Choices

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School: Yule Brook College

Creative Practitioner: Michael Abercromby

Creative Practice: Theatre Maker

Teacher: Kofi Ofori / Anne Veenstra

Year Group: Year 7

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Main Curriculum Focus

Big Picture Education

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Cross-curricular Links

Literacy, Physical Education

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Context

Yule Brook College is an independent public school that uses  the Big Picture Education (BPE) model, catering for students between year 7 and 10. The school motto, “One student at a time” really rings true in this place, as the focus of the Big Picture style is to help students unlock their interests and passions so they can gain employment, apprenticeships, or access to further education in VET or ATAR by the end of their time at Yule Brook College.

The year 7 students that I have been working with were going through a transition period, as the teacher I had been working with, Anne, was moving up to a leadership position, and a new teacher, Kofi, was coming to the school. This, combined with the lockdown that had interrupted the end of our second term project, meant that the students were a little displaced in a school and classroom that they had just become used to. Rather than continue to create uncertainty or unnecessary pressure, we instead chose to reduce our class size to one year 7 cohort (rather than the two that were involved last term) and allow the students to decide what they would like to pursue, instead of working to a deadline like we had in the previous term.

Project overview

This term was all about choice. This was to get the students thinking for themselves as individuals, but also as a cohort. Through pursuing this we were hoping for two outcomes: firstly, a greater level of active participation, and secondly, through allowing the students to pursue whatever they liked, we could show them that within any passion is a chance to learn and demonstrate learning. This second goal ties into the Big Picture Education system they use at Yule Brook, something the year 7s are still getting used to.

Student agency

Of course, exercising choice, or in fact choosing, is a skill in itself. Furthermore, getting a group of year 7s to come to make choices is even more difficult and we were not without our roadblocks in the early stages of the term. It started with a bet, teachers against students, where we bet that they couldn’t organise themselves to all do the same activity for 20 minutes.

Their 20-minute basketball game proved us wrong and gave us the groundwork for how they wanted their sessions to run from here on: physical, competitive, group, fun. This spawned the next idea of exploring ‘useless skills’ (card throwing, paper plane folding, juggling etc) and mapping the learning journey of a skill chosen by the students. Taking YouTube videos of world record holders and professional magicians we attempted to learn these skills. This quickly descended into chaos, with very little engagement with the task beyond the 10-minute mark, and a peculiar desire to prove experts wrong, which we later discussed in context of the pandemic.

Rather than reducing their choice as a result of this failed lesson, we instead increased their level of choice. Rather than choose within a framework as I had done for the skills session, I instead gave them a complete choice of topic, with the promise that I will find something to teach them within whatever they gave me. The only proviso was that it was the class that agreed to it.

“Cardboard wars” was what they wanted to do.

With a desire to keep my promise, we quickly recovered from this unexpected topic, and extrapolated what they meant by this into things that would be teachable, fun, physical, competitive and in a group. Although initially a little stumped, this eventually led us down the path of fantasy world building, character creation, LARPing, and finally personal heraldry for the people they want to be. Probably the most successful element however was an introduction to stage combat, something I introduced hesitantly but which they really took to and enjoyed.

Whilst we didn’t end up with a final product as we had with term 2, being able to take their original idea and provide opportunities to learn many skills and branch out too many topics, will hopefully inspire them to find those same learning opportunities in other passion areas in their life, and equip them for their journey through BPE.

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WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?

Student

The student involvement was far greater this term. Reducing the cohort size and doubling down on their ability to pursue their choice made for a really meaningful end of the program. It showed them that regardless of their passion or interests, learning was possible and provable. It also opened their eyes up to other areas of life (like LARPing, stage combat, DnD and role playing) which they may not have been interested in before.

We repeated the Student Voice questionnaire with the students at the end of term 3 and there had been a marked improvement amongst students feeling they had a voice.

Teacher

It was great to have a new teacher to show the program to. Although we didn’t get a lot of time together, it was great to share some of the work they had done, and he really loved seeing them engaged with such unique material.

Creative Practitioner

I would never have thought stage combat would be as popular as it was. Although I was concerned of silliness and potential violence erupting given, I placed PVC pipe in the hands of a group of 12-year-old children, their desire to learn more meant that they were never more disciplined than when we were doing this. It has made me want to pursue this further for myself in my practice, but also for potential school groups.

School

Although our term 3 project was largely in house, it is worth mentioning the NAIDOC project which finally got shown to the school at the start of Term 3, had a huge impact on the school. Yule Brook has a great focus on NAIDOC week, and really tries to support its Aboriginal students and community, so being able to share a class project on this was really great. It was well received by staff and parents and has since been shared around not only the school, but the Creative Schools community and the Department of Education, something Anne is very proud of.

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“I am new to the project, but from what I have seen so far it is really good. He taught them, fencing, I actually joined in myself. The kids really enjoy it. They are all really engaged. I think for these kids, it really works for them.” - Teacher Kofi Ofoti

"We started with another group with twice the class size. It was difficult to get the buy in, initially, but Michael and I would debrief and replan each week. We then decided to get them to write haiku poems and we made a video with them for Naidoc week. It was hard to get the kids to come up with ideas initially. When we did the haikus, that's when we saw the magic. That's when they started really developing their own ideas. They really love Michael. Now that we just have our class, it is really working well.  Year 7 is very new. Maybe we should have waited a semester or worked with year 8 to get the most out of Creative Schools. At exhibitions last term, the students talked about Creative Schools. We use the Creative Habits of Learning wheel a lot. They were able to identify, particularly that persistence and discipline were lacking. Working with Michael, my latent creativity has come out again, and it has been latent for a long time. It has been really nice to rediscover my creativity. It has reinforced for me how important things like warmups are for the kids. There has been real impact on individual student. In some of the quietest students I've seen real commitment and drive from them. The less lively kids have stepped up to take the lead in the group. The collaboration and having a say have made a real difference. They have found their voice. It was really good. They might not have found it in normal lessons. With the Haiku recordings some of the Aboriginal boys came to record some of the words in Noongar language. Initially they were reluctant, but they did get involved and went with Michael to record it. It was unbelievable when I heard it. I nearly cried. Having the confidence and the courage to do that was brilliant. They wrote the words, chose the images, and recorded their Haiku poems. This is their work. They are proud of what they have done and what they have made.” - Teacher Anne Veenstra

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“Everyone is enjoying it. There’s action and there is design. We are being taught so many new skills. The kids like to do the things that we do in Creative Schools in their spare time.”  - Student

“It’s different from other lessons because in other lessons you don’t get to choose what you will be learning. We have free roam as long as it’s part of Creative Schools learning. In other classes we have to stay in the room, and we don’t have choices.” - Student

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