1 March 2024
Education the RCC Way…
It is not new, our next generations, your children are striving to make sense of their world and their role in it. The difference however, in today’s world, is that our children are inheriting their sense of identity, purpose and hope not always from the places we did, like the family dinner table or slow conversations with Nanna on a Sunday afternoon. In their quest for understanding, our children are all too often entangled in media driven by notions of success, popularity (especially in terms of social media) and unrealistic aspirations for immediacy and perfection. Is it any wonder we continue to see dramatic rises in mental health and well-being issues such as anxiety, depression, and worse?
Many educational reforms, (including Australia’s most recent, Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Dec 2019) focus on developing successful lifelong learners who are, creative, confident, active and informed citizens. These are excellent aspirations for Australian education, but the critical question parents must ask me is, ‘What are you doing at RCC to build these foundations? And, will these foundations be like solid rock upon which our children can stand and measure their worth in the face of what life (insert social media, peers, future bosses) will ask of them?
At Richmond Christian College, we intend to equip our students with an enduring sense of identity, purpose and hope that will be foundational to their future. Our Christ-centred, biblically based, culturally relevant and academically rigorous approach to education is focused on equipping students with solid foundations of truth and wisdom born by relationship, experience and rigorous investigation that they can rely upon to confidently and positively contribute to their world.
We achieve this through:
Creating a Culture of Safety
RCC intentionally creates a culture of safety in our classrooms and school grounds. RCC teachers, students and parents find a sense of belonging in this safety that perpetuates courageous engagement in a ‘mistake making’ teaching & learning community.
We are very protective of our culture and will never grow at the cost of this. We have a rigorous behaviour management process based on respect and the opportunity for restoration and growth, which includes a very clear anti-bullying policy and seeks to establish graduates who are faithful, lifelong learners, positively contributing with a joyous heart. And our behaviour management system is explicit about positively encouraging these attributes.
We have a fantastic teaching staff who make it a priority to know our students and their world so we can support them. Our welfare team is always available to our students and parents to assist with wellbeing based on faithful resilience.
Creating a Culture of Teaching and Learning for Life
RCC intentionally creates a culture of teaching and learning that cultivates rigorous investigation and relevant application of subject content, ensuring our students authentically engage with their world around them.
Our desire is that as our students progress through school they establish foundations of knowledge and understanding through a broad range of experiences, being properly informed to make critical decisions about what and why they believe and how this impacts upon their actions.
Homework is a part of our practice to build habits that reinforce learning or prepare students for learning. Students are 80% more likely to retain information if they encounter it more than once!
However, engagement with the community through sports, arts and a job is also important to the holistic development of the child so we do not anticipate that homework stops our students from this engagement. Generally speaking, in 7 & 8 it can be 2 – 3 hours a week. In Year 9 & 10 this will double and then in Year 11 & 12 a student aiming for excellence will have habits of up to 12 hours per week. Naturally, where students cannot do this, a simple conversation or note to the teacher to explain is important.
Our use of assessment aims to encourage responsive and reflective learners to understand their strengths and weaknesses better and gain knowledge on how to improve, assessment is not about a performance for a final grade, it is about growth.
Establishing and Maintaining Positive Relationships
RCC intentionally establishes and maintains positive relationships. Our teachers provide an environment where students, and their parents, are valued, listened to and cared for. Every teacher affords every student the opportunity to mature and develop safely as they gain insight and understanding to navigate their world, make mistakes and truly learn.
Our critical conversations with you and our students that gives us insight into their worlds so we can understand and provide environments that cater for students and their families must not stop. When we know, we can act.
It is different to being a helicopter parent who never lets children out of their sight or a lawn mower parent who removes every obstacle, it is about good communication to enable the students to become responsible, and managing these transitions together is vital.
Providing Students with Variety
RCC intentionally provides students with a significant variety of subjects. Our students are able to experience the wonderful variety and complexity of life that their world has to offer and begin to find their place within it. In years 7 – 10 RCC’s subject range includes: Digital design, Art, Textiles and Wood Technology, Food Tech, Japanese/French, Commerce, Photography, PDHPE, IST, Marine Studies, PASS, Music and more. Our HSC course offers a similar variety of subjects, including: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Studies of Religion, Extension English and Math, Art, Music, PDHPE, Business Studies, Legal Studies, Community and Family Services and more. Furthermore, to ensure our subject offerings meet the needs of our students, the students themselves are always involved in determining the subjects we offer each year.
Additionally, in Stage 6 we partner with Southern Cross Distance Education to offer students every subject available for study and provide teacher supervision and support should they choose this model in Stage 6. We also offer opportunities for students to engages in traineeships or Early Entry University courses where this is appropriate.
A Compressed HSC Model
The Compressed HSC course is a distinctively different Year 11 and 12 model that provides students with the opportunity to engage powerfully with their subjects whilst safely navigating these final years. A compressed curriculum model enables students to immerse in their learning, receive more immediate and relevant feedback, and take more challenging subjects whilst reducing the heavy exam load and associated stress at the end of Year 12. Briefly, in this model students complete three subjects in their entirety in Year 11 and then sit the three HSC exams at the end of Year 11. They then repeat this model in Year 12. This also affords students the opportunity to engage in early entry university options or an apprenticeship in Year 12 without it impacting their face-to-face class time. To date this model has resulted in approximately 95% of RCC graduates successfully accessing their desired university or course after competing their HSC (and the infamous gap year!).
Extensive Learning Support
RCC’s extensive Learning Support program provides every student with opportunities to maximise their learning potential. Students of all abilities are assisted to access the curriculum and grow in their knowledge, wisdom and skills. Extension opportunities are provided through programs in academics, creative and performing arts, sport and culture. Individualised, additional support is provided to students with additional needs through Individual Education Programs that involve extra one-on-one teaching time and adjusted content, environments, processes and products where possible.
For individual students who demonstrate gifting and talent in the arts or sports we have individualized timetables of support that enable access to professional support outside of school.
Extra-Curricular Program
RCC has an extra-curricular program that assists students in gaining experiences that will contribute to their character and connection with the community. This program includes opportunities for leadership, mentoring, creative and performing arts, music, sport, and cultural engagement. For those who follow us on Facebook, will have seen this great variety of activities. Whilst we are a smaller school, we have many opportunities.
A famous parable of Jesus’, from Matthew 7, likens a person’s ability to incorporate truth and wisdom into their life to the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. One was washed away in the tides and storms of the world, whilst the other withstood the difficulties. Our children deserve an education that will provide them with foundations of identity, purpose and hope that cannot be washed away in the tides and trends of our world.
RCC staff are passionately devoted to partnering with parents and the broader community to provide a place where our children can safely build an identity, purpose and hope unashamedly based on God’s Truth; foundations that will launch them into their world as unique, powerful contributors to the flourishing for all.
This is education the RCC way.
Blessings,
Jonno
