Flexibility Resilience and Gratitude

I think we would have to agree that 2020 has been a year that everyone will remember. Whether it’s been working from home, cancelling family holidays, job changes or periods of isolation, we have all been affected in some way.

It’s been the same for our students at Calvin Christian School. They have gone through distance learning, changes to classroom set ups, periods of no assembly and cancelled trips and excursions. As a whole, I have been very impressed with our students’ ability to ‘roll with the punches’ and show flexibility and resilience in a wide range of contexts. For example, telling our Year 5/6 students they weren’t able to go to Canberra was met with acceptance of the situation, and a willingness to look forward to new opportunities. They have really channelled 1 Thessalonians 5:18 which states "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

During this time, students have also shown a gratefulness of what we still do have. Living in Tasmania, we look to other states in Australia and other countries around the world and see that we are blessed to even be able to come to school. This term we have been able to begin activities and excursions again including a trip to the Kingston Beach Golf Club for golf sessions with the Year 3 to 6 classes, a Year 3 excursion to Channel looking at the history of schools within the Christian Schools Tasmania family, and a fishing and museum day for Year 3/4 classes. In all of these opportunities I have seen a spirit of gratefulness and appreciation from our students.

We have many exciting trips and activities lined up for Term 4. These include our athletic carnivals, music and sports assemblies along with our annual whole school end-of-year swimming and picnic events. Our Year 3 to 6 students will be going on a range of day trips instead of camps this year, with more details to be coming soon. We are also able to start Term 4 with our Prep to Year 6 swimming program.

During this time of change and challenge, it’s important that we celebrate what we are still able to do and appreciate the knowledge that we have a God who is in control of our future. Psalm 118:24 reminds us, "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Primary Staffing Announcements

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that two teachers will be moving to roles at new schools in 2021. 

Mrs Kim Denholm: Mrs Denholm has been affiliated with Calvin since 2003 when she began as a teacher assistant. She moved into a range of classroom teaching roles in the lower primary and has most recently been working with our K to 2 students in learning support. Mrs Denholm will be moving to Channel Christian School in 2021, working in learning support. 

Mrs Jo Dixon: Arriving in 2008, Mrs Dixon also began as a teacher assistant at Calvin. She moved into a teaching role in 2009 and has taught a range of grades from Prep to Year 4, most recently teaching and caring for our students in Year 3 & 4. Mrs Dixon will be moving to Victoria to teach at Heathdale Christian College in 2021. 

The knowledge, care and expertise of both Kim and Jo will be missed at Calvin Christian School. We will take opportunities to honour both of these amazing teachers at the end of the school year. 

Andrew Nash — Head of Primary

If 2020 was a song, what would it be?

I came across this question in a social media post the other day.

Some of the popular answers included It’s the end of the world as we know it by REM and Am I ever gonna see your face again? by The Angels. For me, as a devoted Powderfinger fan, These Days certainly fits the bill. In the chorus of this song, Bernard Fanning sings,

Control, well it’s slipping right through my hand
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

Certainly 2020 has turned out nothing like anyone had anticipated.

For me, I love planning something almost as much as I love the event itself. Planning a holiday in our household means pouring over Trip Advisor, AirBnB, and other travel websites in anticipation of what is to come. As a teacher, there is such comfort in planning: ticking off a list of tasks, planning a learning sequence. Planning can give us a sense of security and well-being.

Where is God when the days turn out nothing like I had planned?

As I read the Bible, I am constantly drawn back to a few big ideas. God is kind and compassionate. God is to be trusted. God knows our hearts and He knows our circumstances. Psalm 62 urges:

Trust in him at all times, you people
Pour out your hearts to him
For God is our refuge.

And while we may search for answers, for solutions, for predictability and planning and routine, the reminder that God is to be trusted and that He is our refuge brings peace to my heart. Rather than resting in the sense of control I might feel when my plans come to fruition or the satisfaction in completing a long list of tasks, I am trying to daily rest in the knowledge that our kind and good and compassionate God is to be trusted. Even when the days turn out nothing like we had planned, God is still on the throne (Psalm 11: 4). He rules as King and He reigns with strength.

My prayer for each of us—for our Calvin community and our wonderful students—is that we will all be strengthened by the peace of knowing and trusting in God, now and always.

Stelle Carmichael – Head of Students

Learning how we learn

My senior students are currently undertaking a self-directed investigation project as part of their externally assessed folio for Psychology.

They have designed and carried out their own experiments based on the topic of ‘Human Learning’ and are in the process of analysing the data and explaining the patterns that have emerged. Most patterns are consistent with their expected hypotheses—rewards do indeed impact the rate of learning, role models can improve the quality of learning, inability to succeed in learning can lead to the ‘giving up’ that we know as Learned Helplessness, and differing levels of motivation account for much of the variation in the rate and success of learning.

Getting to this point required the students to have a good understanding of how humans learn. Defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of experience, learning is often explained through conditioning. Advanced by B. F. Skinner, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University in the mid-twentieth century, Operant Conditioning theory explains learning through the associations made between a particular behaviour and a consequence. If we are positively reinforced through praise or reward, we will most likely repeat the behaviour that led to the reinforcement. To avoid a negative consequence, we will also repeat a reinforced behaviour. Anyone who has trained a dog to do a trick will be very familiar with the processes involved in Skinner’s theory.

“As a Christian, I don’t accept that we are determined solely by our environment.”

It was clear that Operant Conditioning could explain much of our learned behaviour, but Skinner took it one step further and argued that he had discovered the root cause of all human behaviour. He contested that humans do not have free will at all; rather, all of our actions result from the environmental circumstances and personal history that have provided the context for behaviour being rewarded or punished. In Skinner’s understanding, a person who commits a crime does so because of their circumstances—such as growing up in a family where crime is rewarded—and this makes breaking the law inevitable and natural. In this understanding of behaviour, free will and motivation are dismissed as illusions, as all behaviour is under stimulus control.

While Skinner and others have highlighted the role of environmental factors in influencing human behaviour, other psychologists since Skinner have added new theories and perspectives. We now understand the impact of observation of models in learning. We continue to learn about the role of cognitive factors—those sudden insights and the impact of prior learning that Skinner did not directly account for in his theory.

“Christians may be prompted to act in compassion or extend forgiveness...”

As a Christian, I don’t accept that we are determined solely by our environment. Rather than being animals responding only to environmental cues, I believe that humans are created in the image of God. It is difficult to conceive of all that this entails, but being in God’s likeness allows for the unpredictable and the miraculous in a way that Skinner could not accept. In Romans 1:20–25 we see that humans have been given the freedom to accept or reject the offer of salvation through Jesus. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, Christians may be prompted to act in compassion or extend forgiveness in ways not clearly explained by prior environmental conditions or experiences.

But back to the Psychology classroom where this article began. I feel blessed to be able to witness the process of learning being undertaken by each student as their Investigation Projects progress. They have demonstrated creativity in conceptualising an experiment to test a theory. They have shown academic rigour in covering all of the required ethical bases. And they have delved into the depths of their understanding to conceive of the reasons their human participants responded as they did, drawing on the research of others in the process. Skinner may have explained this through past experience in the ‘machine’ of society, but I feel that there is something more miraculous at play as the students tap into the creativity, analysis and forward-planning characteristic of humans as God’s ‘image-bearers’. 

Bonny Moroni – Head of Secondary