Transcript for Preparing for the Data Collection
[Piano playing music in background through duration of video]
Preparing for the Data Collection
[Bronwyn Hamilton]
To prepare for the Data Collection in our school I must admit initially I thought "Oh my goodness this is big this is going to take us a lot of time, it's yet another thing we're being asked to do on top of our already busy schedules" but once we then broke it down into manageable segments we realised that it actually was very manageable and there were benefits to us so let’s get into it and make it happen. So the first thing we did to prepare was have all of our teachers complete the DSE online learning modules so that they were better informed about what the definition of a disability is and what kind of adjustments are required. We then asked our classroom teachers in the Primary and our Year Level Coordinators in the Secondary part of the school to identify the students that they believed fit the definitions of students with a disability who required the kind of adjustments according to the definitions we were working with. We also had a core group of teachers who were two Assistant Principals, the Primary Assistant Principal, the Secondary Assistant Principal, our Student Wellbeing Coordinator and our Inclusion Support Coordinator who completed the training that the department provided, read all the materials that the department provided, so they became the experts. We then organised a meeting, just one day in fact it was half a day I think where each of the classroom teachers and the year level coordinators just came and met and discussed with the core team the students that they believed met the definitions and then we would come to a conclusion together but with the core team who had the most training, our experts making the final decision as to who would be included.
Informing the school community about the Data Collection
[Bronwyn Hamilton]
It was important that the whole school community was aware that we were undertaking the Data Collection. The way that we did that was to put an article in the school newsletter, to say this is happening, what it's about, what it was for, and that any families that we would be involving their students in the collection would be contacted directly. That was the first step, that was the general step. Then there was the process of once the students were identified that there were letters sent home to those families or phone calls or both, made to those families whose students would be involved in the collection, and it was very important that they were not worried about their students being labelled and the school wasn't worried about that occurring, that it's kind of a matter of fact kind of event that is happening in the school and that's the way we approached it.