Ms Brittany Shapcott shares why she chose to undertake her journey into the vocation of teaching through the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney.

Teaching is a funny business. It’s a science and an art, an activity that is not just complicated (like putting a man on the moon) but complex, with infinite variables shaping the way a child learns and grows to maturity. It’s also often a fairly solitary business, with much of what a teacher does happening on their own, in their classroom, with their students. This has some real strengths. Even when increasingly burdened with regulations and compliance requirements, teachers still have a lot of agency to work with their students in ways they see best. It also has some real weaknesses. It’s hard to get better when you’re rarely seeing the work of others and having others see your work. Teacher education and professional learning is best when it’s in what the sociologist Etienne Wenger called ‘communities of practice’ — environments where our work, our beliefs, our thinking is positively shaped by those around us.

That’s one of the big reasons why we have a Research Office, seeking to bring teachers together in communities of practice, and open up the classroom and the College to shape and be shaped by best practice beyond ourselves. One of the most significant projects we have been part of is the establishment in 2020 of the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney. With five Sydney schools coming together to train their own teachers, the TSAS uses the time-proven Clinical Teaching Model to encourage bright and vocation-oriented Christians into the teaching profession and form their thinking and practice, not just in textbooks, but ‘on the job’ from day one. 

Trainees work 1-day per week with a Teacher Mentor while completing their Bachelor or Master of Teaching in an online and face-to-face cohort. Rather than conducting a few practicum placements, they graduate with up to 350 days of classroom experience, as well as all that comes with being part of a school community. We have been delighted to see four Trainee Teachers join the College since last year: Ms Brittany Shapcott, Ms Tara Harman, Mr Ian Kim and Ms Elena Petschack. They have all been a blessing to the students and teachers they serve, and will go on to significant careers in education.

Dr Caitlin Munday leads the TSAS in addition to her part-time role at the College as Research Fellow (Professional Learning).

To find out more about this unique program, please visit the Teaching School Alliance Sydney website.

The Alliance be holding its final virtual information session for 2021 via Zoom on Tuesday 22 September, 7:30-8:15pm. Details and registration can be found here.

If you know someone who would make an outstanding Christian teacher, please share the details and invite them to contact Dr Munday, Director of the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney, at director@teachingschoolsalliancesydney.org.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

​On Tuesday evening we were delighted to have hundreds of parents and teachers from Scots and the wider community join us for a special ScotsIdeas conversation, ‘Helping Children to Deal with Stress and Uncertainty’.

Guest panelists included well-known psychologist and author Andrew Fuller, ‘Digital Nutrition’ pioneer and clinical psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, and Wellington College (UK) Deputy Head David Walker. They addressed a wide range of topics based on questions from attendees, including using technology well, engaging with frustrating behaviour, building relationships while remote, and supporting children to talk through their anxieties and aspirations.

Key take-away messages included:

• Be curious, not furious. It’s easy to respond to frustration with more frustration. Take a step back back and recognise your own emotional and physical state.
• When boys express frustration in poor behaviour, ask ‘What’s happening?’ Use the HALTS acronym to ask: Are you... Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? Stressed?
• Use this unique time to talk with your children about what kind of world we want to create for the other side of the pandemic. Engage them in thinking about making a meaningful contribution to the world, and stimulate projects to support this.
• This is a pandemic, not a productivity contest. Don’t stress about students falling behind during the pandemic. Stimulate executive functioning skills like memory and self-regulation by building good daily and weekly rituals and routines as a family.
• Take an interest in your son's gaming habits, by having a go yourself!
• When wearing different hats as a parent (parent, teacher, coach), it’s important to frame this for children. ‘Now it’s time for learning’, ‘Now it’s mummy time. Shall we go for a walk?’

We are looking forward to continuing to work with Andrew Fuller through our partnership with Skodel, a unique wellbeing platform developed by Scots Old Boys Julian Fagan and Ian Fagan. In Term 4 we will be introducing the wellbeing check-in tool with our staff and Senior School students, and expanding our care coaching into 2022.

For more information about ScotsIdeas please click here.

128 years ago last Thursday, late in the afternoon, a distinguished group of leaders from state, church and community, including Lord Jersey, the Governor of New South Wales, gathered on the shores of Botany Bay to open The Scots College and welcome its three staff and thirty-five boys. Among the speakers was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales, the Right Reverend Dr James Smith White. A leader and scholar of substance, Dr White ended his stirring address about the purpose of this new school by talking about its teachers:

‘The Principal and teachers are Australians who have won the highest honours in the University of Sydney, have had long experience in teaching Australians, and to whom teaching is a work of faith, a labour of love, and a patience of hope. May their most sanguine hopes be fulfilled in the success of The Scots College; and what greater success can be desired than that its alumni realise the aspirations of its motto: “Utinam patribus nostris digni simus”.’

Teaching and schools have changed a lot since 1893. Yet those who teach and lead the College well over a century later follow the same sense of vocation Dr White evoked of the founders. They are men and women of character who teach not just knowledge and skills, but character and values, not chiefly in what and how they teach, but in the overflow of who they are. 

The Scots College Research Office exists to inspire our staff to continue to pursue expertise in their calling of developing the brave hearts and bold minds of every Scots boy.

We began our year doing just this with our annual Staff Culture Day on Friday 22 January. Picking up our College value of ‘Leadership Through Teams in a spirit of service, compassion, humour and community’, staff engaged in a range of experiences to help them reflect on their own character and how to best develop it in the boys. 

We heard inspiring stories from those who’ve put leadership and service into action, including a grandmother who has fostered 75 children over the last 45 years, and the Captain of the Wallaroos, our own staff member Ms Grace Hamilton. We welcomed representatives from over a dozen charity partners, including Jericho Road (the Presbyterian Church’s mercy ministries), the Salvation Army, Bushcare, and more, to talk with staff about what compassion and service looks like and how they might engage their boys. And staff competed in the world-first blended XVenture Mind Games, tackling physical and online challenges across our campus. 

We will take these experiences as inspiration for our work across the year of embedding character formation further into our teaching and learning, and our culture as a staff team. Dr White would expect nothing less.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

'Control based approaches are bad for the future. If we really want to encourage excellent teaching, teachers who are committed and passionate and prepared to have the emotional capacity to engage with their students in relationships to get the best learning from them, we need to free teachers from process-driven bureaucracy. We need to trust them despite the fact they'll sometimes make mistakes.'

So said Gigi Foster, Professor of Economics, UNSW, at our latest ScotsIdeas forum on 'Redesigning Education and Society for a Post-COVID World'. This evening, hosted in partnership with the College's Institute of Business and Economics, brought together a diverse panel of leading thinkers and practitioners in education to ask how we might make the most of the disruption brought about by 2020 in changing the way we educate.

Panelists included:

• Honorary Professor Mike Conway, Founder and CEO of XVenture, University of Wollongong, emotional agility and mental coach for the Socceroos and former managing director of The Wiggles.
• Professor Gigi Foster, Professor of Economics UNSW, host of ABC Radio National's 'The Economists', and 2019 Young Economist of the Year.
• Mr James Oliver ('09), Research Director, Strategic Projects, NSW Department of Education.
• Dr Ian PM Lambert, Principal of The Scots College
  

If you had missed it, I encourage you to watch the recording and delve into the compelling conversations and topics discussed, along with all other ScotsIdeas events here.

Dr Ian PM Lambert shared these reflections in his weekly newsletter:

“If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow.” John Dewey

This statement over a century ago by the great American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer, John Dewey, has never been more true. Casting a stark reflection on Australia’s current education system. For the past 20 years, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in our curriculum is now failing our students to prepare for the unexpected in their future.

For this year in particular, no one could have predicted its events and how it has led to the profound change in the way we operate, think and relate to one another. It has given society and Scots a reality check, reinforcing why we continue to forge ahead with our Reinventing Education strategy.

Education is not just about preparing for an ATAR or being ‘work-ready’. If one was to take a single learning away from 2020, it has taught us the need to be agile, adaptable and resilient in the face of challenges. This is a core of what education is. Many take for granted that being agile, adaptable and resilient just happens, but at Scots we believe, and have proven that, it can be taught.

On Wednesday evening at our latest ScotsIdeas event, I was joined by a group of experts in economics, coaching and education to deliberate on the topic ‘Redesigning Education and Society for a Post-COVID World’. The panel of experts discussed the global trends as a result of the pandemic and what in their opinion schools should be doing to better position students on how to tackle an uncertain society after school.

We look forward to sharing our exciting program of 2021 ScotsIdeas events soon.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

Master Teacher Mrs Sandra McMurray and Year 4 Teacher Mr James Graham share their stories of finding and following their vocation as teachers, and what it means to grow as a teacher at Scots.

Our critical friend, Dr Phil Cummins, shares some of the findings from a major International Boys' Schools Coalition research project on the nature of character education in schools for boys, of which Scots was a key participant.

The popular ScotsIdeas program of ‘compelling conversations in education’ is back for 2020 with more engaging, relevant and thoughtful voices to help you bring out the best in boys. On 24 February, a sold-out audience of parents and staff enjoyed a compelling conversation about the science and character of relationships in schools.

Dr Rob Loe, former teacher, senior leader and leading academic in the measurement and management of human relationships as CEO of the Relationships Foundation, spoke lucidly about why relationships matter and why we don’t understand them as well as we should. In an age obsessed with social networks, he called for schools and families to invest in ‘relational networks’. ‘Relationships are not about how well you like people, but how well you know them,’ and the foundation for flourishing individuals, communities and nations.

How can we build deeper relational networks in schools? Drawing on ground-breaking research with tens of thousands of school students, teachers and parents around the world, he showed the protective impact of good relationships, and how great schools invest seriously in creating belonging. Four key strategies for improving relationships in schools included:

1. Developing students’ awareness of unity over diversity
2. Exploit synchrony, those routines and habits that enculturate, such as uniforms, chapel and assembly
3. Create healthy competition among teams and not individuals
4. Instil in students an awe for something larger than themselves

See below for a full recording of Dr Loe's talk.