Bastow Changemakers - Impact Case Study

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Impact Case Study

Bastow Changemakers

A framework for success The innovative Latrobe Valley Flexible Learning Option campus (LV FLO) opened in mid-2014 to provide an alternative education option for the region’s disengaged youth. LV FLO is the result of a partnership between the Valley’s three government secondary colleges: Kurnai, Traralgon and Lowanna.

Participant: Brett Pedlow

Principal, Latrobe Valley Flexible Learning Option Campus (LV FLO)

Led by Bastow Changemakers participant Brett Pedlow, and a team that includes a growing number of skilled change makers, the school is achieving life-changing results for its students and other at-risk young people.

Brett Pedlow was brimming with ideas and experience when he accepted the role as founding Principal of Morwell’s LV FLO campus in early 2014. He was about to introduce an alternative form of education to the region – one that would engage with young people who had already fallen out of mainstream education, or who were at risk of doing so, and help them find pathways back into the system.

At that time he didn’t have the project management structures and theoretical frameworks he needed to navigate the complex process of creating an entirely new school campus, and a highly specialised one at that.

Bastow | Changemakers

As a first-time school principal, he also wasn’t sure how to successfully bring about scalable change; to look strategically at the ‘big picture’ and then go about making it a reality. It was also around this time that Brett enrolled in the Bastow Changemakers course. The course began several months ahead of LV FLO’s scheduled opening and gave Brett the knowledge and tools he needed to confidently lead the campus through a successful launch and beyond.

‘I was so lucky I chose to do Bastow Changemakers when I did,’ says Brett. ‘LV FLO represents a huge change in approach across the whole of the Latrobe Valley – it was changing the way we cater for disengaged kids and I’ve had the job of leading that change.

‘The skills and practical, user-friendly frameworks I learned through Changemakers were incredibly beneficial, so much so that I decided to put two members of my team through the course in 2015.’

Developing a flexible learning model After the local Koori pathways school closed down in 2013, the Kurnai, Traralgon and Lowanna secondary colleges formed a joint taskforce to investigate options for helping young people who had disengaged or been excluded from mainstream education. Brett was the project officer for the taskforce, which visited other alternative education schools and eventually chose to adapt the flexible learning model used by the Warrnambool Alternative VCAL Education (WAVE) campus.

‘We have a real challenge in the Latrobe Valley with kids disengaging from school and all the problems associated with that,’ says Brett. ‘There’s crime, homelessness,

physical abuse, sexual abuse, drugs and alcohol use – the whole gamut.’

Around 60 students are enrolled in LV FLO at any one time. The school’s programs are individualised and Brett and his team work closely with each young person to help them identify and access the pathway that’s right for them.

‘On average, each of these young people have been out of school for about five months before arriving at LV FLO,’ Brett explains. ‘A lot of them have been through the youth justice system; they may have mental health issues and serious problems at home.

‘They’ve been pulled from pillar to post and have no sense of ownership around their own pathways. We try and work with them so they can guide their own destiny – everything we do here is student driven.’

Scale and innovation Brett says early on in LV FLO’s development, there were times when he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.

‘Changemakers helped by giving me a tangible and very practical framework for how to work through a project and deal with any problems that arise,’ he says. ‘And in the establishment phase, I was encountering problems everywhere. I followed that framework really closely.’

Another useful approach Brett learnt from Changemakers was the ‘pivot principle’ – taking the time to step back, reflect and assess a situation from all sides. He’s been imparting this approach to problem solving to his staff and students.

Pictured: Adele Zomer with student

While the students’ social and educational issues present the LV FLO team with daily challenges, Brett says they aren’t the most difficult aspects of his role.

‘The biggest challenge for me during this whole process has been managing effective stakeholder relationships,’ he says.

able to stand back, observe and reflect, look at scale and be more innovative.’

Empowering an emerging change agent

going to deploy it and how he’s going to communicate that with people. He speaks more confidently and is much better at negotiating and establishing partnerships.

‘It’s been a massive body of work and Brett’s done it incredibly well, and Changemakers played a big part in that.’

Changemakers gave Brett the confidence to manage these stakeholder relationships, while always staying focused on the ‘end game’.

Brett enrolled in Bastow Changemakers at the suggestion of Mark Anderson, who was then a senior adviser in the Department’s Latrobe regional office. Mark had liaised with Bastow to bring the Changemakers course out to the region.

‘The course really hit home that you might only get a minute in front of someone to make an impact,’ he says.

‘It’s important to have a clear vision about what you’re aiming to achieve. You’ve got to know what outcomes you want from every meeting, perfect your pitch and make sure you get your point across.’

‘I thought of Brett straight away because he was clearly a future principal and the main project we were working on – the new school – was a ready-made change project,’ Mark says.

LV FLO will have catered for more than 140 students and helped over half of those transition into alternative education or vocational settings, including mainstream schools, TAFE colleges, registered training organisations and employment, by the time it enters its third year of operation in July 2016.

Brett was also pleased to discover that Changemakers didn’t add to his already heavy workload. ‘We’re all flat out; we don’t want extra work for the sake of doing extra work,’ he says. ‘What we do want is something that’s going to enhance and make our job easier, and that’s what Changemakers did for me.

As the project developed, Mark observed Brett taking on more and more responsibility and gaining higher levels of confidence, particularly when working with high-level stakeholders. While Mark had expected to be more handson in supporting Brett, it became apparent that the new principal was steadily growing in confidence and had everything under control.

Feedback from stakeholders has been overwhelmingly positive to date, however Brett sees this is a challenge in itself as his team needs to critically reflect on the school’s performance. Since completing the course, he has incorporated regular reflective conversations with his team, and reviews of internal processes and outcomes data, into LV FLO’s ongoing operations.

‘What I really love about Bastow is that the courses they offer are relevant and the people teaching them are legitimate,’ he adds. ‘Teachers do mountains of professional development and there are so many courses out there that are theory based and leave you asking more questions about their relevance than they provide answers.

‘Before Changemakers, Brett would have had to rely just on his own experience in terms of how to go about leading a project like this – his approach may have been less structured, possibly even a bit scatter-gun,’ Mark says.

‘Having a guided process kept him on track and enabled him to implement the project more effectively.

‘We need to consolidate our practices, focus on continual improvement and safeguard what we’ve established so our programs are sustainable and not personality or personnel reliant,’ he explains.

‘Changemakers was the opposite and provided me with a scalable approach to implementing change,’ Brett says.

‘By doing the course I’ve become a better leader by being

‘When I look at Brett now, I see him as being highly strategic,’ Mark says. ‘He’s reflective and really thinks through how to implement change and innovate, how he’s

Bastow | Changemakers

An evolving hub for change

Brett’s team has grown from four when LV FLO opened, to more than a dozen. During the last term of 2015, they applied the pivot principle to conduct an internal review and tightened up many processes and programs as a result.

‘We’ve identified what we were doing well, the changing needs in the Latrobe Valley and how we can best cater for different groups,’ says Brett. ‘And that’s led to us becoming much more of a hub, the base for a range of other programs, as much as being a school.’

Recent innovations include the appointment of a transition officer who focuses on identifying potential careers and pathways for LV FLO students, and the LV FLO Outreach Program that began at the start of 2016 and sends two team members into homes. Brett has also sponsored another member of his team to join Bastow’s 18-month Create: Middle Leaders program in 2016.

According to Brett, when LV FLO opened its doors, he and his team were, by necessity, ‘flying the plane before it was fully built’.

‘LV FLO probably would have been set up without me doing Changemakers, but I don’t think we would have had the success that we’ve had without me doing this kind of course,’ he says. ‘I now appreciate how to bring about change on a large scale.

‘Now this plane is much closer to being built, and thanks to what we’ve learned through Bastow Changemakers, we’re certainly flying it a whole lot better.’

Pictured: Brett Pedlow

A growing team of change makers Reaching youth in the justice system Dale Banks, the Latrobe Valley’s Courts Education Liaison Officer, is one of the two team members Brett sponsored to complete the Changemakers course in 2015.

of writing, the courts liaison position doesn’t yet have ongoing funding.)

The course helped Dale expand links with government agencies and community support services to improve referral processes. It also gave him strategies for reflecting and starting over when things don’t go to plan.

Dale splits his time between the LV FLO campus, where he’s based, and the Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court. This role, introduced when LV FLO opened, involves working with young people going through the courts and aims to link them back into mainstream school or appropriate vocational pathways.

Building resilience through the wilderness

In the past 20 months, Dale’s program has helped over 50 young people enrol in some form of education – and that’s in addition to those who’ve been helped directly through the LV FLO school. ‘Being based in the courts is really working,’ Dale says.

This world-leading wilderness adventure program is operated by South Australia’s Operation Flinders Foundation and takes participants between the ages of 14 and 18 years on an eight-day wilderness adventure in the far northern Flinders Ranges. It provides an opportunity for young people to break away from their past, build their resilience, and learn the values of team work and respect.

Changemakers helped Dale gain greater clarity around how to confidently move forward in the pioneering role.

‘This was the best professional development I’ve ever done,’ he says. ‘I was just starting up the position and the Changemakers course helped me put my ideas into practice and also identify ways of expanding the role.

‘It’s given me the confidence and strategies to deal with stakeholders and know the right way to talk to them,’ he adds. ‘It’s about knowing how to pitch – the four or five key stats that you can just roll off the top of your head.

You never know when you’re going to meet that person who might be your next source of funding.’ (At the time Bastow | Changemakers

Luke Haustorfer, the other member of Brett’s team to have completed Bastow Changemakers, is responsible for managing LV FLO students’ participation in Operation Flinders.

LV FLO sends two groups of 10 students on Operation Flinders adventures each year. Each group treks a gruelling 100 kilometres and once they’ve begun the journey participants have no opportunity to ‘opt out’.

Delivering the program for LV FLO requires significant engagement with external stakeholders, which Brett says initially took Luke outside his comfort zone.

‘Luke was able to use the framework provided by Changemakers to conceptualise what he needed to

do, know how and when to engage with stakeholders, and work out how to overcome challenges,’ explains Brett. ‘And after the first trip, which went really well, the course enabled him to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and how we could tweak it to make the program sustainable over the longer term.’

LV FLO’s participation in Operation Flinders is jointly sponsored by GFD SUEZ Australia Energy, which operates the Hazelwood power station, and Rotary. The school’s first group completed their journey in October 2015.

‘I had some pretty poignant feedback from one boy after he got back,’ Brett recalls. ‘He said he’d never finished anything in his life and now he felt as though he’d achieved something huge. And he knew he’d be able to draw on that experience in other areas of his life.’

‘The Changemakers course helped me put my ideas into practice and also identify ways of expanding the role.’ Dale Banks

Pictured: Tom Burdekin with student

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership 603-615 Queensberry Street North Melbourne Victoria 3051 t (03) 8199 2900 f (03) 8199 2910 e bastow@bastow.vic.edu.au

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