Nicole Creaser – Year 12 Coordinator / Student Voice and Advocacy Korumburra Secondary College
Korumburra Secondary College, like all schools, is adapting to the new learning environment in term 2 and recently invited South Coast Prevention staff to present to the Year 12 HHD class.
1 - Please tell us about your role at Korumburra Secondary College?
Year 12 Coordinator. Teacher of Unit 3 & 4 Health and Human Development, health, science and humanities.
2 - How are you staying connected with your students and is it effective?
We use a program called ‘Microsoft Teams’ to allow video conferencing. All of our lessons are available on our school learning platform, Compass, (just like normal), but instead of being in a classroom we connect ‘face-to-face’ via Teams. We also have a fantastic mentor system that means each student has regular contact with their mentor teacher, either via a learning platform, phone call or email.
According to the students, so far so good, although we have all mentioned how much we miss being at school together. We will never take it for granted again!
3 - Why did you invite a Health Promotion Officer to virtually present at your class?
Sarah worked with KSC last year on the Tap Water health promotion program. She is fantastic with Secondary School students – she is able to speak with them on their level, and has enough ‘cool’ that students really take notice of her messages.
This program was really successful, so I made a mental note to invite Sarah back to speak to the Year 12’s about Health Promotion when we reached that part of our study design.
Of course now we are all online, but Sarah was able to link into our class and speak with them about her role.
Sarah’s first-hand experience and practical knowledge is inspiring to our VCE students who are thinking of a career in the health sector, and provides applied knowledge and ‘real-world’ examples of some challenging theoretical concepts for VCE students to wrap their minds around.
4 - Do you have any advice, tips or learnings from your new way of working you would like to share with other teachers?
Feedback from our senior students has been that the classes that most closely resemble what they would do at school are the most successful. They are really missing the connections we have at school and so we are making a real effort to reach out and ensure each student is travelling ok.
Finally, we are making sure we are having some fun. Just because we are apart doesn’t mean we can’t keep building an awesome community.