Dear Friends,

I trust you have found the opportunity to discuss your child’s progress helpful during Parent Teacher Interviews on Tuesday and Thursday evening. Whilst they are short they are aimed to be a snapshot of how your child is tracking socially, emotionally and academically at YSS. Learning is lifelong and innate. When we consider an infant and the internal desire and purpose to learn we can be sure, it is intrinsic to human survival and development throughout life. The phenomenon of learning. All learning is point in time. Your child may not be learning aspects of the curriculum at the same pace as their peers. Each student is on a continuum of learning for which their next step is the most important one. The parent teacher interviews are an ideal opportunity to discuss your child’s next step for learning.

The Learner Assets are embedded throughout our school and are taught and reinforced in every class. As educators, we know the words we use have a great deal of power. What we say and how we say it helps shape a child’s view of themselves as a learner and their understanding of learning itself. You may have heard your child and their teacher talking about these assets. As effective learners, we need to be THINKERS, SELF MANAGERS, COMMUNICATORS, RESEARCHERS, CONTRIBUTORS and COLLABORATORS. It can be useful to consider the learner assets as a tool kit we draw on to learn something. Different learning situations require different skills and dispositions but growing and sharpening these tools over time results in stronger learners. I encourage you to ask your child, What learner assets did you use when learning about…?  Maybe consider which learner assets you used when engaging in new learning recently.

It was being introduced to the work of South American educational philosopher Paulo Freire as a young adult that my purpose and passion for the field of education was ignited. I share with you a quote that to me sums up how the phenomenon of learning occurs;

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other.

Have a wonderful week,

Eunice