St. Joseph’s is a place that is committed to building the necessary knowledge and competencies for students to thrive and succeed in learning and life.
We have a supportive and active community who fully involve themselves in our school life. Our staff are open and committed to do what ever it takes to ensure that each learner is stretched and experiences success in their learning.
Teachers explicitly teach learners strategies to get out of ‘I’m stuck’ situations. Being stuck is celebrated and harnessed as an opportunity to build each individual’s learning capacity. The focus on developing learners’ capacity to thrive in tricky situations – knowing what to do when they don’t know what to do – is valued highly. We have learner dispositions that are integrated into all learning. The Learning Dispositions are an important part of building learning capacity and these are being respectful, creative, curious, resilient, self managing and reflective.
The Learning Model is another essential learning strategy that is intentionally taught to enable learners to proactively advance their own learning, problem find and problem solve creatively and face their changing future with confidence. The Learning Model develops learners to make meaning and develop their ability to think.
We pride ourselves in making learning visible. Learning progressions are displayed in ‘learner friendly’ language to help our learners know “How am I going?” “Where am I going?” and “Where to next?” By making learning and progress visible we empower both our learners and their parents to have an understanding of the process of learning and valuing what our learners think. Our vision and learning philosophy has emerged from a wide range of theory and research.