parenting ideas

flexible learning environments offer real alternatives for young peoplewho are unable to succeed in the traditional classroom. learningis tailored to individual needs and interests in diverse and innovative ways. through aflexible learning enrolment young people are achieveing learningoutcomes and moving confidently into further education or employment. coming back to school when your previousexperience wasn't a happy one takes a huge amount of courage, and sticking itout takes a lot of resilience. you do need to have your youth workersin a program like this, you do need to have

your teachers who are teaching the subjects and have anunderstanding of sace. you need to have your people who work withina job network who can work withthe students, people with an outdoor recreation background who can do the community basedlearning program and and get the students out of their comfort zone and develop absolutely lifelong skills that the students need. the relationship between the teacher andthe learner in that kind of environment is is critical to whether or not that youngperson or older person is able to stay.

some of our students have never achievedanything like completing a subject oranything like that, so when that did happen there was that real senseachievement, it’s like ‘i can do this’ and that often starts a process thatwhen they actually do achieve something, then suddenly it’s like ‘i can do the nextthing’. we work with the families to try to support themand it may take a few years and it might be adjusting and just working on thewell-being side rather than the educational side and then

you know there may be that flicker of hope.what we want is to try to provide proactive support for the those young people to develop behaviours and attitudes that are much more conducive to operating in a school community, in the localcommunity, in the workplace, whereever they want to be.being able to work with principals from similar schools isvery, very important. we actually can’t solve these issues in our own schools. ourfunding models make it tricky, it's not something thati've necessarily

been able to do in my own school on my own, ido it because i have my colleagues supporting me. from a community point of view it has high credibility, partly becauseof the clear outcomes for students and partly because the project operates so effectively incommunity the many people come into contact withthe program and with the young people in a rangeof ways. the work that's happening, particularlyusing online learning tools, that co-constructed curriculumusing ipads and iphones to

capture learning as it's happening, asthey’re going is just fantastic. young people havereally spoken positively and often quite emotionallyabout the change that wave made to their lives and to their futures and

they often are saying well ‘that's how it was then because i was underall these things but through wave i was able to work through a number of those issuesand look at me now’.