At Boonah SHS, staff work hard to know and understand students and their individual needs and to differentiate learning to engage and challenge students at the appropriate level. Boonah SHS recognises that because each student is an individual, staff need a variety of strategies, knowledge and understanding to support students. As a result, Boonah SHS is committed to developing staff capacity to support students. This is done in a variety of ways:
- Case Managers are provided with opportunities to engage with experts and professional learning in order to understand the needs of students and how these needs are effectively met. Training is provided to case managers in a variety of areas including on specific disability areas; engagement with the variety of programs that are run within and external to our school and adjustments.
- Case managers then share their knowledge with other staff about students and their specific needs
- Training is provided to all staff about specific areas including differentiation, individual curriculum plans and specific disability areas
- Snapshot information about strategies and tools are provided to staff each week, through the principals weekly update
- Specific professional development is sourced for Education Support Officers (ESO's) so that they can engage in training specifically related to areas that they would like to or need to develop
- Specific mentoring with individual teachers – this is often led by the Head of Inclusion and may include the development of strategies for students or a class and co-teaching.
- Specific meetings are held to support groups of teachers to meet the needs of individual students or groups of students – this is done by the deputy principals, Head of Inclusion and Head of Student Services
- Specific information and knowledge is shared by staff with specialist knowledge e.g. the speech language pathologist, about how to meet the needs of individuals or groups
- Information obtained from parents and students, about students is shared through the personalized learning plans – this acknowledges the importance of the knowledge of parents and of students themselves
- The school reaches out for mentoring from other more experienced district office and regional staff.
- A folio of knowledge and tools are kept on the school operations one note for all staff to access.
- Boonah SHS regularly work with staff from our feeder primary schools to understand the needs of students and to share resources, knowledge and best practice including through the Fassifern Inclusive Leaders meetings.