Future Ready – continuing our series profiling Year 12 2024
Transitions are part of life. We learn to manage them and, hopefully, embrace them for the opportunities they offer. Yesterday morning, School Officer Brock Prideaux delivered this message with passion and clarity in his address to the Quad Assembly. Brock spoke about his own transition to Trinity in Year 5, overcoming initial feelings of being overwhelmed by stepping into one opportunity, and then expanding his involvement to embrace all that Trinity offers. For Brock, that first step was into the Athletics program, and from there, he broadened his engagement and anchored his belonging.
The core business of a school is learning. Learning is relational: we learn from and with those who share our learning community. Therefore, if we feel we belong and know we are valued, we can learn effectively. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a global peak body for educational research and practice, anchoring its educational work in 7 Core Principles. The second of these principles is The Social Nature of Learning:
‘The learning environment is founded on the social nature of learning and actively encourages well-organised cooperative learning.’ (OECD The Nature of Learning, 2016)
Trinity clearly evidences opportunities for cooperative, relational learning in myriad ways. We require boys to involve themselves and learn within House, Sport and Co-curricular dimensions, partly because successful learning in these cooperative contexts transfers to successful learning in academic contexts, but more importantly because these experiences reflect the way we learn and contribute in life.
This week’s featured student from the class of 2024 is Toby Henry. He exemplifies Brock’s perspective and the OECD’s principle. An academically successful student, Toby achieved an ATAR greater than 99, but this is not what he reflects upon … rather, it is the breadth and richness of opportunity, experienced as formative moments, and valued for what they bring in the transition to life beyond school, that Toby chooses to speak about. You can read his profile here.
School is, in one sense, about getting ready for the future, and, as boys travel through each year of education, they find themselves closer and closer to their own transition into the post school world. ‘Future readiness’ is an important outcome of secondary education … but, listening to Brock and reading about Toby, I wonder if getting ourselves future ready is really as simple as embracing what is on offer today?
