During the first week of what was the school holiday period for our students, the staff at Living Faith participated in a range of highly engaging professional activities. The staff at Living Faith refer to our professional development week as ‘Bootcamp’. Bootcamp is a very important and highly valued time in the school where much planning and resources are dedicated to ensuring our staff are given many opportunities for rich learning to take place.

Please see an overview of some of the guest speakers who delivered professional development to our staff at our recent Bootcamp:

Nathan Wallis - ‘Conscious Intelligence’

Nathan’s presentation explored how the brain works and how neuroscience can better inform our day-to-day interactions with children and young people. Information about the human brain (and how it grows to reach full potential) has exploded into our awareness over the past 20 years. The 1990’s were called the ‘decade of the brain’ and advances in scanning technologies allowed us to understand the workings of the brain like never before, showing us the huge significance of the early years and the critical role this period played in defining later outcomes. These new findings can contradict many of the practices that parents, teachers, and other helping professionals have utilised in the belief that they are helping children. Nathan presented the practical implications of this research with a focus on how to use this knowledge to create better outcomes in the classroom. 

Session 1: Understanding Your Brain Overview – First 1000 Days

In contrast to what your parents believed, your outcomes are not predetermined just by your genes and it’s not about learning alphabets, numbers or colours. It’s about being in a safe, loving and interactive environment. The more love and positive interaction you experience in your first 1000 days of life, the more developed your brain will be. This will ultimately impact all children’s life-long outcomes.

Session 2: Engage Your Brain

This session focused on the social and emotional aspects of brain development and how our feelings impact our thinking. Nathan particularly highlighted the importance of play-based learning and how this enhances outcomes for our children. While the times that our social/emotional brain really has the steering wheel is two to eight years of age, and again in the middle of adolescence, it is relevant to all learners who want to feel engaged, enthusiastic and passionate about what they do.

Session 3: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

‘Change Your Brain! Change Your Life!’ explores the inherent ability in everyone’s brain to be able to change the ‘wiring’ of their brain and thereby improve their level of happiness, well-being and overall quality of life. In essence, our brains are voice activated and we are far more in control of our brains than we realise.

If you would like more information regarding Nathan Wallis visit: https://www.nathanwallis.com/ or ask one of our staff members what they thought of Nathan’s workshop.

Dr Anne Knock - ‘The Learning Future’

Dr Anne Knock is the leadership and cultural expert at ‘The Learning Future’. Anne is an educator, facilitator and coach who enables profound shifts in strategy, leadership, culture and pedagogy through her wisdom. Anne has partnered with well-known contemporary educational leader, Louka Parry, to form ‘The Learning Future’, a strategy and professional learning organisation that is based in Australia, but works globally to support educators, schools, leaders, and organisations to thrive in a constantly changing world. At ‘The Learning Future’, Anne leads programs and projects to help educators, leaders and organisations step into the future through strategic design and learning experiences that optimistically chart a path ahead in our increasingly complex world. Anne and Louka work to transform learning environments, systems and structures so that we better empower individuals to develop the key human capabilities that matter most for their learning future.

Anne led staff through a thought-provoking workshop which was designed to help us to consider the ‘What if?’… What if Living Faith’s current investigation into secondary expansion was to proceed? What might our collectively imagined future look like based on what we know today about the constantly changing world? 

The day was creatively designed to be a big picture provocation to create momentum for the future of the school whether that future is expanding to become a school with Kindy to Year 12 educational offerings, or continuing to be a Kindy to Year 6 primary school that aspires to be the leading provider of contemporary Christian education in the Moreton Bay region.

To find out more about the work that ‘The Learning Future’ does visit https://www.thelearningfuture.

Pastor Jim Strelan - Spiritual Development ‘Free to Flourish’

Pastor Jim Strelan led enriching and provocative spiritual development sessions at our staff retreat under the theme of being ‘Free to Flourish’. Staff were encouraged to consider new ways to remain ‘spiritually alive’ and we delved deeply into what it may mean to flourish in a spiritual sense. Staff also reflected on what it might mean to ‘live in the unforced rhythm of grace.’

“Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not grow weak.” Isaiah 39:31

Blessings and peace

Andrew Kelly, Principal