Summer 2006

Innovation in education

Making a difference

Michelle Roberts reports on a program developed to create greater connectedness for the students to their school, their teachers and the local community.

Cheltenham Secondary College is a single campus, years 7 to 12 co-educational college bordered by both light industrial and residential areas in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. Founded in 1959, the college has always enjoyed an excellent reputation in the local community for its traditional values, strong discipline and welfare structure, and sound educational outcomes for its students. The current enrolment is 1170, and this has remained steady for the last five years.

In response to school survey data from students and teachers that students in year 9 in particular were disengaged and unwilling to take risks with their learning, a new subject called ‘C-Cubed’ has been included within the core curriculum program for year 9 this year.

About the program

C-Cubed stands for ‘community–city–challenge’. It is a program that:

• takes student learning beyond the classroom
• allows students to ‘learn about learning’
• allows students to understand more about themselves, others and their surrounding community
• allows students to understand and learn more about the City of Melbourne, all it has to offer including its history, its culture and its people.
• gives students the freedom to explore their own interests
• challenges students to become more critical, competent, caring and creative in their thinking
• provides students with skills and knowledge that will be able to be used when they leave school.

1. Playing the Real Game

‘Playing the Real Game’ is a career exploration program which was developed in response to the particular challenges the new working world throws at young people. It introduces students to the nature of the future they face and helps them understand it, and gives them skills to explore how they can function successfully in it.

2. Community experience

Five weeks of this program requires students to undertake community service in the local area. They choose their placements from a list of services/agencies that have volunteered to take our students for placement; these include cluster and local primary schools, Salvation Army stores, Elderly Citizens clubs. The other four weeks, students explore ways of offering their services to the school community. This requires them to work in groups devising a plan of action.

3. City experience

This unit provides students with opportunities to explore the city and what it has on offer. The aim of this unit is to come up with a focus question or hypothesis, which students then explore throughout the nine-week program. Students will spend one week of the program in the city undertaking research on their focus question/hypothesis. Students learn more about interviewing skills, phone skills, team work, collecting and presenting data, writing up surveys, information and communication technology (ICT) presentation methods, presenting to an audience, self-assessment and travel in the city—just to name a few!

4. Challenge yourself

The aims of this unit are to challenge the students physically, mentally and socially; to take students outside of their comfort zone and to expose them to new experiences, which increases their awareness of themselves and others. Challenge has enabled students to take risks of a physical nature with sailing, circus skills or triathlon.

Program organisation

The program is organised as a year-long learning project. There are five periods per fortnight—a triple lesson on day 8, a double lesson on day 2 with all year 9s blocked on together (9 form groups). Each component is nine weeks in length. All students complete the Real Game unit in the first nine week block, then three groups are on Community, three on Challenge and three on City for the next block. Each grouping of three form groups are rotated through the three Cs during the year. There are 11 staff members who are timetabled to cover the nine form groups, which allows for team teaching opportunities and exposure of more staff to the program.

Assessment and reflection

The program has been reviewed at the end of each nine-week block using student self-evaluation reflection sheets, student focus group sessions, teacher action research meetings and student attendance data. Student self-evaluation surveys and student focus group discussions have enabled the students to reflect on their own learning and make valuable suggestions for improvements in the program.

Our findings to date highlight the following:

• Community organisations have provided valuable information in relation to students’ contribution to their organisation and have given the students experience working in an environment that enables them to have contact with the wider community.
• City students have become more engaged in their learning and produced substantial action research investigations. Presentation of their reports to an audience of parents and students has improved the connection between the college and the parent community.
• Student attitudes to school survey results for this year show improvements on the teaching and learning variables, in particular student motivation for year 9 students.

In terms of learning outcomes, our students are learning to cooperate more effectively in authentic problem-solving situations. They are more engaged with their learning as they have more input into and control of the learning agenda. Confidence has grown as they take more risks and succeed. Year 9 attendance has improved and other classes appear more settled.

The success of the program this year is due to the outstanding work of the team of teachers, in particular the three leaders who have been integral in the programs development and coordination.

‘I really liked surveying and interviewing because it was really different and made me step outside my comfort zone.’

(Student, City experience)

‘You can do anything you put your mind to.’

(Student, Challenge)

‘It was good that we developed a bit more independence.’

(Student, Community)

‘I learnt about communicating with older people in the community.’

(Student, Community)

‘It was really great to see teenage boys interacting so enthusiastically with the preschoolers, particularly when a number of the children have very little access to male role models.’

(Preschool teacher)

‘It was a pleasure to have your students assisting us. They were polite and communicated with staff and students with maturity and confidence.’

(Primary school teacher)

‘This program is great it gives the students so many opportunities.’

(Parent, C-Cubed)

Michelle Roberts is assistant principal at Cheltenham Secondary College in Victoria.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au