From the Principal
At Redlands one of our strategic priorities is to continue to attract, retain and develop quality staff. As a school we have a commitment to ensuring the professional growth and development of our staff which then leads to the provision of the best educational opportunities for our students.
One of the ways we achieve this is through our Innovative Teaching Fellowship. This annual fellowship is an opportunity for teaching staff to undertake high quality professional development and study within Australia or overseas.
On Monday afternoon, this year’s fellowship recipients, Director of Redlands House, Chemane Huon, and Redlands House teacher, Deb Thomas, shared a presentation to all teaching staff on their learnings from their recent study program in Italy and England.
In Italy, Chemane and Deb spent a week on a Reggio Emilia study tour which included the Reggio Emilia Conference and visits to Reggio Emilia Schools. Reggio Emilia is the core philosophy underpinning our approach to early education at Redlands House where children are encouraged to explore, question and interpret the world around them during these early years, which creates a solid foundation of experiences to help each child reach their full potential later in their schooling.
In addition, with our recent acceptance into the Round Square global network of schools, Chemane and Deb were able to visit Round Square schools in England to learn from some of their approaches to early education.
On Monday it was wonderful to not only have all staff learn more about our approaches to early education from Chemane and Deb, but to also see how our Redlands Learning Platform provides a continuum of educational approaches from our Reggio Emilia approach in our earliest years all the way through to our approach to HSC and IB studies in the final years of schooling.
Congratulations to Year 12 student and Wellbeing Captain, Anneka Steele, who this week was announced as one of five national winner of the 2024 Australian Economics Olympiad. As a national winner, Anneka will now compete in the Australasian Economics Competition (AAEO) facing competitors from the Asia Pacific region including New Zealand, Singapore, China, Taiwan and Malaysia. This is the second year in a row that Redlands has had a national winner of this prestigious competition with Taylor Riddell (Class of 2023) winning the award last year.
In speaking to Anneka earlier this week about this award she reflected that she attributed her achievement to the “just give it a go” mindset that she has learned at Redlands which allowed her to put herself forward for the competition in the first place. She reflected that during the actual competition, “taking a leap of faith and attempting to answer a challenging question turned out to be the most rewarding experience of the entire competition. It reminded me that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take and that success for women in male-dominated fields sometimes just requires the courage to answer one question.”
Inspiring words.
Mr Sean Corcoran
Photo Caption: Redlands House students engaged in learning.