School: Catholic College Wodonga [Victoria, Catholic System]
Educators: Sandie McKoy (Career Education & Development Leader), Tarree Edwards (Year 9 Education Leader)
Context: Year 7-12, mix of University/Trades/Direct Employment Pathways
“…it makes things really easy for teachers to be able to essentially pick up and use within the school”
Study Work Grow member Sandie McKoy discovered the Ponder Program when it came out in 2022 and thought it could be a good fit for her school.
With her colleague Tarree, they were looking for structured program content to be able to run during their Year 9 and 10 PLE sessions (Personal Learning time), as the sessions had gotten to be “loose” due to a lack of structure as Tarree put it, and the PLE teachers agreed it needed revamping.
The 19 teachers across the two year levels took up Ponder straight away, because the Teacher Resource Booklets for each module gives them all the lesson content, the sessions are only 10 mins, and the students get value from the videos and activities.
Key Takeaways:
- Tarree liked how the program was fully flexible – if something comes up, they weren’t behind, they could just skip a week or push the week forward. NAPLAN was a great example of this.
- Educators were happy to have content that is structured, but that they didn’t have to prepare themselves.
- Students enjoyed the lessons and were engaged in them.
- They’ve found that younger students are coming to chat with them about career pathways (and not leaving it until later years).
- Potentially looking to implement some of the Ponder content, structure, and lessons into their VCE Vocational Major for Year 11 and 12.
As you can see from the shortened video above, both Sandie and Tarree’s experience with Ponder has been very positive, as well as feedback from their educators.
