Andrew Watt- Principal

Innovation

Innovation remains a strong focus for Emanuel School and is integral to our Strategic Roadmap, which seeks to promote curiosity and adaptability. According to Nick Skillicorn, founder of Idea to Value, innovation is all about “executing an idea that addresses a specific challenge and achieves value for both the company and the customer.” In a school context, our students participate in experiences designed to take their ideas or inventions through a process, towards producing a product or service.

Our Primary School Innovation Leader, Sophie Poisel, and her team led a number of student events, including Destination Moon: more missions, more Science, during Science Week. Students attended Women in Space and RoboCup, and enjoyed a range of speakers, from NASA JPL, STEAM and Media.

Our annual Primary School Innovation Festival was held on Wednesday and the large number of parents, staff and students who attended enjoyed a Dramatic Action performance on “Emerging Technologies and Sustainable Futures,” followed by an impressive panel of award-winning STEAM Professionals who discussed the problems they solve within their work setting. The panel consisted of an archaeobiologist, a marine biologist working with drones, a chemical engineer and a social-roboticist.

A key part of the Festival was to celebrate the innovative thinking that our students engaged in this year, through a range of projects in our classrooms. Our students led their parents through a parent learning activity and parents viewed a range of projects they had been creating, including works in progress. Parents were very proud the project showcase!

Our Primary School students have also enjoyed working with new technologies in the Imaginarium, as part of the academic program and in our club program. These new technologies include: Hummingbird (Years 4 and 6 and MakerSpace); EV3 (Year 6); VEX Robotics (Pilot Program); VR using CoSpaces (Pilot Program); Creating Emanuel Expert Speaker posters using a drawing app (Pilot Program); Minecraft Club (Imaginarium Leader initiative) and: Laser cutting (Imaginarium Leader pilot). We owe a huge debt of thanks to Sophie Poisel for her significant contribution to promoting innovative practices across both our staff and students.

The focus within our High School has been on equipping and inspiring our teachers. We are currently involved in the Deep Learning project, which seeks to build the role of teachers “to that of architects of learning, designing experiences that build global competencies.” This project commenced last October, with the Deep Learning Network Capacity Building Forum. After a visit to the Imaginarium and Design Lab from St Philip’s Christian College and working with Michael Burden (Director of Innovation at St. Clare’s College), we have sought to extend our network of innovation-focused schools and leaders. This took the form of a school tour of two seminal independent schools on the Mornington Peninsula – Toorak College – working with Phil Carew (Head of E-Learning) and Peninsula Grammar – working with Dean Pearman (Director of Learning Technologies and Innovation).

Our High School and Primary Innovation leaders, Eytan Messiah and Sophie Poisel, conducted a Digi Tech Deep Dive Conference, with international speakers, for teachers from all education sectors. The High School innovation team has been working with teachers across HSIE and Mathematics, to formulate the Brand Development Project; a discrete unit of work that spans across the Year 9 Business Creators, Extension Maths and Year 10 Photographic & Digital Media courses. Students are given a brief to develop the branding of a business. They then collaborate with students across curriculums to develop their work from concept to final design and pitch back to their ‘client’. Eytan Messiah is currently working with Primary Director of Studies, Katie Brody, to develop and facilitate a workshop at the upcoming AISNSW Igniting Learning Lab 2019. We will join “world-class experts and passionate educators for a day focusing on how students ignite their own learning”.

HSC Music Showcase 

Family, friends and staff were treated to an outstanding series of performances from our talented Year 12 musicians: Isabella Flax, Joel Ehrlich, Chloe Ben-Mayor, Joshua New and Esther Reznikov. We enjoyed an impressive array of vocal, acoustic and electric guitar, violin, piano and flute items. The actual HSC performance was held the next morning. Thanks to Danny Burley for his support of our students and leadership of this special event.

Night of Science and Wonder

Our Year 10 students enjoyed the opportunity to showcase and explain their Independent Research Project on Monday evening. Across each of the four rooms, the audience of staff, parents and students encountered very engaged students and a range of interesting projects. We have some highly gifted, budding scientists! Thanks to our Science teachers for guiding our students so ably through the scientific enquiry process.

Project Heritage

This year’s Project Heritage program saw nine groups of Year 6 students spend time with different older members of our community. The program involves multiple interviews and opportunities for the students to question, engage with and learn from their ‘living historians’. The children then worked to create many individual and collaborative responses including biographies, poems and the final presentations. It was a pleasure to see the children share their learning in such respectful and engaging ways.

RUOK Day

On Thursday we marked RUOK Day with baskets of fresh fruit for staff, along with messages to encourage positive wellbeing and mental health. It is a day to encourage us to connect meaningfully and start a conversation with colleagues who may need a friendly ear. The last few weeks of term are always very busy and RUOK Day is a reminder of the positive effect of a heartfelt “Hello, are you OK?”.

Mazal tov

• Our HSC Music students: Isabella Flax, Joel Ehrlich, Chloe Ben-Mayor, Joshua New and Esther Reznikov were outstanding at our HSC Showcase.
• Jonah Trope (Year 9) has been selected to trial for the Under 15 Boys All-Schools cricket team for the Tour to Queensland.
• Ethan De Melo (Year 11) was included in the Australian Men’s train-on squad for the AFF Futsal Championships.
• Michael Khedoori was invited and competed in the AAPES (Australian Academy of Parkour Exercise & Self-Defence) in Singapore recently and placed 3^rd amongst 74 athletes from across the world in the ‘speed run’ challenge.
• Chelsea Rutstein won 1^st place and 3^rd place in the ladies division fishing against all of NSW at the Australian National Sportfishing Association (ANSA) NSW awards.
• Well done to our Primary School Chess Team on becoming the champions of the Metropolitan East Region. The team comprised Daniel Zipser, Joshua Barnett, Oscar Salek, Max Tsipris, Dylan Vitek and Gabriel Pozniak. They will now progress to play in the Inter-Region finals. We wish them all the best.

Daniel Zipser, Joshua Barnett, Max Tsipris, Gabriel Pozniak and Dylan Vitek. Absent: Oscar Salek.

Quote of the week

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”

B.B. King