Workshops foster bright future
Leaders of a new Wimmera program for gifted and talented children are already planning to expand opportunities for students next year.
Horsham St Brigid’s College will host the second of four Bright Sparks program sessions tonight after a successful launch last week.
Bright Sparks co-ordinator Michelle Dooling created the program after realising there was a demand for more handson training in a variety of fields.
“There are a lot of advanced sporting opportunities for students but they are limited in other fields,” she said.
“We wanted to implement an exciting program for gifted and talented students in our school.”
Mrs Dooling said teachers at the school jumped at the opportunity to run specialised workshops in particular areas of interest.
“They are essentially master classes,” she said.
“We put up nine topics for the students to participate in and we are running five this term: Junior chefs, irobot, Artistic Flair, The Great Outdoors and Fun With Film.”
Mrs Dooling said the idea for the program stemmed from her time teaching in Melbourne about a decade ago.
“They talked about running a similar program and I thought we could take those ideas and adapt them and adopt them for Horsham,” she said.
“Then we thought it would be a great idea to extend it across the community.”
Bright Sparks is a free program for Wimmera students from years five to seven.
Participants attend Horsham, Horsham West and Haven, Horsham Ss Michael and John’s and Laharum primary schools along with Horsham and St Brigid’s colleges.
“Having the different ages helps build leadership, with the year sevens looking out for the younger students,” Mrs Dooling said.
“It’s also been a great opportunity for the primary school students – some of the parents might have been a bit anxious dropping them off at high school for a class but when they returned with big smiles the parents would have been relieved.”
Mrs Dooling said night was a success.
“There were a lot of happy faces,” she said.
“It was a bit of a gamble because we weren’t sure how well it was going to be received, but we have got 35 enrolled this year, which is a great start.”
Mrs Dooling said she hoped to expand the program to offer other workshops in the future, including creative writing and acting master classes.
“We hope to expand both our numbers and our options in the future and hope this is the first program of many,” she said.
“A lot of it comes down to our resources and staff – the program is outside of what we do and what we already ask of teachers, which is a lot. the first
“It’s not just the workshop time, it’s all the preparation that goes into developing the master classes.
“We are really fortunate to work with such wonderful people who are so dedicated to helping develop our students.”
The Bright Sparks program will run for the next three Wednesdays from 3.45pm to 5pm.
The Junior Chefs workshop is booked out but there are limited spaces for the remaining topics.
People can call the school on 5382 3545 or visit www.stbc. vic.edu.au for more information or to register.