Wellbeing at the heart of learning at Woodline
In the final week of Term 2, the principals and teaching staff at Tarrington Lutheran School and St John’s Lutheran School Portland joined me for a two-day Professional Learning immersion at Woodline Primary in Ceres, just outside of Geelong.
The first day was led my Lael Stone, founder of the school who spoke to us about her passion for student wellbeing and how she has been able to realise her dream of developing a school based on non punitive discipline where children have authentic choice and autonomy and emotional safety. She encouraged us as adults working with children to listen without judgement, without fixing and without entering the drama that is taking place. Lael’s message about the need for adults to be calm in the face of chaos was clear as we strive to create strong connection and loving boundaries to support children through the experiences that they are having and to develop strong emotional literacy and processing.
On Day two of the immersion we heard from Principal Claire and the Learning leader Rachel, who took us through what learning looks like at Woodline and how learning is supported through particular processes and structures. Woodline is a primary school with very strong Reggio Emilia Play based learning influence all the way through their Primary years and it was so interesting to get insight into the structures and research that makes such student led learning a robust inquiry process. We had the opportunity to engage in our own inquiry by exploring the concept of growth through a range of provocations. Each person constructed something to represent their perspective of growth and the guides demonstrated how they converse with and question learners to make connections and build meaningful lines of inquiry. It was a beautiful process. If you are interested in exploring a new wellbeing or inquiry focus in your own school then I encourage you to reach out to me so we can connect.
We are excited to be taking another group of staff from Lutheran schools to be immersed in the Woodline way on our Melbourne Learning Tour in a couple of weeks.
