Looking Ahead - An Update on Nathan's Role
As many of you may be aware, I was delighted to graduate with my Bachelor of Secondary Education & Bachelor of Fine Arts Drama last year, and had been offered and was ready to accept a position in a Logan-based secondary school for 2025. I therefore had anticipated wrapping up my work here by the end of 2024.
However, after four months of careful consideration and consultation with many people, I've made the decision to continue at Jamboree Heights OSHC for the foreseeable future. The community and culture at Jamboree Heights is unlike many I've experienced in both primary and secondary contexts, and I love the creativity and freedom I have in my role to try and make OSHC a better place for learners, staff, families and the community.
When I started working here in 2019, my wonderful Mother would often recall of how I, as a child, would cry when at OSHC, and how guilty she felt sending me there. Now, over a decade since then, I've made it my commitment to try make OSHC a welcoming, supported, enjoyable learning space.
And that will continue to be my mission for the foreseeable future.
Nathan Merry
Assistant Coordinator
If you're interested, I've also written a little bit about how we're improving our service experience and responding to your feedback.
Learner Experiences & Leisure
OSHC is about learning and growing through play - and with over 240 learners in some of our sessions, it can mean lack of activities or space to play can inhibit their experience to do this.
As such, we've started accessing additional school spaces, including the Library and Speech Therapy Room. These indoor spaces, combined with more consistently offering more outdoor spaces like Loose Parts, quiet zones and structured activity spaces, should allow for our learners to always feel like they have options for play.
We're also trying new programs, like wellbeing clubs and social clubs (e.g. Drama Club, Yoga / Stretches) to offer alternatives to the usual hustle and bustle of play.
A Note on FOOD! - One clear and repeating piece of feedback from our 2023 survey was food and that we didn't offer enough. As such, we have increased our food budget and now offer afternoon tea & seconds multiple times per afternoon, as well as having an allocated food stock for those who aren't sustained by afternoon tea alone.
Behaviour
Over the past couple months we have identified a shift in behaviour, and sadly, not all good. As someone with behaviour management experience in much tougher schooling contexts, I have very high expectations for our learners at Jamboree Heights, which I know they can all achieve.
Kim, Razia, Maja and I have been working closely with Inclusion Support and are actively researching ways we can promote positive behaviour and provide proactive approaches to behaviour management (as opposed to reactive - dealing with behaviour after an incident). We hope that by promoting a culture of positive behaviour and reducing boredom/disengagement, this will help reduce incidents and increase learner engagement, safety and wellbeing.
We know this won't solve all the issues, and incidents will still happen - but we hope to play a role in building self-regulation capabilities in learners and helping them achieve the expectations of a positive, actively contributing global citizen.
Community & Culture
As aforementioned, I believe that Jamboree Heights has one of the best community cultures - something that is consistently reflected in school data and our survey feedback, but also just from being a part of this community! As an OSHC, we want to continue actively contributing to our community.
We once again this year are excited to be operating the School Movie Night on Saturday June 1st. We would love to see you there for this event as we enjoy food, relaxing under the night sky watching a family friendly movie!
Finally, I want to extend an invitation to you, our families, to contribute to our program and service. If you have ideas, feedback or concerns, please contact us as we'd love to hear from you. If you have a business we can support or promote, or want to become involved - such as Maria, one of our wonderful gardeners, then please reach out.
Thanks for being an active, involved and supportive community and we can't wait for what lies ahead!
Comments