Our Learning Community

At Mt St John’s, all staff are part of our learning community. We are active, lifelong learners who welcome the opportunity to learn from each other. We come together to celebrate our successes and look for opportunities to improve the way we work with students.

We believe that it is the responsibility of all staff in schools to focus on school improvement. Australian research consistently shows that improving schools build stronger team-based environments. At Mt St John’s we work hard to collaborate together to achieve better outcomes for students.

We have a School Improvement Team (SIT). This team was formed through staff nominations. The members are responsible for overseeing our school improvement initiatives. They lead our two Action Teams. Currently our Action Teams are working on improving Staff and Student Engagement and Communication. All staff have a role to play on one of our teams.

Each week, our teachers come together to form a Professional Learning Team (PLT). At the PLT we look specifically at student learning outcomes. We use the following critical questions to guide this team:

• What do students need to know?
• How do we know that students know it?
• What do we do if students know it?
• What do we do if students don’t?

We believe all students can learn. Our staff support students to access the curriculum. We have small class groups, teacher aides and specialist teachers in English and Mathematics to support student learning. Students are provided with enrichment and extension tasks so that they are challenged to take their learning further. One of our school rules is ‘Effort’. This rule encourages students to put effort into their studies, their presentation of work, their cooperation with others and the way they conduct themselves in the classroom.

Parents as learners

Parents play a crucial role in the education of children at Mt St John’s. We encourage parents to be involved in initiatives within our school. This is important as higher levels of parent engagement have been linked to student outcomes, including improved attendance, academic engagement, attitude, behaviour, wellbeing and positive homework habits.

We gather information from our parents regarding how we are performing as a school. We use Insight SRC to survey all parents annually. Involving parents in providing feedback to the school may highlight gaps in our effectiveness.

We encourage parents to be involved in as many things within Mt St John’s as possible. In the past we have conducted the following events:

• Extending Mathematical Understanding Student and Parent Activity Sessions
• Parents and Friends Association
• Family First Aid
• Parent Assembly Conferences
• Kindergarten Orientation Sessions
• Parent Information Evenings
• Welcome BBQs
• Family Parish Masses (Sundays at 10am once a term)
• Carols evening