Circular Head Christian School - Principal's message

Circular Head Christian School Principal’s Message Ara Popowski – Principal, Circular Head Christian School: One of the keys for me is being a present principal, so I’m out there in the classrooms, talking to the teachers and getting around students, talking about their learning. Being able to transfer what I’m learning straight to our leadership team and straight to the teacher on the ground is really important to me. Jono Arnold – Deputy principal, Circular Head Christian School: It's extremely challenging being in a remote school and a remote area to try and, first of all, attract staff and then to retain them. However, when they get used to our broader community, and then really engage in the school they really love it. They actually find it’s a place they can really make a difference, which is great. Ara Popowski – Principal, Circular Head Christian School: We wanted to ensure that students had a pathway focused learning, and as part of that we made it compulsory for all of our year 10s to study a VET course. Year 10 is the start of your final years of formal schooling and not your last year of school, which has been really common practice in our area. So when we looked at our staff we were able to identify quite a few areas where staff were trained in hospitality, early childhood education and care and they had to all study their workplace training assessment certificate 4 to be able to deliver those VET certificates. So, what we've been able to establish is a really great team of vocational education and training teachers and we have up to seven courses that we can offer here at the school. We really, strongly believed it was the right move and we're still, you know, we're in year three now and believe that we're doing the right thing for our year 9 students. Some really valuable advice that I've been given is to be a good listener and just not underestimating how important that is to hear people. Whether it’s a great thing, or a concern, just making sure that I've actually been able to reiterate back to them what they're telling me. I would say I'm a fairly relational leader and so, I really like being in a classroom, talking to the teachers, catching up with them, meeting with them after school and just hearing about how they're going, you know, what their challenges are, you know, where we can support them. And if I'm not doing that, their heads of school are certainly doing that so, maintaining that culture of a strong relationship across our staff is really important.