Lithgow TAFE teacher Nicola Connon will be touring educational facilities in the UK for five weeks as part of her 2018 Premier’s Teacher Scholarship.
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Ms Connon is a teacher in foundation skills, which encompasses careers and employment education, Aboriginal language and English as a second language sector.
While overseas, she hopes to observe programs at educational institutions, which she may be able to adapt or adopt for use in Lithgow.
Her itinerary includes facilities at London and Blackpool that have received funding to incorporate resilience strategies into their curriculum.
“I will also attend training in essential resilience skills that are useful in and out of the educational setting,” Ms Connon said.
“By undertaking the research, I hope to learn best-practice strategies to build resilience in the classroom to enhance a young person’s ability to cope with adverse life events, as well as keeping the youth cohort engaged and on a pathway to success at TAFE NSW.”
She has a keen interested in new programs, such as Kooth, which make counselling and emotional wellbeing resources available in the digital space, and HeadStart, a Blackpool resilience project.
“It’s about finding ways to keep young people studying, when there is adversity in their life, and moving on, either to further study or a job,” Ms Connon said.
Member for Bathurst, Paul Toole, said the Premier’s scholarship program enabled NSW teachers from government and non-government schools and TAFE NSW to undertake a five-week international study tour, visiting some of the world’s best institutions and centres of learning to consult experts and observe exemplary practices related to a specific aspect of their curriculum.
“Nicola provided an outstanding application impressing judges with her initiative and dedication to introducing strategies to build resilience in the classroom,” he said.
“This is just one example of TAFE NSW boasting some incredibly committed teachers like Nicola who strive to provide students in Lithgow and across the state with the best programs and support needed to be job-ready.”
Ms Connon will return to Australia at the end of June and plans on sharing her knowledge across TAFE NSW.
“I plan on writing a detailed report of the study tour which will demonstrate best practices I have observed in my resilience research and how these practices could be used by TAFE NSW to give students the very best opportunities to succeed,” she said.
