Creativity

There is great privilege in witnessing the new learning that occurs each and every day at school. The learning occurs across all domains of the College; the spiritual, the sporting and co-curricular, the social and emotional, the leadership and of course the academic. Naturally, we might tend to focus more on the outcome of the learning experience, the end product so to speak. However, focusing on the result may elicit only a mild, and perhaps even just a fleeting, moment of joy. More importantly it is shining a light on the process to arrive at a point of learning. It is at this juncture where we should focus on our effort, our resilience, our grit and our creativity that has got us there. Whilst not to diminish effort, resilience and grit; they are crucial ingredients to learning, it is creativity that we desire all students to develop. In 2018, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched The Future of Education and Skills 2030 project. Amongst the findings of the project was the need to think more creatively.

Vale Sir Ken

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Sir Ken Robinson a week ago. In the field of education, he was a pioneer, who championed, long before it might have been in vogue, the importance of creativity in education. Remarkably his TED talk ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ in 2006, is the most viewed in TED history, having been watched over 60 million times. A comment he makes, which has stuck with me since first viewing his talk, is this, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. I encourage all families to dedicate 20 minutes to watching the full clip here.

Year 10 Art

We thank the Year 10 Art students for displaying their creativity in the form of portraiture inspired by Australian artist Abdul Abdullah. Their works clearly indicated the application of many hours of effort and skill. The pop-up art gallery was well received by staff and students alike during lunch and we thank Mrs Denise McMahon for her leadership of the Visual Arts Department in curating this initiative.

Water Rockets – Science

This week, it was wonderful to speak to many of the Year 8 students on the oval as they worked in small groups on their water rockets during Science. A range of variables were considered in the construction of the rockets and of course in the manner they were launched. The visible learning taking place and the creative manner in which it was done was tremendous to see and I thank Mr Joshua Cummins and Mrs Ashwita Venkatesh for allowing me to be a part of that experience.

Mr Ben Ryan, Director of Students