Students Leading the Way at Newlands Primary School

By Nerida Jolley

At Newlands Primary School, in Melbourne's inner north, student voice isn’t just encouraged - it drives real change. For Inquiry Teacher Nerida Jolley, creating meaningful opportunities for students to partner with adults is key to improving student wellbeing and outcomes. 

SRC Selection as an Opportunity to Uplift Every Voice

It’s a familiar story: a school with so many positions for student leadership and with the best intentions to give students a real voice, but just not having the time allocated to make this a reality. From time to time at NPS, there were fantastic opportunities to include students in decision making, like inviting students into teachers’ planning meetings to give feedback and guide their planning, and presenting students’ films in the local cinema. The school valued student leadership but, like most schools, there wasn’t the necessary teacher time available to dedicate towards supporting the student leaders and SRC in a consistent manner. 

Fortunately, an opportunity arose for me to use the extra APT that I had in the timetable this year to support student leadership. I am also given less yard duties so that I can organise meetings at play times with the SRC and various Year 6 leaders to support them in their roles assisting various teachers (Art, Sport, etc).

The SRC have been also able to have a meaningful impact through VicSRC’s Teach the Teacher program and the extra time release that I’m given. I have found that VicSRC’s Teach the Teacher program has been a really powerful way to demonstrate to all staff that we have a new culture of more meaningful and consistent student empowerment. Staff were so impressed with the PL session that the SRC ran after school as part of the Teach the Teacher program, and are eager to support their ambitions.

Staff, students, and families alike have also been really supportive of the new way that I’ve trialled selecting members for the SRC – randomised selection after a screening process, to weed out any nominations that weren’t serious or that didn’t reach the standard that the Year 6 School Leaders set. The reason for this more randomised selection is to address the common issue of the SRC tending towards a popularity contest, and to give the students who might be quieter or not like public speaking (as part of the nomination process) a chance to be in the SRC; the student representative council should be representative of all students, not just the more confident, extroverted, or popular students.

As we, as a society, are seeing a rise in young people experiencing distress over the state of the planet and climate, we can’t afford to let students feel disenfranchised or disempowered. Giving all students meaningful opportunities to make decisions in partnership with adults and having adults support young people to create change in areas that matter to them is incredibly important and I feel so grateful to be in the position that I am at this school.

Community Inquiry Program as a Form of Student Empowerment

With rising numbers of classes, two new specialist programs were added for the 1/2s and 3/4s last year, one being Community Inquiry, a program to support students to build their inquiry-based skills through exploring the issues and opportunities in the school community and then creating meaningful change.

The 3/4s started their Community Inquiry program with a walk around the yard, marking the zones of regulation (green zone, blue zone etc) that they often feel in different parts of the school. We identified some commonalities, like the vegie garden was commonly cited as a green zone area and the toilets were often blue or red zone areas. Students were then asked to reflect on what they would do if they were the principal for a week through a short series of questions.

From here, we analysed the data and found that the four most common areas that students would take action on were: 1) litter; 2) the behaviour in, and state of, the toilets; 3) the lack of nature and nice spots for students to sit and chat for wellbeing; and 4) that students wanted more breaks from learning to run around and chat with friends. As we couldn’t do much to change that last point, we focused on the first three.

Two grade 3/4 classes focused on each issue. We inquired into why these were issues, how to support positive behaviour change, and brainstormed solutions. Students then spent the last half of term three and all of term four developing their own initiatives, usually in pairs or small groups.

To address the issues in the toilet (vandalism, graffiti, invading other people’s privacy), students created the following:

• A mural to make the space more welcoming and encourage better behaviour through positive messaging.

• Posters to go in snap frames that we bought for the backs of cubicle doors.

• Toilet sign out/sign in sheets for each class, so that it would be easier to track down the students who had vandalised or done graffiti in the toilets.

• Toilet Private Investigators – a group of students to investigate issues and find the perpetrators.

• A student noticeboard outside the toilets for student-made comics and posters that students could read while they’re waiting for their partners to finish their business (some students thought that students vandalised toilets when they were bored waiting).

• Presentations to give to each class to share the results of a survey they did and why we should all behave with more respect and care in the toilets.

• A short movie, written, performed, and directed by students on the issue of behaviour in the toilets

• Pamphlets and posters to be put up in each class with student-made rules and messages to encourage better behaviour.

• A book for the Preps with very creative, philosophical and amusing stories to provoke reflection and encourage better choices.

To address the litter issue, students organised:

• A Litter Picker initiative, whereby each double class was given a kit for collecting litter, and a map with their class’s designated area, and points awarded to the cleanest area each fortnight (their photo goes in a golden litter frame).

• Nude Food day each Tuesday, with a trophy presented to the winning class each week, and reusable containers donated by our local Woolworths to give to students who needed support to get reusable lunch containers.

• A litter policy (covering the two points above plus a new rule banning students from taking wrappers outside) which they successfully presented to School Council for adoption.

• A letter to our lunch order provider requesting that they stop sending the small plastic fish-shaped bottles of soy sauce (unable to be recycled and ending up as landfill or litter) with sushi orders, replacing these with donations of big refillable glass bottles for each double class to share.

• Presentations to deliver to each class to educate students on the reasons why littering is a problem for the environment and our local waterways.

To improve students’ wellbeing through nature and nice spots in the yard, students:

• Made some bamboo teepees for plants to climb up and students to sit inside

• Created garden designs for a wellbeing garden (which I used this year for a ½ project)

• Tidied up old garden beds in the quadrangle (painting the edging, weeding, putting in new plants).

• Created “nature connection” orienteering and scavenger hunt activities for students of all ages.

• Made a “calm garden” space for a lunch time club.

To tie all six of the grade 3/4 classes together, I organised for a local singer-songwriter and community choir leader to run a program with students to write a song that would inspire positive behaviour change. Representatives from each ¾ class took the ideas from the rest of their class to the lunch-time sessions and we came up with an awesome song! Other students then got involved in the recording stage, and when students performed it in the final assembly last year, I was teary with pride. This year we’re going to make a music video with yet more students who have developed percussion and choreography in the Performing Arts program.

Also this year, I am continuing to support some of the student initiatives that were developed last year such as the Litter Pickers and Nude Food, as well as making the most of the student noticeboard outside the toilets – students come up to me with posters and comics that they’ve made, asking me to put them up, and we keep a leaderboard there for the points won for Nude Food and Litter Pickers. Then there’s the 1/2 cohort and all that we did last year and are doing this year, which is also very meaningful and exciting! I’ll have to save that for another time – there is a lot happening here at NPS to empower students, and it’s shaping the school in their image!