Global Resonance  

Ms Kieryn Bateman | Director of Learning

In Year 7 Integrated Learning this week our students walked in Mary Ward’s footsteps, as they vicariously took their own journey across the Alps in order to empathise with and appreciate her mission. During one such lesson I had the privilege of showcasing our students’ learning to a group of Taiwanese delegates. The delegates are currently visiting Australian schools to explore innovative pedagogical design and teacher collaboration. As students calculated the distance that Mary Ward and her companions walked on their journey, one guest curiously asked the students what had possessed Mary Ward to walk such an incredible distance. The keen Year 7 student’s response was definite - “because she had a message to share with the world”. Whilst Mary Ward’s catalyst for traversing such harsh and treacherous landscape was a little more complex than this, our student’s response was heavy with poignance: it is clear that students and staff at Loreto Normanhurst have their own messages to share, and having eager international guests in our midst, learning alongside us, was the perfect embodiment of this. 

The visit from our Taiwanese colleagues enlivened a key commitment of our current Strategic Plan, to “serve as global citizens, learning from and sharing with others.” The group was comprised of 10 Taiwanese educators who ranged from school principals, directors of academics, tertiary research fellows and ministerial bureaucrats. They joined our Acting Dean of Learning, Signora Stefania Thomsett, our Head of Professional Growth and Practice, Mr Marco Scali, and our Head of PHDPE, Mrs Sandra Cunningham, to hear about our engagement with Deep Learning methodology. The significance of sharing teacher practice was demonstrated by our Loreto staff, as they spoke enthusiastically about our approaches to staff collaboration in learning design, our experience of Deep Learning in the classroom and our hopes for future Deep Learning initiatives. The response from delegates was one of excitement, curiosity and a clear yearning for global partnerships. This visit also modelled to our staff and students a key aspect of the Deep Learning approach, that of Learning Partnerships that are characterised by “relationships that shift voice, control, and interactions [and] have the potential to reframe learning by connecting learners to authentic opportunities locally, nationally, and globally”. We have taken a small step on this educational journey, and hope that we can now continue this partnership with our global educational community, demonstrating to our students that global interactions are an essential element of both learning and our Loreto mission.   

Our current step in our Deep Learning journey is to engage all teaching staff in this powerful professional learning via our new initiative, our teaching staff Open Learning Circles (OLCs). The OLCs are designed to provide teachers with the time and space to engage in professional dialogue and learning in a cross-curriculum approach. The focus of the OLC program for semester one is Deep Learning and creative pedagogy. Our goal is to enrich the practice of all Loreto teachers to enable them to design rich, competency-based learning experiences across every faculty. Later in the year we will then expand our reach further, drawing our parent body into this learning experience to enrich our community understanding of what it is to be an effective learner for the future. When we are all immersed in a shared approach, our community will come to appreciate what it is to uphold the Deep Learning imperative that we must “engage the world...to change the world.” [Fullan, 2023]  

Through initiatives such as Deep Learning and the visit from our international guests, it is apparent that Mary Ward’s footsteps still reverberate today – as our staff and students’ commitment to the Loreto mission rings out loudly and proudly with such examples of our ongoing global resonance.