Victoria – news – 30/07/07
Values education at Werribee Secondary College
Werribee Secondary College will be launching their school values in term three 2007 and the Core Values Professional Learning Team, consisting of five teachers from various key learning areas, are involved in a number of initiatives in preparation for this event. These include awareness raising throughout the learning community, development of laminated posters to be displayed in classrooms and working on the school logo that now features the school’s five core values:
- respect and honesty
- integrity
- cooperation
- perseverance
- responsibility
All staff, thirty student leaders and several classes gave feedback identifying each core value, developing the definitions and articulating the implications for self and behaviours/attitudes towards others.
According to Kelvin Botrell, Werribee Cluster Leader, ‘The team have done an amazing job in preparing for the whole launch and implementation to further develop the College's social culture, hoping it will lead to further improvement in academic results’.
The values are already being used on merit certificates especially for peer mentoring and leadership.
Sue Cowie, facilitator of the Team is enthused by the way in which the values are being incorporated into school practice.
‘The most exciting part of our work will be our brass plaques which will be proudly displayed throughout the school as a permanent fixture after our launch. VCAL students are working on a values mural and many visual art students are creating posters with comic characters; the original idea coming from our student leadership group camp, where for example Perseverance became Mr. Percy Verance!’
Sue was also successful in applying for a federal grant for drama performances with a focus on drug awareness. Year 9 students will be conducting performances at cluster primary schools advocating and promoting the core values and social competencies required to improve middle year students’ awareness of drugs and related harms. The original performance was devised in term one 2007, around each value and performed for their peers during lunchtimes.
The use of drama is an important strategy in implementing a values-based approach. The College also has an accelerated Year 8 Drama Project that is student-centred, specifically designed to study basic stagecraft and includes a unit on comedy. These activities will be filmed and also result in performance outcomes.
The Core Values Professional Learning Team is also working on units incorporating values within each learning area. Sue Cowie is working on Drama and English and others units have been developed for LOTE, Science and Music. Sue is also working with The Learning Federation on a national project that is creating digital units of work that will see values education incorporated in content and teaching and learning strategies.