we've always done. And sometimes I will ask that question at school here, I'll say, why do we do it that way? Oh, we've always done it that way. That's the question we need to be asking ourselves. Are we doing it because we've always done it that way? Or are we doing it with the children firmly in the middle of every single decision that we make, and I think that's when we know we're doing the right thing, if the answer to that is a resounding yes. So room for more innovation? Absolutely. Let's think about what it is we're trying to to, I guess, get to what's our end goal, and then let's work backwards to make sure that everything we're doing is getting us towards that end goal for that us, it's happy engaged students who feel really positive about school and who are equipped with those incredibly important core, foundational subject knowledge to set them up in success for senior school.

Kylie Speer 00:17:36 Well, congratulations and thank you so much for joining us once again. Helen, it was fabulous hearing all your news from St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School.

Helen Finlay 00:17:46 Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely.

Kylie Speer 00:17:51 And thank you, of course, to our viewers for watching the latest episode of The Educator TV. We look forward to seeing you again soon.