What Goals are Important for Senior School?

Continuing our conversation from the last article, now that we know what requirements there are for achieving the WACE, what other goals are important for Senior School? To answer that question will depend on the conversations you have with your child. Some questions to consider are:

• What does the end of the year look like to you as parents and students, apart from achieving WACE? Do you want to finish with a sense of purpose? What does that look like?
• Do you want to finish this year happy and less stressed? What does that picture look like now? What does it look like at the end of the year?
• How do you define success and failure?
• What relationships would you like to have at the end?
• What roles do you have in your life that need to be nurtured?
• How do your plans and goals sit in the context of your relationship with God and His purpose in your life?

You would hope that, as you finish the journey, you would be more equipped to handle the challenges in TAFE, university, or even the workforce. Hopefully, these conversations will help that. John Hattie has written a book called Visible Learning. His research has shown that the top variable for influencing student achievement is student expectation. That is, knowing what the student expects of themselves, and then helping them exceed that expectation. The reason for this is that students, and all of us for that matter, tend to set “safe” expectations. As we partner with our students in their journey and have these conversations with them, we begin to get a glimpse of their expectations in Years 11 and 12 and hopefully work with teachers in engaging them to exceed these expectations. One more thing: a useful link to go to when planning for your child’s career is the Career Centre.