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Teacher Takeaway

Season 4 | Episode 31 | Term 4 Tips

In Season 4 | Episode 31 | Aaron, Alice & Bec are back together for a Teacher Takeaway catch up and sharing their top tips for Term 4.

View the show notes here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://teachertakeawaypodcast.weebly.com/shownotes ⁠⁠

Broadcast on:
12 Oct 2024
Audio Format:
other
[Music] Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Teacher Takeaway podcast. If you don't recognize my voice, this is Beck. I've been away for a while and I'm excited to be back with my friends and colleagues. Alice Vigors, how are you? Good, Beck. It's so good to have you back on the potty. Yay! And also, Aaron Johnston. Hey Beck, it's like almost an OG episode. We're just missing James, but we haven't got together for a while. It's been ages. We are back, oh my god, this number. Season four, episode 31. That is insane. Aaron, what was that last statistic you just shared with our audience? It was 190,000. Is that what you shared? Yes. Oh my gosh. We just did 190,000 plays of episodes. Who's talking about that? Interesting. We said, we said, oh, if it helps one teacher, that would be great. So thank you so much for continuing to follow along and joining in with us and also sending through your suggestions and requests. We've had some amazing guests, but yes, it is so nice to get back with, you know, three quarters of the OG group tonight for a chat, and we are going to be talking about term four tips. But before we dive into it, we're just going to check in and see where we're at. So Alice, do you want to share with us how you've been going? I've been going well. I've been, the last 12 months have been big in my world. Been in a relieving principal role, which has been a really awesome challenge. Let let lots and grown lots as a leader, which has been really nice to work with by substantive school and and look at that growth for the teachers and for the students over the last 12 months. And outside of work, I'm currently writing another book, which is also really super, super exciting. Exciting. Yes. Yeah. Like looking forward to getting that out there. I suppose if we get into that headspace and think of what the last year has been, sitting in a senior leadership position through curriculum reform, through teacher shortages, through all sorts of crazy changes that we've seen across the system. I'm imagining you're quite tired, but also seeing lots of growth as well too. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Aaron, how have you been going? I've been good. Time flies when you're having fun, like Alice said. Let's be honest. Holidays have been great. That's been good. Ready for term four, but this the end of this term four, it'll be two years in my current role in my current school, leading curriculum reform and all those fun things. It's gone so fast, but gosh, it's been so good. I've loved it. This year I've also been doing my master's, so I am one lecture and one assignment away from finishing my second subject. So, I'm nearly, nearly, nearly there. I'm looking forward to the break for the end of the year, but yeah, I've been enjoying that journey of studying again. Not loving the assignments and referencing. Haven't really missed that since doing my degree, but it's been a really good learning experience and I've really enjoyed it, but yeah, everything's been going going good. That's good. I was at that different spot at the beginning of the year where I finished my master's at the beginning of me and I got to the point where I'm like, I'm so over-referencing. And of course, as you finish, you see all sorts of crazy AI chat GPT study tools and everything what's undone and I just got to disconnect and go, nope, I'm done. But I think the ability to be able to study and work and apply some of that learning or reflect on the learning that you're doing is quite beneficial. My, it's just over the two year mark as well too, since I came up to Queensland in the deputy role up here and our staff all celebrated today, our staff appreciation day, which links in with the day our school got its official name. So, like that key anniversary there of, you know, what that's like in a different state system and what that looks like with a different cohort of kids and a different community and lots of growth and learning. For me, I am not as refreshed as you guys because we came back two weeks ago. That's how I'm already tired. How does it get to week two when you're already tired? And we had a public holiday as well too, so it's only nine days of school and I'm already counting that we've got an 11-week term. So, I know there's a longer stretch ahead, 11-week term in term four. Sometimes you don't know if that's a blessing or if that's horrible. We've got all of our events planned for week 11, which is helpful in terms of making sure we can get as much solid learning in that 10-week time as necessary. But tonight we're going to talk about how we can set ourselves up for success for term four and see if we can help some of our amazing listeners that are contributing to that 190,000 listens there. So, I suppose let's dive into a couple of key things. So, we know across the term we've got lots of events, we've got assessments, we've got reports, and usually this is the time of year as well, too, where kids may start getting tired, they may start to show that growth that you've been waiting for all year long, and there could be, you know, some random changes that are throwing your way unexpectedly that it's always good to prepare for. So, let's dive into it. I think we might float around a little bit there. I think probably let's go with reports, since that's probably the first thing that's going to be on everyone's mind, is how do I plan ahead so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute to have to manage reports. So, Aaron, if you've got any sort of key, you know, go to tips when it comes to, you know, reports and assessments through term four. I always say start early, because we always think, oh, I'll do it. I'll do that later, I'll do that later, and then later never comes. So, I think it'll start early and start doing the things that you can do without needing assessment data. So, if you have, you know, I guess like profiles around attitudes or, you know, behavior dispositions and things like that, that's a great place to start. If you're doing general comments and things like that, we can write about how the kids engage. You don't necessarily need marks or work samples. That's a great place to start, because you can leave some of that, I guess, nitty-gritty, real need to look at assessments and data for a little bit further down the track, but knocking some of those things off early, I think is always a great place to get the ball rolling, because the hardest thing I reckon is starting, like actually starting is the tricky bit. So, starting with those things is, I think, a great way to do it, and then I always try to, you know, write, especially when it comes to comments, write my comments, read over them, edit them, happy with them, but leave them, because if we just keep coming back to them, we'll just keep changing them, we'll just keep changing them, we'll just keep changing them, it's like there's always something you could add or take away or change, so you've got to get to that point where you just go, I've done them, they're good, there's no errors or mistakes, I'm moving on, and unless there's glaring issues, I'll come back and change them later when I get some feedback, because otherwise it's just that never-ending cycle, you know, we could just keep doing this treadmill of, you know, going on the hamster wheel of changing comments and tweaking them until, you know, the 11th hour, so maybe some of my top tips, what about you, Alice and Beck? I reckon some of my top tips, once you've kind of done those general little bits, is once you start to get into that nitty gritty, I like to focus on a subject at a time, so that my headspace is in, say, if I'm doing English, that's where my headspace is, and I'm just looking at that English data, or I'm just looking at that maths data, so that I'm not kind of feeling all over the place in my head. Another top tip I would have is to reach out early to someone, a colleague, who can proofread those reports for you before they go to your supervisor, there's nothing worse as a supervisor when you're getting reports, and you can tell they haven't been read by someone else, and you've got to make a lot of changes, so that would be another top tip that I have, and also connect with your grade teacher to make sure that you're consistent with your judgments around the assessments and the grades that you're giving the students, and parent-friendly language. Always parent-friendly language, yeah, get rid of that jargon, definitely. I think I was on the same as you, I was going to say I'm the same as you, like, have a subject, and just stick with that, and then I was going to say, because I can sometimes get a bit overwhelmed, so I would like break it down into, like, seeing myself like daily goals, like, so if I know I've got 30 kids, like, I just need to write six a day, I find that as a way of making it feel more manageable for me, because you can just be like, I'll go write 30 comments, but if I go, no, okay, I just need to write six a day, and if I do six a day, I'll be finished by Friday, and then I've got time to, you know, to read over them, so that's another little tip there. Because we don't want to call the people overload ourselves. Nope. That's the chunk of damn, like we do with the kids. Yeah, and you still, you know, you just want to give yourself time as well, like, if we don't, that's, that's when we do get sick and we fall apart, because we're working until, you know, all hours of the morning, pumping out these reports. Yeah. Sorry, Beck, what were you going to say? No, or good. I just, two tips to go with, it's, I want that mark of, like, starting early, factor in the time that you will need if you have to set up something. So, for example, if you're using an online platform, so if you're using something like, you know, central or something like that, first of all, I never trust the online system, I always work in, you know, Word, save my own version, make sure I've got a backup copy somewhere. But if you need to set up like a table with all the kids names and comment boxes, or if you've got to set up a thing that has, you know, the title of my comments, all the kids names in a list, use the same order that's in central. If you need to go through and type that up, that's time consuming, like factor that into your time. So like Aaron, you said, I'm going to set myself a day, you know, each day I'm going to get six kids names, set yourself a day up to set up your templates as well too, because that's what will also chew into your time. You'll spend an hour setting it up and then you're like, well, I can't write a comment tonight now. No, don't. You won't be able to write a comment tonight if you spend all that cognitive overload setting your things up first. And like, if you've been doing this for a while, you've probably got a template ready to go. If you've done this, you know, semester one, you might already have a template ready to go, but you might have some new kids that you need to tweak in there. Maybe the formatting didn't work, maybe you need a character count. So allocate time for that too. I like the subject thing as well too, because sometimes when you're working on one kid, you just get in the mindset of the one kid. And sometimes that can create the blinders around, you know, maybe that kid is, you know, a scene English kind of on track doing okay. And this is how they operate, but maybe like maths is their place to shine. And if you've gone in with that headspace of, oh, it's a C average kid, maybe I'm not thinking in the right headspace when I go and jump to mathematics and look at that stuff. And I'm not looking at my assessment or my evidence, or, you know, their work samples. So I like the idea of staying in that same space, because then too, you're using the consistent language throughout your subject as well, because we all know parents compare, we all know they look at what you're doing, well, the ones that are reading it anyway. But I think it just helps you make, you know, better quality comments when you're going through that stuff. I say too, when you're looking at your comments, make sure that your comment matches the overall grade and effort that you've, that you've assigned to that job. Quite often, you know, there can be discrepancies there that can be picked up when you're reading the comment that's like, that doesn't match the grade that you've said or the effort that you've said. So make sure that you're double checking those as well. And for your effort too, don't write a comment that says something like, oh, always tries their best, but then it's like, you know, if it is three. That's three and a five. That's not always. Yeah. Yeah. So one of those things needs to change. It doesn't match up that way. Anything in relation to like assessments, for me, I really like the idea that, you know, as you do, whether it's formative or summative assessments across the term, if you're picking out some key vocab or, you know, those verbs where you can see those students demonstrating their learning and what they're doing, if you have got your comment back, sorry, your template set up, you can probably chuck in some of those things on the fly next to that kid's name is, you know, like demonstrating this or learning to. And then that way, when you go back for your, your report comments, you've got a few sort of, you know, sentence starters, so to speak, you know, based on all of that assessment throughout the terms. What about you guys? Do you guys do anything specific for assessment to lead up and help you with the reports? Oh, I was going to say similar exactly to what you were saying, either using the outcomes or if you've got like a behavior checklist for, say, different skills like maths or whatever. And as the terms going on, you can, you know, have your class list and make some of those notes because they can be great sentences that you can build into comments instead of going, oh, what am I going to write? If I've been sort of taking notes using those kind of checklists referring to the outcomes or the sort of key behaviors, even like the learning progressions, is a great document to look at and go, oh, I want to, you know, get some behaviors around addition, you know, printing off a couple of progression levels and put your class list and marking where kids are at, because that can be really helpful when it comes to writing those comments. You've got that data straight away. I'm going to add to that, make sure that you're using consistent assessments across your grade or your stage so that you can get that idea of where the students are truly at, as well as making sure that you've got enough data that you can try and emulate and make accurate, you know, judgments and observations about about just one assessment. Yeah, one assessment does not make, you know, a child and whether to make sure that you've got enough evidence to support the judgments that you're making. Yeah. And like you said, Alice too previously, like if you've got a chance to bring some of those assessments together as a group, whether it's with a colleague or with a group of colleagues and not out, where does this sit, where do we think so that we are, like you said, having a really clear, shared understanding of what is a C or what is a B or what is a D, so that it is consistent. Yeah. And looking at the language of the A to E scale to make sure that you really understand what that means and what that looks like when you're looking at student work samples. Yeah. And if, you know, you're not in a school where you've got a colleague on the same, you know, stage or grade as you, even, you know, looking at this, the teacher teaching, you know, the stage of grade above or below and having some of because they would have students either operating, you know, at the similar level to the students in your class and you can go, well, how are you thinking they fit in with your stage or grade outcomes so that then I can build on that and be consistent, not just in my class, but with where they're coming and where they're going to. The Cara samples are pretty good for sort of that base level line around that expectation because they give you sort of the students that are performing, you know, at expectation, below expectation, above expectation. So you can, and they give a variety of samples too of different things. So it's a, it's a good opportunity to go, you know, okay, maybe I don't have someone next to me or maybe I do have someone next to me but, you know, we're not sure how our cohort is going against like that, that national sort of expectation from our curriculum. The, the personal and social capabilities framework is really good if you're looking at those behavioral and, you know, that social emotional level two, if you're stuck on any of your comments for behaviors. So all amazing tips, I love it. So that's a lot of heavy stuff for our teachers. And that's also going to be a lot of heavy stuff for our kids in the classroom. Kids know when we're assessing them. They know when that time's coming up, some of them are very aware of the fact that report cards are coming. We don't know what the home life expectations are when it comes to report cards or how you're performing or how you're not performing. And also kids know kids get the vibe of where they sit in that scheme. If they're getting pulled out in a group of three for an extra reading group, you know, that can impact their confidence. It can impact their attention or motivation for what they're doing. So that means that we need to be setting our kids up for success in a really strong way each and every day when we come to school. So providing that, you know, comfortable learning environment where it's okay to fail. It's okay to make mistakes. We don't judge each other about, you know, we're not comparative. It's our personal best, which means we need to be really clear about setting up our routines, setting up our expectations, and just being on top of behavior at the end of a long year with our kids. So Alice, even though you're sitting in that senior leadership space, we never forget the things that work really well when we were sitting, you know, out in front of our kids in the classroom at the beginning of term four going, "Oh my God, there's a big term ahead. What tips have you got for coming back to term four and setting up those behavior, the expectations, the routines?" I think it's like the beginning of every term. You have to revisit the expectations that you have. You know, the kids have had two weeks off and who knows what that time looked like for them, whether there was any kind of routine or structure. You know, you just don't know what they're bringing to the table when they walk back through that gate. So making sure that you take the time to reestablish. Here's what we expect. You know, looking at here's how far we've come, you know, across the year. Now let's finish the year strong, reset those expectations. And even look at it, you know, here's what we're going to focus on to start with, you know, pick one or two of those expectations and really kind of, you know, double down and have those as you focus as you start. You know, if you ended the term, you know, the kids, you know, you might have got a bit lax on your routines or your expectations, you know, really focusing on those ones to bring it back in because term four, it can be a really hard slog. You know, the kids, the kids are done well and truly by the middle of the term. So really, really setting yourself up for success by, you know, reestablishing those and not loosening the reins as the term goes on. Yep. Absolutely. Do you do anything specific, Aaron? Definitely what Alison and I know we tend to really focus on it heavy at the start of you when we get our class for the first time and we spend a lot of time just reconnecting, you know, getting to know each other and checking in and, you know, sometimes we don't spend enough time just focusing on that relationship building again at the start of the term. But like Alice was saying, you just don't know what the holidays have been like. And they could have been really traumatic and so having that time to come back together and just reconnect and focus on building those solid classroom connections is really important rather than sort of skipping over and going, we're getting straight back into it. Go over behavior, but spend some time just reconnecting. One thing I always say is don't do the holiday recount because for some kids, it's it's not something they want to relive or they want to write about, you just don't know. There's lots of other things you can write about, but you know, skip skip that, let's write about the holidays because for some kids, they did nothing. They literally have nothing to write about. And you know, hearing about what other kids did is not a great experience for them. So I do those a couple of things as well as like we were talking about, you know, going back over expectations, but having honest conversations with your class around feedback, like what, what did you find worked really well last term? What didn't work last term? You know, and and it's not about opening up to be personally attacked, but it's just reflecting on how our previous term went and what do we want to do differently this term? Like having some of those conversations at the start of a term is really great. Kids have had some time to, you know, decompress and they may look back on the term and there was some things that maybe you didn't notice at the time that, you know, they, they want to, you know, tweak or change and it's about giving them voice and input into their, you know, classroom and making sure that they have a great ending to the school year because really when you think about it, this is probably the term that they're going to remember because there's so many things that happen in term four with the end of the year. So it's about making a count. And I think having those conversations and getting feedback and talking to them about, you know, what worked well? What is not working well? What could we change? How could we do things better as a class? Is it a great place to start as well? I think you do the anonymous worry thing. Like, you know, you've got the buckets, like, what are you actually worried about this term? Like we put on post a note, put it in the box kind of thing and do the readout. And then in that case, you can address it without necessarily identifying who it was that was worried about it. Yeah. Someone else may be worried about it as well too. Like, especially right now, you six, we've got some kids that are absolutely excited to get out of school and some kids that are just absolutely anxiety-ridden because they're like, I don't know what to expect in high school. I don't know what to do. So we get to you six and they're a bit big for their boots. They're also a bit stressed. They don't know what's going on. There's changes. And so yeah, address the elephant in the room is like, what is it you're actually worried about? You know, are you worried about, yeah, something that bad happened, something bad that happened last time happening again. Now you didn't like that study. It was too hard. The math's like all of that kind of stuff and just let the kids have that opportunity. And I like that when we're talking about revisiting those expectations, Alice, you're talking about like not just like reviewing it, you know, like, let's not be afraid to explicitly teach again, you know, we've gotten into routine. We've forgotten those really complex and detailed conversations we had in term one about what does this look like in our classroom? What does this look like in our school? How do I behave this way and do it? In our minds, we know we taught it. We know they've kind of done it and it's done, but you know, just revisit that stuff and make sure you're going through it as detailed as possible. Because otherwise, when that stuff starts rearing up again, you're going to be frustrated that it's back again. But these kids know better. Go back and teach it again. Go back. If it's, if it's they're doing it again, then it wasn't a master skill. That's right. Are we going to say, Alice? I was just going to say before, you know, it's a really good opportunity to reconnect with families as well. You know, after that that two-week break, you know, just to check in, see how they're going because, you know, for a lot of our families, they've had their kids for two weeks. So just, you know, reconnecting that relationship and, you know, sending homes and positive messages about how the kids have settled back into school, you know, particularly for some of your high fliers. It's nice. You know, those parents don't often get the positive messages home. You know, just fill those buckets early and keep that connection strong so that when you have to make that phone call for, you know, perhaps not a nice reason that you've got that really strong relationship there with that, that parent, that family. Yeah, my principal calls that are making a bank deposit, like make lots of bank deposits with your families because then you do have to make the challenging phone call, at least you're in it together, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Lots of great suggestions there. So let's get into, like, the part that always gets really exciting is the celebrating achievements partner. I know that looks different in different schools, whether it's a presentation day, maybe a year, six farewell graduation. I guess, you know, what are the things that are coming up for you guys that you're excited about and like, and how you celebrate that with your school community. So Aaron, like, how does that look for you in term four for your school? We, I guess you would say we do a lot of the standard things, you know, presentation days and, you know, end of year excursions and party days and things like that. We've got a couple of key ones coming up this time. So we have our end of year camp for stage three, which I'm going on in week two. So that'll be fun. So we're doing five days at sport and rec camp. So that'll be a massive week, five days, five days. It'll be great. I'm telling myself it's going to be great. We're going to have the best time. I'm going to make lots of memories podcast live from your excursion. We may have to do a very, very late recording. Once the kids are all in bed. So that's that one. And then we also do the following week, week three. I'm also going for an overnight to the zoo because that's another thing we do in term four, which I have never done before. And I'm so excited about it. Can't wait to go on. Yeah. So we're going to stay overnight at the zoo with our year four kids. That'll be fun. Yes, although it's got a different name now. It's called something else, but yeah, it will be fun. And then, yeah, just like said, the usual things. I know one thing I used to always do back in the good old days when I had a class with my own, I would always write a letter to each of my students at the end of the year to just congratulate them on, you know, a great year and making them like individualize and personal, like just like a short little half an a full page. But just a letter from me to them, just the things that I was proud of. And, you know, that's something that I know a lot of the kids and their parents thought was just a really nice thing to do. You know, it wasn't necessarily about academics, but it might have been about, you know, they've grown in confidence or they've made really great friends or you've noticed how hard they've tried. And, you know, little things like that go a long way. So, you know, that's something that I always would always do at the end of the year is, you know, right, those little notes, mainly when I had older, older, great, you know what I mean? Like I wouldn't do it if I had kindergarten or something like that. But something like that is always nice, you know, as well as just giving them, you know, like a little, a little memento from the year could be, you know, something simple, like, you know, our class photo in a frame or something like that, you know, getting cheap $2 frames or, you know, just one thing I always did when we had year six was give them like a little gift in the last few years. It was, you know, a little name with kind of like a dictionary definition and underneath it would have Beck and then it would have like a couple of key things of how I would describe Beck in a $2 frame from Kmart. Just little things like that. I think great things to celebrate the growth that we're seeing kids that's not test scores or, you know, grades, but those other things. And those letters, probably parents probably acknowledging and feeling that more than the report card, because that's so much more personalized and about the whole child than just the academics and how they're doing. And my daughter actually had one of those gifts with the little frame, but it was like a word cloud. So it had her name and then all these like descriptive things. And we know how long it takes to put that kind of stuff into for every single child in your class. So she treasured that like she had it for years until it broke. That stuff makes such a difference. I used to make my kids at the end of each year, we would sit in a circle with a bit of paper, a blank strip of paper, and I would read out and say to them, first thing you're going to write down is your favorite color. Okay, on the next part of your list is your favorite food, favorite movie, favorite song, like all that kind of stuff. So I had this snapshot of the kids, and then I would take that and I would make bookmarks just using word. I'd put their name on it, and I would make the bookmark their favorite color, and then I'd find pictures on Google of like their movie and everything like that. And I just laminate it and give it to them with a Christmas card and a candy cane. It was intended to be a bookmark, but I found kids afterwards would be tying it to their school bag, like a name label, and wearing it around on their school bag. And just this one thing I did one year and ended up becoming my tradition, I just loved doing it. Did you have any token gifts or things that you did for your kids at the end of the year, Oz? I'd always get them kind of, you know, our scholastic do that, like they have the book pack. Oh, yeah. So I'd always buy like a few of those throughout the year. So there's a variety of different books, and then kind of pick a book, which I thought would match the kid and the things that I've noticed them reading throughout the year and just write a little message inside the book and give that gift that to them at the end of the year was generally the my go to when I was on class way back when. As a school, one of the things that I really like that we do is we actually send gross postcards to the kids in the mail, snail mail, because the kids don't get snail mail anymore. So we send them. So it's a little, you know, each each term we pick an area of growth. So the last one, last postcard we sent was around spelling growth. So it's kind of just a celebration of, you know, you had this much growth in your spelling, you know, how awesome you've been going and proud of your efforts and all that kind of stuff. And it comes from me in my role as the principal, which is really exciting. It's nice to have that. Something that I can, you know, celebrate with the whole school that the kids love to get in the mail. And we do your traditional, you know, end of year awards, ceremonies and year six farewell celebrations as well. But we do this term. We've got a color run coming up. So it's a nice big whole community celebration. And we're actually inviting some of the small schools from around our area to come and join us. All this color runs, it's a nice end of year celebration that we've got. It's a couple of excursions happening, but the very last day of school, our year six, go on a fun day. They head out and go. I think they're going flip out and bowling. And they get to have a takeaway lunch of their choice and just enjoy the last day of school and celebrate their seven years of schooling before they head off to high school. Very cool. Now, our year six farewell looks a little different. We don't do the year six dinner. Like some schools do, we do a lunch. So they have their graduation ceremony in the morning. And then they can stay on site and they get changed into party clothes. And we have a lunch on the school grounds where we get the photo booth and we play games because we've got a massive esports room with all of the Nintendo switches set up with Mario Kart and stuff. So they go and play in there. We've got a game that we started last year and the kids want to play again, which is pin the tie on the principal. So it's a photo of our principal with his school tie that he likes to wear and they get to play that. And they didn't like the fact that the principal came along and would move the picture while they had the blindfold. And it's a good opportunity for the teachers to just be there with their kids because, you know, this day and age, not everyone can go at night time. Not everyone can afford it. It keeps it affordable for everyone. It means that everyone can attend because we're all at school on site. It means that we've got some good control over the kids being able to do a variety of activities. You know, kids sometimes get overstimulated in a different environment. It's a bit chaotic and very exciting. So at least that way if they need a break, we're in a space where we can control that and manage that and provide that for them. And we've got amazing local caterers that we use to just provide that too. But the best part at the graduation is our Preps, which is kindergarten up here. We have a double sided hat. So the kids all wear their hat on the black side, like black outward facing, but it's double sided and it's bright and lime green for the other side. And our Preps all wear the bright and lime green. It helps identify them on the playground, just so we know who our youngest, you know, more vulnerable students are, especially at the start of the year. And at our year six graduation, our year six buddies come up and their Preps kids all sing a song. And at the very end of the song, the year six kids help flip their hat from green to black as they graduate into year one. So we get to invite our Preps kindy parents in as well as our year six parents to come in and see that. And it's this beautiful end-to-end progression of seeing, you know, that first end of your very first year at, you know, formal schooling and the very end of your primary schooling. And it's just adorable. It's just so cute to watch. So that's a really fun tradition that we've started now at the school. The big thing that the kids are all looking forward to is our end-of-term rewards day, which last year we had the water slide. As our big, you know, big points, the group of kids that got the highest points get to go to that one. And our house group, the Windsor House points gets to go on to the water slide as well, too. Meanwhile though, I think the teachers went up and down it more than the kids did after the kids were all done. So that's a fun way to round off the year for us too. So do you get to do anything special as principal for all of those events? Do you get to like, you know, Rob Shoulders with PNC presidents and any special MPs that come and visit for that kind of stuff, Alice? Yeah, well, we have, PNC do quite active in our schools, so they'll run an end-of-year disco and things like that. But yeah, we have a few notable people who come to our, what we call our recognition assembly, so our end-of-year awards day. So I have to entertain them, which will be interesting, but no, not most of the people that all, like our special guests, that'll come in are ones that we see throughout the year anyway. So it'll be nice, but one of, just thinking when you mentioned your special tradition that you have at your school, we've got a really fun special tradition that we have at the end of the year, which our year six has really looked forward to. It's our year six verse teacher's weapon of choice game. Oh my god, weapon. So it sounds brutal, but it's so much fun. So it's kind of like you said, you set your game up on the oval in like, it's like the table set up, but you can choose, you don't have to choose the table as your weapon of choice, and I put inverted commas with my fingers. So you might choose to kick a soccer ball or throw a tennis ball or a frisbee or a, you know, one of those foam javelin things, like you can choose whatever item of sporting equipment you would like. And then kind of, you're rolling it off that spot, are you? Hurl it off that spot, out into the table, you know, set up, and then you've got to kind of like, table, you've got to run your bases and you've got to get, get home. So you have all of our year sixes lined up and you kind of move through, move through them and we have all the teachers lined up. And the last, probably the last, I reckon we're on a five year streak, teachers have won the last five years. But every year that the kids just, they go hard and they try and guess, but it's a really nice end of year celebration. It's a nice competitive, competitive camaraderie happening. I'm just picturing all of these random sports equipment that's flung out on the field. It's the same rule where they have to like, get it back to home base or they have to tag them with it or something to get them out. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's so much fun. Oh, the risk assessment on that one. What could possibly go wrong? Just done a blunder. The year that the students finally win is the year that it will just become gospel in the town. They finally got to beat them in the way the year is not the year. Not on your watch anyway. Oh my gosh. I think that's an awesome note to wrap it up on tonight. I think that's hilarious. I'm going to have to go back and tell my principal about how New South Wales gets to play weapon of choice. Oh my gosh. It's been so lovely sitting with you guys again to chat and hopefully help our fellow colleagues as they step into term four. Anyone in New South Wales who's headed back to work for term four, we'd like to wish you all the best. Please send us through any other topic suggestions that you've got over the term for us to consider or any other special guests. Alice, so lovely seeing you tonight. Yes, you too back. And so good to see you Aaron. You too. Just like the good old days. Yeah, and we miss you James. What are you doing? He's off enjoying his holidays. I think this is his honeymoon. It is official. Yes. Hopefully he'll be back soon. Excellent. Hopefully we'll all be able to be back together and align up. I just need to make sure my daylight savings doesn't make me forget the wrong times. We're going to wrap up that episode there and we will see you in the next one. Thanks everyone. (gentle music) (upbeat music)