Living school was founded in 2020 as a small not-for-profit non-government independent school by John Stewart, an experienced educator and school leader, who was born, raised and educated in Lismore. The focus for the Living School is to create a progressive model of schooling: one that is engaging, authentic, connected with the local community and based on the ideals of inclusivity, pluralism, humanism and sustainability.
We are a NESA registered and accredited K-12 school.
Living School is intentionally different where we start by asking a simple question: What is school for? Rather than preparing children for a job, we believe school should be to develop and improve community. This simple definition resonates through all we do – to make learning life-worthy. We want our children to be ‘in’ the community – rather than walled in sites, walled in buildings, walled in classrooms.
By launching the Diploma Program, Living School is aligning our vision to a global outlook for learning and teaching, with the progressive intentions that created the IB in 1968, namely:
Critical analysis, student agency, transdisciplinary, range of skills, based on constructivism, holistic, criterion-referenced, open plan learning environments, and an openness to multiple perspectives.
By becoming a candidate school – the first in the Northern Rivers of NSW, we want to look creatively at how we implement the Diploma Program to allow a Year 13 approach. This means students could enrol in the DP in Year 11 or in Year 12, opening up our teaching practices to be less ATAR focused and more micro-skilling with certification.
To unpack some of our Living School differences, let’s explore five key differences.
School terms are only six-weeks to lessen burn-out and tiredness. There are six terms in an academic year. Each term has a KeyStone Theme, which repeats annually:
Term 1: Identity
Term 2: Nature
Term 3: Life and Living
Term 4: Civilisation
Term 5: Phenomena
Term 6: Service
Students and teachers develop a KeyStone inquiry question to explore each topic in depth. And each year the inquiry questions becomes deeper, broader and more complex.
Woven into these themes are the United Nations International Observances, which brings poignancy to special days of the year, along with other key dates: Pi Day, Harmony Day, Literacy Week, Numeracy Week. The intentional use of these days in our teaching and learning aligns with our unique pedagogy.
At the heart of all learning lies the individual (student and teacher). The learner’s values, beliefs, experiences and skills is the catalyst for curiosity and wonder. We plan intentionally around four modes of intelligence:
Internal Self – our inner identity
External or Social Self – how we want others to ‘see’ us.
Rather than ‘frameworks’, Living School develops unique learning lenses – a way of looking at learning and teaching differently. We don’t wish to frame but rather allow for teachers to see things differently and then act to create stimulating and connected learning experiences.
We have an emphasis on Connections, Concepts and Context in the way we engineer learning:
1. Connections allow us to integrate subjects around the KeyStone theme – and allow us to teach in a multi-disciplinary process-oriented way. This is our Thinking to Engage loop.
2. Concepts are the knowledge theories on which we can develop an ‘academic’ understanding of English, Maths and Science. This is how we Conceive understanding.
3. Context is the purposeful and planned aha moment act, when things ‘make sense’ by placing the knowledge into an authentic situation. This loop is our emphasis on offering rich and rewarding, memorable experiences.
Our intentional programming is interrelated and built on our understanding of weaving key threads into our programmes, providing student agency, assessing widely and promoting a positive intentional emphasis on System 1 and System 2 thinking – which means we want students to persevere and put in effort for their personal best.
As well as wearing a learning lens to see things differently, our model of schooling encompasses the VAST universal qualities of success. This model embraces our key Values (an ethical stance), our Attitudes (the capacity for positive productive thinking), Skills (the key competencies). The deliberate use of a flower in bloom is to remind us there is no race in life-long learning – only the joy of seeing someone blossom.
There is consistent alignment between our VAST outline and the IB Learner Profiles.
There are three Learning Neighbourhoods with their own campuses and rites of passage between each neighbourhood.
K-4 Primary School – this focus is on Inquiry Based Learning with the emphasis on gaining competency in Literacy, Numeracy and Curiosity
5-8 Middle School – an emphasis on Project Based Learning. Our middle school becomes two streams, and pulls in Year 8 to be the leaders of the school (whereby they run their own learning festival)
Years 9-10 – expeditionary and challenge-based learning, where we take students on extended camps and expeditions.
Years 11-13 – developing personal pathways and bedded into the Southern Cross University campus:
1. Academe: International Baccalaureate Diploma Program for opening minds to breadth and a global community.
2. Horizon: Entrepreneurship (utilising the CAS and TOK core threads designed to build a business in three years, and micro-credentials as a portfolio of certified qualifications.
3. Vocation: school based apprentices and work experiences with the development of a career portfolio, culminating in a personal project, called CornerStone.
The Living School pedagogy is unique and weaves together the best practices from a global stage.
Opening a school in 2020 posed some unique challenges: the end-of-year 2019 bushfires; the 2020 COVID pandemic, the 2022 historic floods. In all of these challenges, we quickly adapted. When everyone went online learning, we opened a new program, called Onland Learning, whereby all our students every Friday are involved in outdoor education learning, based around learning experiences outside of the classroom. These experiences draw together the subject threads of HSIE, PDH, Science, Maths, English in a unique experience whereby the students are growing their own food, learning to surf, learning to fish, learning to model, learning to construct. In all that we do, we design experiences around Growing, Making, Performing, Exploring, Cooking.
There are many more unique elements that create our diverse educational ecosystem. At the heart of all great learning are relationships. Living School finds success in the unique differences of learners and people. It is only by trusting others we can be open to challenge and feel supported by care.
We live by the adage, an affective teacher is an effective teacher. And we heed Jerome Bruner’s articulation – a teacher is a learning experience not a transmission device.