‘Growing our Learners’ was the theme of the annual Home Tutor Conference for Alice Springs School of the Air,held earlier this year. This week-long conference supports one of our strategic focus areas, partnerships, with our goal of building the capacity of our home tutors to meet their students’ learning needs. There were a variety of presentations across the week ranging from esafety, how the brain works, key scientific concepts and learning in the early years. One of the highlights of the week was the workshop with Above and Beyond, who presented sessions on the importance of music and movement to help in student learning, how to engage students and how to foster resilience in our learners. Our home tutors enjoyed the dynamic sessions with Tammy Anne, ‘the Mindbrain Lady’ and Todd, ‘the Mindful Man’ and particularly as the sessions were targeted to their needs as the ones who are physically with the students every day, enabling their learning. Putting the theory into action, our music teacher did daily uke sessions with the home tutors to build their confidence in helping their students who play this instrument, and also as a fun, team building activity to do as a group of people learning together.
Following the conference we hold fortnightly home tutor learning sessions on topics as requested and also have sessions where they can ask questions, learning from each other. Our school developed website also has a home tutor page that contains information and resources on a wide variety of topics that home tutors can access whenever needed to support their role as enablers of student learning.
As well as building the confidence of our home tutors to meet their student’s learning needs, our partnership with them also involves tapping into their expertise as part of our school improvement. In 2021 we are investigating new ways for our primary students to learn in maths and we are holding workshops with our home tutors to learn from them what they need to daily support students’ mathematical development.
We value the passion and commitment of our home tutors and partner with them to grow our learners.