Upper Coomera State College (Gold Coast) is a P-12 campus with approximately 2700 students. Currently we have approximately 93 Indigenous students. There are 167 teachers, 76 auxiliary staff, including one Indigenous teacher aide.
The school has been open for 5 years and are currently undergoing a curriculum review in preparation for QCAR.
Upper Coomera State College Head of Junior School, Yolanda Tognini, has a passion for Indigenous education and social justice. She has been the driving force behind ensuring that Indigenous perspectives are embedded within our unit development. She has the unique ability to inspire others and motivate staff to ensure that the very best outcomes are achieved for all of our students.
Barb Tong and Donna Gosling are the Heads of Curriculum (Years 4-6 and Years 1-3 respectively). They have led the process of the Curriculum Review (moving from a 3 year cycle to a two year cycle) and ensuring that all units that are developed have an Indigenous perspective embedded. These ladies have ensured that assessment is foregrounded and the essential learnings are explicit throughout units. Barb Tong in previous years had been the accountable officer for Indigenous Education and worked with Sonja Bailey, Debbie Wood, Kate Mulhearn and Anita Harris to organise and run celebrations such as Reconciliation Ceremony, NAIDOC week celebrations with all students. This team worked closely with Debbie Wood, the school's Indigenous teacher aide, and Di Cuffe, one of the community elders to organise and run the events.
Megan Stewart is a year 3 teacher at the college who has been instrumental in planning both the "Australia" and the "Indigenous Australians" unit.
Anita Harris is a year 6 teacher at the college who has been dedicated in the development of the "British Colonisation" unit which explores the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the new settlers as well as the impact of this settlement on Indigenous people.
Andrew Beattie is our Indigenous Education Program Manager, and he has worked with Barb Tong and Donna Gosling in ensuring that Indigenous perspectives are incorporated into every unit across years 1-9. Nat Finneran is a Team leader in the Middle school who has led the process of the curriculum development for years 7-9, including embedding Indigenous perspectives and mapping the essential learnings.
Kim Alden is a HOD in the senior school who co-ordinates senior programs targeted at promoting student achievement, engagement and attendance across years 10-12. Kim also plays an active role in transitioning graduating students in viable career pathways.
Leonie Coghill is the Manager Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Relations within the Cultures and Histories Program at the Queensland Museum, Southbank. She is a teacher herself and has been instrumental in liaising with the College to ensure that Indigenous perspectives that are presented are accurate. She has also discussed further ideas with teachers that they may like to consider in their planning.
The process began in January 2007 when Yolanda Tognini was appointed as Head of Junior School at Upper Coomera State College. Within this time, the school had also been participating in the QCAR trial and had come to the realisation that the current three year cycle needed to be revised back to a two year cycle.
Within these early weeks, conversations arose between Yolanda, Camille Nielson (Principal Education Officer, Indigenous Education Curriculum Branch), Leonie Coghill and Barb Tong in regards to how we could ensure that within the review, Indigenous perspectives were embedded.
In Term 1 2007, contact was made with the Indigenous Learning Engagement Centre (Inala) to form a partnership with UCSC in providing up-to-date information about appropriate Indigenous resources to support the embedding of Indigenous perspectives in the curriculum. The Learning Engagement Centre staff and UCSC staff organised a display of Indigenous resources for staff to access and consider in supporting their units of work. There has also been an audit of Indigenous Resources in the Information Resources Centre and subsequent purchasing of resources.
On the 18th May 2007, Leonie Coghill and Barb Tong met to discuss Indigenous perspectives and how they should be developed within a school framework. She looked at a current unit on "The Great Barrier Reef" and made some suggestions about what activities students could do so as to learn about Indigenous perspectives within that unit.
From these discussions, it became evident that within our curriculum, we did not have any strong historical units to provide the foundation of knowledge from which the students would gain their understandings and perspectives from. It was decided that there was a need to provide a strand of historical units developing in complexity as the students progressed through the College.
Barb Tong participated in a workshop entitled "Assessment Immersion Program" and was also interested in foregrounding assessment in order to inform the teaching and learning programs.
"It has been amazing watching teachers within their planning of units have open discussions about what the Indigenous perspectives within each unit would be" said Barb Tong.
The 2007 School's Indigenous Education Committee (Andrew Beattie, Debbie Wood, Kate Mulhearn, Sonja Bailey, Anita Harris, and Yolanda Tognini) has reviewed its 2007 actions and planned further actions for 2008. Some of the future strategies include: a Community Partnership Day Breakfast for Term 4; inviting an Indigenous artist to work with students to develop a portable mural; and commencing a Senior and Middle school Indigenous student buddies program for the Junior school Indigenous students.
By the completion of 2008, each of our integrated units will have Indigenous perspectives embedded into them. This keeps these perspectives at the forefront of our minds when we are teaching. From here, we will continue to consult with Leonie Coghill, the Manager Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Relations within the Cultures and Histories Program at the Queensland Museum, Southbank and the Learning and Engagement Centre staff (Inala) to continually refine our units and resourcing. This has been an extremely worthwhile project and will continue into the future.
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© The State of Queensland (Department of Education, Training and Employment) 2008.