Flexible learning environments
offer real alternatives for young people who are unable to succeed
in the traditional classroom. Learning is tailored to individual needs and interests
in diverse and innovative ways. Through a flexible learning enrolment
young people are achieveing learning outcomes and moving confidently
into further education or employment.
Coming back to school when your previous experience wasn't a happy one
takes a huge amount of courage, and sticking it out takes a lot of resilience.
You do need to have your youth workers in a program like this, you do need to have
your teachers who
are teaching the subjects and have an understanding of SACE.
You need to have your people who work within a
job network who can work with the students, people with an outdoor recreation
background who can do the community based learning program and
and get the students out of their comfort zone and develop absolutely lifelong skills that
the students need.
The relationship between the teacher and the learner in that kind of environment is
is critical to whether or not that young person or older person is able to stay.
Some of our students have never achieved anything
like completing a subject or anything like that, so when that did
happen there was that real sense achievement, it’s like ‘I can do this’
and that often starts a process that when they actually do achieve something,
then suddenly it’s like ‘I can do the next thing’. We work
with the families to try to support them and it may take a few years and it might
be
adjusting and just working on the well-being side rather than the educational
side and then
you know there may be that flicker of hope. What we want is to try to provide
proactive support for the
those young people to develop behaviours and attitudes that are much more
conducive to operating
in a school community, in the local community,
in the workplace, whereever they want to be. Being able to work with
Principals from similar schools is very, very important. We actually can’t
solve these issues in our own schools. Our funding models
make it tricky, it's not something that I've necessarily
been able to do in my own school on my own, I do it because I have my colleagues
supporting me. From a community point of view
it has high credibility, partly because of the clear outcomes
for students and partly because
the project operates so effectively in community
the many people come into contact with the program
and with the young people in a range of ways.
The work that's happening, particularly using online learning tools,
that co-constructed curriculum using iPads and iPhones to
capture learning as it's happening, as they’re going is
just fantastic. Young people have really spoken
positively and often quite emotionally about the change that WAVE
made to their lives and to their futures and
they often are saying well
‘that's how it was then because I was under all these things but through WAVE I was
able to work through a number of those issues and
look at me now’.