Step-Up day

It was a joy to welcome new families to the Woodleigh community on Wednesday. Our new students bravely took part in Step-Up day and met their new friends and teachers. Our equally brave parents engaged in an information session, in which we utilised a tool from the Compassionate Systems Framework, Stocks and Flows, to help develop a shared vision of what may contribute to a learner thriving.  

Stocks and Flows is best understood with the metaphor of a bathtub; water accumulates in the bathtub when we turn on the tap, and water flows out from the bathtub via the drain. This is not a static system – depending on the inflow and outflow, there will be more or less water accumulating in the tub at any time. We asked the question – what if we considered the water, or stock, was a ‘thriving learner’. What conditions, opportunities, dispositions or experiences would contribute to a learner thriving? And what conditions would deplete a learner’s capacity to thrive?  

The contributions from our new parents were both illuminating and a beautiful demonstration of a shared understanding and collective aspiration. Something that stood out to me was the inherent system-ness to their responses – a deep recognition of the profound interconnectedness between inner conditions, relational elements, and broader environmental conditions.  

Parents named inner conditions, such as a sense of belonging, and pointed to the importance of relational elements such as friendships and supportive educators. Parents named good sleep, alongside the need for self-regulation and emotional literacy. These are undoubtably contributing factors to a child thriving, and they are mutually reinforcing. The interconnection between these elements demonstrates the central importance of a strong home-school partnership and the complexities of creating the conditions for thriving – something that we strive to do purposefully, each and every day, at Woodleigh.  

Parent reflections on what might deplete from a learner’s capacity to thrive were equally interesting – ideas such as fear, self-doubt, bullying and too much pressure – and again pointed to the importance of a holistic focus. Further, they indicated the importance of an understanding of systems – by working to increase the inflows, and restrict the outflows, we can purposefully develop our learners’ capacity to thrive, something we strive to do each and every day at Woodleigh.  

Please see the pictures attached which illustrate the thinking of our wonderful new families, and a word cloud which sums up their thinking.