Day 8: Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and Billanook College

Today I visited two Pauls: Paul Fitz-Gerald at Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School (IGSS) and Paul Fielding at Billanook College. A common thread between the two, aside from a mild geographical proximity, was the Space Camp they run in the summer. Students from both schools spend an entire week during their holiday break learning about aerodynamics and flight first hand. They go for a flight in a glider and also in a plane, launch model rockets, and design their own gliders. The camp looks fascinating- wish I could get all of my students together for a week in the summer to do something like this!

Before I forget, Paul Fielding showed me a really neat camera called a Key Cam that uses a micro SD card and is affordable enough to be attached to a rocket. The footage is remarkably good and the unit is affordable enough that it's not the end of the world if it doesn't survive the landing.

I observed a year 10 class at IGSS that was studying inertia. Well, actually a pair of them running simultaneously with different stations, and the students moved back and forth between the rooms depending on which experiment they were working on. The teachers (Paul and Dina) had planned this out ahead of time and it seemed to go really smoothly. The activities were engaging and were presented in the form of real-world scenarios- pushing a heavy shopping cart, collisions between cars, etc. 

Many teachers here, like as Dina, Giselle, and Paul Fielding, were actually engineers first before becoming teachers. The undergraduate degree doesn't matter too much- the teachers either got a one-year postgraduate diploma in teaching or a masters afterward. The diploma is being phased out and the only option for new teachers will be the masters route.

Billanook College feels like it's far removed from the city, but it just happens to have a large campus (with its own stream) and be situated next to a vineyard. It's an independent school, but it doesn't have an entrance exam, so it gets a wide economic cross-section of students. It has strong support services for students with learning disabilities and also for international students. One faculty member told me that while the campus is nice, their strength is in the programs they offer. The school has a day with five 65-minute periods on a 2 week rotation.

I observed a year 11 class that ran like a well-oiled machine. The students were running motion labs using inclined planes and trolleys (carts). They collected data via the Pasco Spark Systems. The only hiccup, which was really minor, was the transfer of the graphs to the students' Google Docs writeups. They have to take a picture with their device (iPads for years 7-9, BYOD after that (laptop and phone/tablet) and then insert it into google docs via drive. It worked fine and the students had an excellent handle on using the devices after having them for so long. Side note: Paul Fitz-Gerald's school had an interesting way to let the students know the expectations for how iPads were to be used during the lesson:

Too few students at my school use devices in this manner, so it's not really applicable, but I liked the idea.

There was 1 female student out of two classes that total roughly 22 students. Paul Fielding told me that the state average is 20% female for year 11's, and 10% for year 12 courses.

After school Paul took me to the top of Mount Dandenong, which was spectacular. We then had dinner with his wife, a linguist, and the school's career counselor. It was fascinating to hear their perspectives.