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Ms Alison Gable, Dr Suzanne Carrington & Ms Christine Gruss Queensland University of Technology & Mungar State School Mungar, Queensland, Australia
' …It ' s not all up to the teacher. ' (Year 7 student)
Small rural schools in Australia are not generally considered to be at the forefront of progressive, educational reform. They must manage to sustain themselves in communities that are often struggling to overcome the difficulties of distance from services, declining population, and the vagaries of a global, agricultural economy.
However, one school in Mungar, Queensland, has taken a leap of faith into unknown pedagogical spaces as a consequence of one simple question put to its students: ' If you had $500 to improve the school, what would you do? '
Mungar State School has developed an innovative plan called the Sustainable Kids Program. At its core are the students who have been given control in developing a school-wide, environment improvement campaign. The results are impressive, as students, teachers and community members find internal resources to push the program ahead. The outcomes reveal a school with a community of learners, valuing the diversity each member brings. Teachers and students have become active participants in their own learning, subsequently stimulating enthusiasm and support from the local and wider community. All stakeholders have been forced to reflect on their roles in the education of the students, resulting in a program that manages and builds on knowledge and expertise provided by the entire community.
The Sustainable Kids Program was not developed as a consequence of any ' top-down ' directive or ambition to follow the latest trends in educational reforms. Rather, the Sustainable Kids Program has evolved from a simple school grounds improvement campaign to a program that has renegotiated the role of teacher and student alike.
Mungar State School is located within a rural community, approximately 250 kilometers north-east of Brisbane, Australia. The school is situated in a small township and serves as one of the main foci of the local community. The student population comprises approximately 60 children, organised into multi-age classes from pre-school to Year 7, and supported by ten staff. Students within the school draw from a homogeneous population of rural families who, in general, have limited financial resources. There is a predominance of boys in the school (2:1); including two students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Thirty per cent of the student body have been appraised with learning difficulties.
When Tina Gruss arrived at Mungar to begin her new role as principal of the school, she soon came to realise that her students were an untapped resource of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm in renewable energy and environmental practices. These were topics close to the hearts of the students and their parents and evident in the home gardens surrounding the small school. However, the school grounds offered few areas of interest beyond the playground equipment. Was the discrepancy between the community ' s gardens and the school grounds reflective of a less than ideal integration between school and home? Had the school missed a significant, natural resource available to it in the form of student and community strengths and talents?
The principal took steps to harness the obvious skills and ability available in the community in order to stimulate improvement of the school grounds. In addition, the students ' engagement with sustainable environments would be harnessed to steer the direction of the program. By doing so, Tina had made two important choices - to attach school improvement to the values, beliefs and needs of the local community and to build directly on the students ' strengths and talents. In addition, she acknowledged the limitation of her own knowledge in the area:
' …I knew nothing about it and I wasn ' t going to be someone who was a fountain of knowledge . . . and the kids could stand on their heads telling you about solar power and farming practice ' .
These decisions proved to be a catalyst for an evolution of significant change in the school and community.
Twice a week (known as Vision Time) the school divides into three multi-age groups, each of which are responsible for the co-ordination and development of one of three Visions or projects (a water feature, an animal farm, or a bike track). These projects were selected following a student-led survey of school improvement ideas. Teaching staff support the students in achieving their Visions, but the students are responsible for all contact with outside organisations and businesses. A student council oversees the distribution of external funding, co-ordinates student surveys and reports to the Visionary Committee overseeing the program. The Visionary Committee membership draws from the school ' s administration, teaching and ancillary staff, as well as representatives from the school ' s Parents and Citizens (P&C) association and educational advisors for technology, curriculum and student disabilities.
The Sustainable Kids program is entrenched in social action requiring students to address the school ' s environmental management planning, in partnership with the wider community. This has resulted in the development of real, not ' virtual ' , projects that have significant impact on the school and community environment. The implementation and management of the projects require the students to identify possible problems and barriers to their visions, and then find, evaluate and employ resolutions.
The Visions require extensive intellectual focus, not only in problem solving but also in project management, where tasks and resources are identified and controlled so that valid progress is made. Vision Time requires critical and creative thinking about the ecological, economic and social implications of decision making; in example, ' What do we do long-term with Chloe (the heifer that arrived this term)? '
' …kids are negotiating the curriculum and they will see real things come out of it . . . it ' s not controlled and it ' s not contrived. ' (Tina Gruss, Principal)
Roles and responsibilities for the students were discussed amongst the school staff with an aim to position students as active agents in the program. The role of the Student Council was strengthened to oversee the three Vision teams and all budgeting requirements. This moved the student body beyond tokenistic participation in school decision making to active agents in the school community.
The Vision teams are carefully structured and nurtured, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for all students. Supervisory roles in budgeting, design and building are advertised, with interested students having to submit an application to be reviewed and voted upon by parents and students. Students are accountable for their participation in the teams, resulting in a positive interdependence amongst members, linking individual actions with group success.
Teaching staff aligned to the Vision Projects work as group members, without dominating the situation. As a consequence, the projects are not adult-initiated, managed or led, and all team members must share in possible failure and setbacks. This has led the Mungar teachers to question the traditional role of educators as controllers of learning. As one teacher reflected:
' You have to be prepared to be a facilitator. You have to be prepared to let the children go on their way and not step in. So you have to really step back from your thinking of…well, some people have to step back from their original thinking of what is a teacher. '
Mungar teachers are quick to point out to their students that they personally do not have all the knowledge required to realise the students Visions. To achieve the students ' goals, they must look beyond the expertise held within the school to the wider community. As one student remarked:
' [you ' ve] got to have the knowledge because none of the teachers have been to universities and learned about building…those things that we haven ' t got, we ' ll work on them ' .
As a consequence, students access outside expertise in building and construction; local and state government requirements and animal husbandry to build on and bridge gaps in knowledge. Simultaneously, parents are viewed by the students as important sources of experience and capabilities, whose wisdom and experience they can draw upon.
A traditional approach to school grounds improvement could have followed a more predictable pathway by positioning teachers as ' gatekeepers ' ; co-coordinating and managing the projects, delineating what, and how, the children participated and, finally, ' protecting ' students from setbacks and failures (Mannion, 2003). However the Sustainable Kids Program, through its teamwork, has established collaboration as a ' way of doing business ' in the school (Villa et al., 1996). Students and staff are placed in a collegiate environment working towards the attainment of the students ' Visions. In addition, parents and the wider community are drawn into the program as students access knowledge and expertise outside of the school boundaries.
The consequence of this has been an evolution of interdependent communities of parents, teachers and students, establishing supportive relationships throughout the school community. These relationships have created a sense of belonging for all groups and developed important parent-teacher-student connections.
' Well, this is a really happy school. That ' s one thing I ' ve noticed. All the parents seem to be able to find the teachers very approachable. The teachers are wonderful and they interact so well with the children. And the kids are coming home at night and they ' re just so excited about their teachers and happy about them. I think it ' s just like a community, the school has become like it ' s own little community, and everybody just seems to be able to talk and communicate well, and that makes it such a better environment for the kids to be at school . . . And the thing is, too, that they are so excited about the project and the kids are excited about it, and that gets the parents excited. ' (Parent)
The comment above reflects the powerful impact of the program on the development of social relations within the school community. Teachers report improved collaboration and interaction between all staff as a consequence of a common bond in the form of the Sustainable Kids Program and increased opportunities to work with all staff. Parents ' perspectives on home-school relationships relate to an increase in interdependence that extends beyond the parameters of the Sustainable Kids Program. Students at the school have found value in the skills and talents that each child brings to the team, regardless of their age or ability. As one parent reflects:
' …because they ' re working in groups that are mixed with all the different grades, yeah, that seems to have helped break down that sort of hierarchy structure. And they just see each other as friends that you can go and talk to ' .
A study of children ' s awareness of self in relationships (Furrer & Skinner, 2003) concluded that children ' s sense of belonging played an important role in their academic motivation and performance. The authors suggested that a priority for schools should be to develop the quality of relationships between students, adults and peer social partners.
This view is supported by Beck and Malley (1998), who call for a ' pedagogy of belonging ' , stressing human relationships over the demands of competitions, grades and scores. This requires a connection of students with the school community and the importance of teacher-student relationships.
The Sustainable Kids Program has redefined the teacher-student relationship by questioning the traditional role of teacher as the font of all knowledge. One teacher aide remarked that the students were more at ease with the teachers, and able to ask for help and assistance:
' I think they ' re just more at ease with each other. They may have lost that distance, but they haven ' t lost that respect thing, as well. It ' s still there; they know that that ' s the teacher…[T]hey don ' t know everything, we don ' t know everything, so we have to go away and find out stuff as well. We don ' t have the answers to every single thing. And that we ' re wrong at times ' .
Thus, students and teachers are learning together to achieve the goals established by the Vision projects. The collaborative nature of the teacher-student relationship at Mungar is reflective of Mannion ' s (2003) call for renegotiated ' pedagogic spaces ' allowing for new explorations in child-adult learning relationships, where the shared actions between adults and children and the outcomes of their work is the significant location for learning.
Whilst the Sustainable Kids Program began as the principal ' s reflection on the values and beliefs of the local community, the direction of the program evolved as a consequence of a launch into unknown pedagogic spaces. These spaces allow learning to be ' collective ' , as teams build relationships to achieve their goals. The principal provided the opportunity for her staff to explore alternative modes of ' doing things ' that created an exciting range of learning opportunities for all involved in the process. Students, teachers and parents ' researched the contexts and communities in which they live ' (Smyth, 2000, p.496) and worked together to learn about, and address, real concerns.
In addition, there is evidence of growth in ' social capital ' , ' social connectedness ' , and ' civic engagement ' , as described by Putnam (1996, p.1). The Sustainable Kids Program at Mungar reflects the features of social life in the community, and enables the development and maintenance of networks based on trust to achieve a shared vision for the school. It is obvious that the students of Mungar have brought their ' lives, perspectives, cultures, and experiences into the center of curriculum in a way that involves students as coconstructors and cocreators (rather than passive consumers) of that curriculum, along with teachers ' (Smyth, 2000, p.496).
References
Beck, M. & Malley, J. (1998). A Pedagogy of Belonging. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 7, 3, 133-137.
Furrer, C. & Skinner, E. (2003). ' Sense of Relatedness as a Factor in Children ' s Academic Engagement and Performance ' in Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 1, 148-162.
Mannion, G. (2003). ' Children ' s Participation in School Grounds Developments: Creating a place for education that promotes children ' s social inclusion ' in International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7, 2, 175-192.
Putnam, R. (1996, Winter). ' The strange Disappearance of Civic America ' in American Prospect, 24, (epn.org/prospect/24/24/putn.html).
Smyth, J. (2000). ' Reclaiming Social Capital through Critical Teaching ' in the Elementary School Journal, 100, 5, 491-511.
Villa, R., Thousand, J.S., Nevin, I. & Malgeri, C. (1996). ' Instilling Collaboration as a Way of Doing Business in Public Schools ' in Remedial and Special Education, 17, 3, 169-181.
Ms Alison Gable has recently completed a Masters of Education (Learning Support and Inclusive Education) through Queensland University of Technology (QUT). This paper has emerged from an evaluation of the Sustainable Kids Program undertaken as partial fulfilment of her degree. The full study can be accessed through the Staff College, Inclusive Education website at www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=15739. Ms Gable is currently pursuing a PhD.
Dr Suzanne Carrington has recently returned to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) after completing a two year secondment to establish the Staff College, Inclusive Education for Education Queensland. The state-wide Staff College directs and coordinates learning and development for staff to support students with diverse learning needs. Previous to Suzanne ' s position in Education Queensland, she coordinated post-graduate studies in Learning Support, Inclusive Education, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder at QUT.
Ms Tina Gruss has been a Teaching Principal at Mungar State School for 3 years. Prior to Mungar she has worked in the capacity as a Teacher Coordinator on a remote Indigenous community, as well as 20 years teaching across the primary year levels in large and small schools in Queensland. She has also been an Education Adviser for the Preschool Curriculum in the early years. Tina Gruss has an avid interest in leading a community of learners through negotiation of the learner and the curriculum.
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