With much sadness, we share that a truly inspirational gentleman, HPE educator and our current ACHPER SA Co-President, Craig Johncock, passed away on Boxing Day after a long battle with illness. A passionate long term member and supporter of ACHPER, Craig was awarded the prestigious National Fellow Award in 2019, for his outstanding engagement with the HPE community, leadership of the profession and commitment to the Board of ACHPER SA and National ACHPER representative forum.
A most respected and admired leader of Sport and Physical Education including for 18 years at St John’s Grammar, and prior to that spending the previous 25 years working in the Education Department.
Craig was highly regarded for his Advocacy of HPE and Sport, and well known for his work ethic, work with the AFL and for his enthusiasm for community work. Craig’s love of sport and for young people and his passion for the promotion of health and physical activity was life-shaping for many people.
Craig was extremely passionate mentoring young people; one of the things he was quite proud of was the number of students that he taught that then went on to be HPE teachers or coaches within the wider community.
Craig has left an amazing legacy with ACHPER SA, and his planning and dedication was evident right up until his final days. Such was Craig's love for Health and Physical Education, he was buried wearing his ACHPER shirt. The strong ACHPER contingent also wore ACHPER shirts to the Celebration of his Life. Our sincere condolences and thoughts are with his wife Sue, children Kelly and Karl and all members of Craig’s extended family. Read more on ACHPER SA's tribute page here.
Printed with permission from ACHPER SA.
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President’s Report - Dr Sue Whatman |
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We are delighted to bring you the first ACHPER Advocate for 2022 with all the optimism and energy that the New Year brings – the Year of the Tiger. 2022 is meant to be a messy but promising year, as professional associations like ours continue to design, adapt and deliver services to the HPE and sport community and to you, our cherished ACHPER members, under ever-changing COVID guidelines.
As you’ve read in our opening story, we have lost an amazing member of the ACHPER family, Mr Craig Johncock, who served as ACHPER SA’s President and co-President until he passed away on Boxing Day last year. Craig was awarded the National Fellow in 2019 for his outstanding contribution to ACHPER and the National Board will sorely miss his commitment, experience, wisdom and unflagging optimism even faced with the gravest of illnesses. ACHPER SA has prepared a brilliant and moving tribute which you can read more about here. Vale Craig Johncock.
ACHPER is so pleased to be able to continue our National partnership with Tennis Australia. Our partnership enables quality curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment options via tennis aligned to the Australian Curriculum and the provision of professional learning to our members and the wider HPE community. If you haven’t checked out Tennis for Schools yet, click here.
ACHPER is currently undertaking Stage 2 of a Strategic Review, ably chaired by State Presidents Dr Ben Williams (Qld), Brad McAllister (NSW) and Vice-President Kate Simpson (Vic). The SRC has representatives from Life members, the National Board and the Executive Management Group and is working on nation-wide issues of shared governance and operational efficiencies. The challenges of COVID have brought our operations into sharp focus and we are so pleased with the progress we are making across Australia to ensure ACHPER can evolve and respond to these challenges, to remain the best professional association for the HPE and sport educator community.
In case you missed it last year, ACHPER has released the Health Education Audit Tool developed by Health Promoting Schools committee. Click here to access the tool: (insert link on our website or embedded as a file in constant contact). We have an update in this edition about an exciting new research project into quality physical education for the early years – see Board Director Dr John Williams’ article in this edition.
We’ve featured some sponsored professional learning products in this issue, all of which we believe are of high quality and benefit to ACHPER members. Check out the feature articles from Elastoplast, Grey New and Lions Quest. Click on the links within the articles to learn more about them.
All the best for a great start to 2022!
Dr Sue Whatman
President and Chair of National Board of ACHPER Australia.
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Elastoplast Helping Kids Stay Safe |
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Developed in collaboration with ACHPER, the Elastoplast Kids First Aid Program provides schools with free, curriculum-aligned resources focusing on the key first aid knowledge areas – recognising and responding to unsafe situations, treating minor injuries and sending for help.
Each school that registers will receive free lesson plans, activity sheets, Elastoplast first aid product samples and a pack of 1st First Aid Certificates to hand out to students when they have completed the program.
More than 500 schools across Australia and NZ have received the free resources since the program launched in 2019, and over 90% of teachers would recommend the program to a colleague[1]. Register today!
[1] Elastoplast Kids First Aid Program, 2020: Participant Survey
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Towards Reality Congruent Early Childhood Physical Education - Dr John Williams |
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It gives me a great deal of pleasure to be writing this for the first Advocate of 2022 as it describes an exciting project I am privileged to lead in Australian Capital Territory government schools that includes fellow ACHPER members, including ACHPER Life Member Associate Professor Shane Pill and ACHPER ACT Chair Dr Michael Davies. I use the word ‘exciting’ genuinely and without hesitation for a number of reasons. Firstly, the project has eventuated from a school research partnership called the Affiliated Schools Program jointly funded by ACT Government Education and the University of Canberra. Specifically, our project is aimed at Year 1 and 2 children across five public schools with the main project purpose being to develop capacity amongst eary years primary classroom teachers to teach quality physical education.
Our project seeks to offer a more reality congruent, or ‘the knowledge of it that is possible’ (Giovannini, 2015) version of physical education. In terms of our idea of reality congruence, our project is framed using Penney, Brooker, Hay, & Gillespie’s (2009) work that presents quality physical education as the intersection of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. The project aligns to the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education (AC: HPE) (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2016) as the curriculum used in all six of our partner schools. In terms of pedagogy, we are primarily using Metzler’s (2017) interpretation of a Personalised System of Instruction and for assessment we are drawing upon a range of appropriate instruments suitable for using with Year 1 and 2 in meeting the AC: HPE Year 1 and 2 achievement standards.
Finally, in recognition of the wonderful teaching resources our organisation produces, all of the teachers in our study have been provided with a copy of the Five Propositions, Kids Sports, Play with Purpose and Daily does it - all of which are published by ACHPER and available through the bookshop.
I look forward to letting our membership know about how the program develops and the outcomes that emanate. Watch this space!!
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Social Emotional Learning Aligned to HPE for You |
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Grey New has a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Program available, aligned to the AC. It includes all documentation from Unit plans to Lesson plans.
The program covers and assesses all Personal, Social, and Emotional Health content descriptors of the new AC. It is skill-based, addressing students’ wellbeing. Our sequenced and modular program includes unit/lesson plans, video lessons, worksheets, and assessments.
Year 7 and 8 live!
The Year 7 and 8 SEL Program is now available on our website. This includes 32 × 45 minute lessons/videos (8 lessons/term), all worksheets, assessments, and plans.
Year 7 and 8 topics include: Stress / Mental Health / Empathy / Conversation Skills / Identity / Self-regulation / Peer Pressure / Celebrate differences / Problem solving / Conflict Management / Self Care / Self Compassion.
All this is available to your school in 2022 for $750. See a sample here. To purchase, use this link.
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Three Transport Priorities for the federal election: for happy, safe and healthy kids – and to also save our economy billions |
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As schools go back across the country and in the approach to a federal Election, we urgently need to do more to keep our kids safe on the roads and to get them and their families moving more.
To drive this change, ACHPER has joined an alliance of 13 health, transport, education and climate organisations in presenting the Three Transport Priorities to the federal member for Wentworth, Dave Sharma MP, the Shadow Asst Minister for Treasury, the Hon. Dr Andrew Leigh MP and the Member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines MP at a presentation in Parliament on Monday 14th February. All three are Co-Chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of Cycling, a group that unites MPs and Senators with an interest in active travel and cycling in Parliament.
The Three Transport Priorities are:
1. Lower Default Urban Speed Limits in residential areas, shopping streets and school zones.
2. 1500m Safe Routes to School including footpaths, pedestrian priority crossings, and ‘no drop off’ zones.
3. E-Bike Purchase Subsidy of up to $1000 off for customers purchasing an e-bike.
Why these priorities?
● The Three Transport Priorities are evidence-based solutions to reduce crashes, reduce congestion, and increase physical activity.
● We know that business as usual will continue to lead to crashes ($22bn), congestion ($19bn), and physical inactivity ($16bn), costing Australia a whopping $57,000,000,000 (57 billion dollars) every year.
Walking and cycling are COVID-safe forms of transport and the additional physical activity has benefits for our immune system.
● We need to make our streets safer, as tragically, drivers of motor vehicles remain the number one killer of children in Australia.
● We need to make our streets safer, as half of Australian parents have concerns about letting their children walk or cycle to school.
● Our local roads were once playful streets, where 3 in 4 children walked or rode to school – and parents felt safe to let them.
● Nowadays, just 1 in 4 children walk or cycle to school, despite more than half of children living within 1km of school in urban areas.
In an election year, now is a great time for our profession to show our support for more active and safe travel opportunities. Read more about how to support the three transport priorities here.
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Build students’ SEL skills and nurture their wellbeing, through the acclaimed Lion Quest F-8 SEL program. Mapped to the Australian Curriculum, Lions Quest is easy to implement with ready to go lesson plans.
The program includes a short 2-hour online teacher professional learning session to help guide you on delivering the program in your classroom.
Based on CASEL’s core competencies model, the Lions Quest programs offer 36 lessons per year level, as well as ideas for cross-curricular integration, whole-school implementation and parent and community partnerships.
What do schools have to say about Lions Quest?
“There is no doubt that we need to equip students for life beyond the classroom and Lions Quest helps to do just that.” Director of Wellbeing, Hills Christian Community School.
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ACHPER Australia is proud to partner with Tennis Australia. |
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ACHPER Australia recognises the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which we live and work and pays respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our ACHPER membership, our schools and HPE communities, our partners and our staff. |
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