| Funky school |
| Posted by: Susan Einhorn |
| IT is shortly after 11am at Our Lady of Lourdes School, in Sydney's northwest. The bell has signalled the end of "little lunch" and children are pouring into class. A group of 15 file through the door, followed by 10 more, and then another five, and were this an old-style school that would be the end of it. Students would take their seats, face the front and one teacher would say: "OK, children, open your books." None of that happens at Our Lady of Lourdes, in Seven Hills, in part because the number of children flowing into the room hasn't stopped at 30, or 35, or even at 50. On the contrary, the average "class size" is 120. The children here aren't even required to sit in a certain seat or face the front of the room, in part because there isn't really a "front" of the room. In fact, the school doesn't have any four-walled classrooms. It has large, well-designed "learning spaces" with bits of wall here and there. There are no desks as such; there are round tables with tub chairs, an L-shaped lounge with scatter cushions, a tall table with hydraulic bar stools and a comfy, carpeted area designed for children who want to sprawl on the floor. "It probably looks nothing like the classrooms you knew as a child," says principal Steven Jones. |
| Source: The Australian (Australia) | Published: September 15th, 2011 |
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