At Southern Cross Catholic College, teachers believe their fundamental task is to evaluate the impact of their teaching on students’ learning and to maximise that impact continuously. To achieve this, we must know every learner.

In understanding our learners, having a meaningful relationship is critical. We need to ask where students are starting from, how they learn, what strengths they have, what obstacles they face and where they might be going. But understanding learning is also about understanding the person. What are a student’s interests and hobbies?What opinions do they have, what do they believe? Knowing these is critical to developing that relationship.

Once we know our students and how they learn, teachers can teach accordingly. We acknowledge that while there are some generally applicable characteristics of good teaching, students learn in a variety of ways. In a reimagined world of education, differentiated learning is the future.

In the past, education has taken a “one size fits all” approach to learning. No longer is this the case. Teachers need to be aware of what every student in their class is thinking and our teachers strive to do this every day.