What do we want the children we teach to be like as adults?

​This is the question we asked our whole school community in 2015, via facebook, the newsletter and through chats at the school gate.

We asked our staff, families and other community members how they wanted their child to be as adults.

The resulting feedback was a wonderful collection of statements and words that we might call dispositions, capabilities and assets. At that time we represented them through our Lansdowne dispositions flower

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Disposition Flower

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If you look closely you see words such as: responsible, kind, brave, loving, grateful, courageous, problem solvers, and inquisitive, curious, creative thinkers. 

These words have given us a shared language and understanding about the purpose of schooling at Lansdowne. What we are here for is to develop children with these capabilities and dispositions.

​We continue to ask this question – seeking feedback from our students – evident in the video taken in 2017, our newer families and at community forums such as the one held in March of this year. As well, we are continuing our own learning in wellbeing, emotional and mental health and the skills needed for living and working in the future. The feedback continues to shape our thinking and direction.

​The latest iteration of our work can be seen on our website and is titled Assets of a Lansdowne Learner (ALL), aligning our work to our much loved motto – Respect for one and all.

These assets are what we aspire for our students to develop at Lansdowne and to take further into their lives as adults. We use these assets as the backbone for our planning and consider the development of them as important as the development of literacy and numeracy skills and the content knowledge of learning disciplines.

​It influences the way we teach and has been the basis for our focus on developing a culture of inquiry (more on that in a future blog).
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Head over to our Assets of a Lansdowne Learner page and please join our conversation around this key question What do we want the children we teach to be like as adults?