From the Director of Teacher Development

Through our continuous work in ‘Building Community to Become a Better Learner’, one of the guiding principles for professional learning at Saint Ignatius College Geelong in 2024, has been to empower teachers to ‘stive, thrive and inspire’ not only the students we teach but one another through a strong culture of collaborative practices.

This culture has been nurtured through a wide range of Professional Development opportunities across the College and is evident in all contexts where teachers meet together, work together, and learn together every day.

Currently, all teaching staff are completing their annual ‘Professional Learning Cycle’ that will culminate in an exciting showcase of achievements at the end of the year. All individual or team learning goals are linked to our Learning Area priorities and will inform very real and tangible outcomes for professional practice across the board. In addition to this whole school process, a large number of teachers have become involved in regularly scheduled Focussed Workshop Time for small group collaboration. This regularly designated time for self-nominated teaching teams to develop new curriculum, moderate for assessment and undertake targeted professional learning together has significantly strengthened the foundations of our College wide commitment to move forward together as a collaborative learning community. Further testimony of this culture is visible in our teacher-led and initiated professional learning sessions held after school to address specific areas of staff interest and our collective ongoing commitment to the MACS Vision for Instruction. The MACS Vision is grounded in evidence from cognitive science research. A recent highlight of such offerings was a ‘Writing Masterclass’ led by Steph Gillies - Pedagogy Literacy Leader.

As the College steps into the next phase of our Connected Curriculum programs at Years 7 and 8 in 2025, we will be embarking upon a journey of Instructional Coaching and Leadership. A large group of College leaders from across our Pastoral and Learning Area teams have been undertaking training to be coaches since early Term 2 as they prepare to lead this ‘one to one’ classroom based instructional coaching, with teachers in Years 7 & 8, as well as other nominated areas of the school. Our aim here is to purposefully support individual teachers achieve their professional goals related to evidence-based high impact practices within our new and developing knowledge rich teaching and learning programs. Our teachers at Saint Ignatius College have much to be proud of and a great deal to look forward to indeed!

Jemma Morris | Director of Teacher Development