Principal’s Voice – May 2024 - Bold Park Community School

May 23, 2024
Whole School

Principal’s Voice – May 2024

I enjoy listening to podcasts while walking the dog or cooking in the kitchen. One I have been revisiting recently is Wiser Than Me. The host asks her 70+ year old guests what they would tell their younger self as advice.

I do have a few recommendations for my younger self, but what I have realised by listening to a variety of older (and younger),Wiser Than Me people are that they are only able to offer advice through having made some (or many) mistakes.

The pace of world change is accelerating, and the pace of technological change is much faster now than it has been in the past. The online world is a fertile ground for mistake making. The quote below from the World Economic Forum puts the pace of change into perspective.

One insight I take away from this long term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life. Learn more via World Economic Forum.

Our staff look for threads in the curiosities and questions of our students to give agency (a way for student ideas to direct the path of learning). I have seen a thread across our School community from the questions and challenges I have experienced. This thread is about how we support our children to navigate the social world, both online and face to face. The term ‘guardrails’ came up a lot in my research and chats with the Wiser Than Me experts in the field of online safety.

Schools and families are working hard to support our young people with guardrails so they can connect and safely navigate the online world. There is a village supporting our children here at Bold Park Community School, and with our help, they will make fewer mistakes and then be able to consider the advice they will give their younger selves in the future.

The school will be coordinating student and family workshops on cyber safety and awareness. Stay tuned to EDUCA and class updates for these in the future.