Blue Gum Community School provides a uniquely Australian place of learning by:

• studying and reflecting on educational approaches regarded as ‘best practice’ internationally, from the specific perspective of Australian society;
• setting up a physical and educational environment that is a microcosm of Australian society, and reflective of our specific school community;
• valuing our Australian heritage and identity, particularly in relation to: Indigenous culture and history; the value for welcoming people of all different backgrounds; everyone being given a ‘fair go’; and the Australian value for the outdoors, as a rich and important place, in which we live, learn and meet with others in our community. 

Blue Gum Community School seeks to offer a model of ‘best-practice’ within a uniquely Australian learning context that:

• is inspiring, challenging, interactive, reflective, evolving and sustainable;
  offers negotiated, collaborative learning choices; 
• values diversity and difference;
• allows/encourages each student to explore their place in the wider community, and importantly;
• treats each student as Competent, Capable, Creative, Responsible, Resourceful and Resilient.

Blue Gum Community School aims to provide inspiring, challenging, interactive, reflective, evolving and sustainable learning environments by:

• treating the environment as a third teacher, and valuing its use as an educational resource;
• curation an aesthetic, multi-sensory physical environment - indoors and outdoors;
• offering, each day, a range of open-ended multi-level challenges/activities/ stimuli for students to choose from and explore, to gain understanding and to research ideas further;
• encouraging students, educators and parents to contribute ideas and artefacts for inclusion in the educational program, and to work alongside each other as co-learners in exploring these ideas and artefacts and discovering new questions to answer;
• posing questions and inviting students and educators to hypothesise/ theorise about possible answers to the questions and then find ways of testing their hypotheses/theories, which they can pursue in a supportive ‘joint-discovery’ context;
• continually looking for ways of responding differently to real-life situations encountered, so that ‘best-practice’ is a journey, not a destination/outcome; and, 
• re-connecting students with the broader community, especially different generations and cultures, through immersion in e.g. shared intergenerational and intercultural activities/experiences.

Blue Gum Community School aims to offer negotiated, collaborative learning choices by:

• offering students a range of learning options and encouraging them to contribute their own, then inviting them to negotiate a learning option, with an educator or other students, that satisfies their own interest, the interests of other students, and an educator’s perception of an appropriate/positive learning activity;
• re-directing students’ focus away from educators as the main reference point, towards seeing their peers and the wider community as valuable sources of different perspectives, recognising them as potential co-constructors of knowledge;
• encouraging students to work in small groups, where students are more likely to successfully initiate, negotiate and work together on activities that maximise learning while being personally satisfying and empowering.

Blue Gum Community School aims to value diversity and difference by:

• welcoming a mixture of ages, abilities and backgrounds (in students, educators and families) in each class, reflecting the wider community;
• offering a range of multi-level learning choices; 
• a team of educators in each class; 
• vertical age groupings; 
• co-education; 
• inclusion of students with disabilities, where possible; 
• and an educational approach that encourages students to try out different ways of thinking, doing and being.  

In all things, we are intentional about implementing practices that support our students to flourish through a curriculum shaped by real research that allows for the development of deep learning and understanding, as well as the recognition of multiple perspectives. All this is done within an environment that promotes the social justice principles of access, equity, and participation.

Blue Gum Community School encourages each student to explore their place in the wider community by:

• recognising that childhood is not preparation for life, but is life, so being alert to authentic opportunities for students to engage deeply, and for extended periods, with different aspects of living, different roles and different agencies within the community.

Blue Gum Community School aims to treat each student as Competent, Capable, Creative, Responsible, Resourceful and Resilient.

Competent – We recognise there is so much students can already do! We have high expectations of their engagement and agency every day at Blue Gum. Daily we invite students to solve real problems and use real tools in an environment that is empowering, challenging and enticing. 

Capable – Students are given regular opportunities to make decisions about matters that affect their lives! We encourage them to be co-designers with us in the program, influencing the life of the school as they work with the group to build culture and the web of relationships that makes us, us! We expect students and adults to both have agency at Blue Gum, to initiate and plan activities with others, to weigh options, and importantly to influence the life around them. We see Blue Gum as a place to lean in and get involved in what’s happening all around us, and in so doing, to bring our different capabilities to the group, so we are all more able to learn and live well together!

Creative - We see creativity and imagination as crucial distinctives of being fully human! We expect students to generate new ideas and forms of expression through their engagement in experiences and encounters that matter to them. When creating we never want to limit students to copying or reproducing other’s ideas. Instead, we encourage them to find expression in a multitude of ways, for a multitude of reasons! Through their experiences at Blue Gum students are naturally exposed to a wide range of media to explore their ideas and to create - through which they can deepen conceptual understandings.

Responsible – We encourage children to consider the way our responses can help us to overcome, build relationships and move forward, even when things don’t work out quite how we’d like! We expect children to accept and deal with the consequences of their decisions, taking responsibility for themselves and for others. This means we don’t avoid disruptions or difficult situations, instead we lean into them as important avenues towards growth and learning.

Resourceful - Students are contributors to the program at Blue Gum. We give time for them to explore lines of inquiry, to figure things out, to unravel problems/knots, and to design and test possible solutions. We encourage them to be resourceful with the materials all around us and to take care with the way we use (and re-use) those resources in sustainable and respectful ways. 

Resilient – Students can bounce back! We want them to handle the ups and the downs of life and build skills for responding and coping when things don’t go as planned, which they often don’t. Learning to persevere and to live in the inevitable uncertainties that life can bring, is an important part of our program at Blue Gum! We see this ability to be resilient as essential to living wholeheartedly and in community.

Connecting with our families at the Friday Garden Club, a parent designed community experience.