Our professional learning will take your knowledge, skills and practice to the next level, and our alumni agree.
What teachers and leaders value about our professional learning:
My participation in the program has strengthened my focus on learner dispositions and collaborative practice. I now plan and reflect with staff more, designing engaging, real-world learning tasks. Students are increasingly able to articulate what and how they are learning, and I use both reflections and data to track growth.
– Peter Barone, Leading Future Learning
This PD was outstanding. It really had an impact on my leadership and ability to use coaching strategies and give appropriate and effective feedback.
– Kylie Reed, Leadership Coaching
Orbis creates an environment that makes it easy to challenge my thinking as well as being able to create realistic plans for the future of my preschool.
– Anna Daly, Leading Future Learning
This was an important opportunity to learn how to better reach students and make change for learners - and an opportunity to inject joy back into teaching and learning - all packaged in a whirlwind of practical examples and colleague connection, which was so powerful!
– Seonie Robst, Restorative Practices
Transcript
Hayley, high school teacher, Loxton High School: For me to be looking at and improving my own teaching practice actually gives me a lot of enthusiasm and I think that that's really exciting.
Trent, primary school teacher, The Heights School: All of the sessions being quite hands-on it's given me a lot to take straight back into the classroom and work with the kids. I guess it's fortunate to sort of be able to work with colleagues from just different sites, you don't usually get that opportunity and when you do it might just be for the one day whereas knowing that you're working as part of a team and it's ongoing it's really beneficial.
Hayley: Every teacher has a lot to offer in these conversations so I think it's great that there are a group of teachers and already there's some wonderful conversation and some really interesting perspectives.
Trent: It felt quite personal as well because it wasn't a huge group of people it wasn't like you're sitting in a lecture theatre and just getting spoken to. It is really hands-on, there's a lot of group work and you get that opportunity to work with different people where even those off-the-cuff discussions around how they do things that their school.
Hayley: The facilitators and the leaders are genuinely interested in our answers and I think that they are watching and absorbing and taking everything on board.
Trent: You just thought about something or you've tried it in your class then you can easily contact any of the tutors and they'll get back to you. The difference with Orbis is that it's ongoing, there's a lot of things to take away from the course in particular the overall project.
Hayley: It's exciting to be on the ground level of a really innovative and effective literacy program.
Trent: Yeah that really has allowed me to then go okay well I value this, this is what I've learnt from the project and I can take that into my class, I can take that and bring that to other staff as well as I saw the changes in my students. I couldn't have anticipated it going any better.
Hayley: Orbis is designed to be that central place certainly for literacy and numeracy development but I'm sure that there's lots more potential as the as the programs are all out.
Trent: It's basically the subject that I wish I actually got in uni, I wish I had that hands-on experience, most definitely recommend it to other staff.
Transcript
Nigel Gill, Principal of The Heights School: By completing the program I'm going to be exposed to the up-to-date approaches and strategies around educational leadership and help target more deliberately the work of my leadership team, people's roles, the work of teachers and connecting teachers work to our overall site improvement plan.
Jennie-Marie Gorman, Principal Sheidow Park School: For me the opportunity to be part of the instructional leadership course was a great opportunity as a beginning principal because it's a chance to see if what I'm doing is what I need to be doing. I feel like it's making me think deeper and that's the thing that I knew I needed help with. So things like data I was okay with data but not great but I feel like now I've got some skills to be able to actually dig deeper and actually think about what I'm doing and how I'm using that.
Nigel Gill: Probably the greatest influence has been on the development of the improvement plan for 2020 in terms of identifying what key things are we going to go after. What key things are we going to be asking our teachers to get better at? This program has got me thinking sharper about how we measure the impact of student learning so we do a lot of things in schools but this program has really been challenging in terms of what's making the most difference and how do we know. But to be coming to these days over a period of six to nine months and constantly revisiting your improvement work at school and then having homework and challenge projects that we can connect to the improvement work has helped drive it.
Jennie-Marie Gorman: I always knew that the principal had a lot of influence in what was going on in school but now it's me and I'm the one that's doing that. It's made me have to be more strategic and especially knowing the direction that I wanted the school to go in so those sort of things have been brought home to me during the program.
Nigel Gill: Its greatest leverage will be through the leadership team's ability to deliver on our SIP, on our improvement outcomes. We were looking for something to get every teacher involved in because if we can all work together on something then we can make the most difference. This program provided the space and the thinking and the range of high yield strategies that can make a difference to kids learning and therefore we chose feedback.
Jennie-Marie Gorman: My key takeaway for the program is that I've got lots to learn and that it's okay to challenge myself. That actually being out of my comfort zone and learning new things and that you're, you're always a life-long learner so that's been really good for me.
Nigel Gill: The value for this Orbis program for me is that it has given me clarity around what I'm trying to do, confidence in what specific things to do, and renewed excitement.