Live in Melbourne, Teach at Elevation

Please read through this entire page to find out all about our professional learning community.

At Elevation Secondary College, how we do things is just as important as what we do. We focus on evidence based management and organisational strategies as well best practice in educational research.

Elevation Secondary College is:

• A great place to work
• An evidence based school
• A school that has high expectations of its staff

A Great Place to Work

In 2022, Elevation Secondary College was named the Best Place to Work in Education in Australia and New Zealand by the Australian Financial Review Best Places to Work Competition.

Learn more about our award:

Flexibility and autonomy are key at Elevation Secondary College | Australian Financial Review

A message from the Principal of Elevation Secondary College | AFR BOSS Best Places to Work- LinkedIn

As a new school, we know we cannot achieve our school vision without deliberately building a performance culture. A performance culture is a collection of processes, norms, values and behaviours that enable teachers to teach as well they possibly can. A focus on culture means we invest in ways of working together and we are committed to organisational health.

We employ the Datawise ACE Habits of Mind to make the most of our time this involves: a shared commitment to action, intentional collaboration and a relentless focus on evidence. We achieve this through structured meetings and protocols, practice and reflection on communicating with clarity and accountability and responsible use of data.

The school has allocated significant resources to induction, professional learning, instructional coaching and curriculum-based professional learning communities. For example, we provide three full days of induction for new staff and professional learning communities meet on a weekly basis.

Because we are a new school, staff are encouraged to bring the best of their previous experiences and professional knowledge to build something new. All staff contribute to the development of the school not only consultation and feedback, but also through autonomy, creativity and hard work in developing programs and processes that do not yet exist.

An Evidence-Based School

The school’s learning programs reflect well-established evidence of ‘what works’ for students.

These include:

• The importance of deep, subject-specific knowledge as a context for students to learn and apply skills.
• Access to quality explicit instruction, worked examples and opportunities for practice and feedback as essential pre-requisites for higher-order thinking or inquiry.
• Structuring lessons and teaching sequences to manage cognitive load, provide opportunities for multiple exposures, and retrieval.
• The Science of Reading and evidence-based literacy intervention.
• Providing opportunities for accelerated learning in specific academic disciplines.
• School-wide positive behaviours as the foundation of a Response to Intervention model for behaviour management.

The school’s professional learning and resourcing priorities also reflect best practices.

Which include:

• Curriculum-based professional learning communities and collaborative planning time.
• Use of classroom observation, feedback and reflection to embed all professional learning activities.
• The use of specific task-level data on student learning to inform teachers’ next steps.

The College has been profiled by the Grattan Institute & the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) for our innovative and evidence-based practices.

Making time for great teaching: How better government policy can help | Grattan Institute

A School that has High Expectations of all Staff

Our staff are highly collaborative and hold high expectations of each other. Our staff are:

• Education professionals
• Subject specific and pedagogical experts
• Improvement focused and reflective
• Motivated by making an impact on student learning
• Keen to be a part of something new
• Academically humble

We have a visible and distinct professional culture at the school. Teachers at the school live our values through our practice, relentless focus on improvement and capacity-based professional teaching competencies.

At Elevation SC subject teams plan and collaborate using common unit plans, lesson elements, teaching timelines and assessment tasks. Evidence has established that teachers’ professional learning and collaboration are most effective when aimed at whether students are learning what has been taught in class. As a result, most of teachers’ planning and collaborative time is spent in domain and subject teams so they can engage with task-level assessment data, common problems of practice, and implementing high quality curriculum.

We value and work very hard towards consistency in our classroom practices. Consistent routines for processes such as: entering and exiting the classroom, starting lessons, and introducing vocabulary, remove uncertainty, risk and distraction for students. We also believe routines benefit teachers and that we owe consistency to each other. This is because unified communication and implementation of classroom practices and school rules has a compounding positive impact on student outcomes as well as our own sense of efficacy. Teachers at our school view active and capable classroom management, relationship building and leading an academically rigorous classroom as a core parts of their role.

Education Support staff are trusted and empowered to take significant initiative and have ownership over their work. For example, integration and multi-cultural aides collaborate with, and provide feedback to, classroom teachers. Administrative assistants communicate regularly with families and often lead the development and implementation of school processes. They engage in regular professional learning and feedback to grow and lead in their respective fields.

As we have built our school with our community, we often say ‘we know this school cannot be all things to all people’ and appreciate that this applies just as much to staff as it does to students and families.

Employment

Elevation Secondary College will be growing rapidly over the next decade and as such there will be significant employment opportunities for educational professionals.

Elevation Secondary College will have a powerful professional learning culture, based on the idea that:

“If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve”

Dylan William, University of London

Staff at the school will maintain a professional approach to their work at the school. The school will develop a culture of professional learning where observations, walkthroughs, coaching, data and academic research are commonly used to improve practice.

Consistent with the schools behavioural expectations of Aim High, Work Hard, Be Good, staff will be expected to be aspirational, improvement focused and maintain a growth mindset, complete their work in a professional and timely manner and maintain positive and professional relationships with all members of the community at all times.

Staff will be expected to balance the need for high expectations of all learners with a positive education and trauma informed approach to engagement and wellbeing and inclusion.

To view and apply to current vacancies at Elevation Secondary College: Click here for more details.

Employment Expression of Interest

Responses to this form will remain confidential. Third parties (such as referees) will not be contacted regarding this submission without prior agreement.