Marianna Carlino

St Augustine’s College – Sydney

In Empowering Educators, inspiring Aussie educators share how they build and nurture entrepreneurial mindsets in schools and classrooms. Here we ask Marianna Carlino, Faculty Coordinator – Languages at St Augustine’s College Sydney about her inspiration and how she creates creating authentic and connected learning experiences.

Q1. Can you give us three words (or phrases) that describe your life as an educator? 

Rewarding, engaging and constantly evolving

Q2. What is the most important skill for young people to learn at school? What’s one way that educators (and/or caregivers) can explicitly build this skill?

Resilience.

In my experience as an educator, the best mode to support students is to ensure that communication is not only concise but most importantly clear.

Encouraging students to make mistakes and discuss strategies or techniques to learn from them and evolve into a better version of themselves.

A safe and open learning environment, in my opinion, is crucial for this growth phase to occur with positive outcomes

Q3: What’s one of the best learning experiences you’ve ever delivered (or seen being delivered)? 

The most recent successful learning experience was just a few weeks back during remote learning.

The lesson intention was to present the notion of flexible assessment to my Year 9 class where the end gaol is to create a digital artefact (video or infographic) using both English and Italian on a discovery question of their choosing. (Task notification and link here)

In order to successfully explain the overarching outcomes, I used several online tools, such as YouTube clips, Padlet to collate their discovery question and chose Flipgrid as their submission platform.

Clarifying questions were encouraged to be expressed using the chat feature in Zoom to ensure that all questions were made visible and a platform to ask questions was accessible to all at their own pace as they worked though the notification. The benefit of the chat is the ability to private message any questions which removed any stigma of being a ‘silly’ question and possible embarrassment in front of peers.

The lesson progressed at a lovely pace, the lesson intention was attained and the students were not only engaged but enthused by the task.

Win win on all accounts!

Q4. One thing all teachers and school leaders wish for is more time. Can you suggest one ‘productivity hack’ to save teachers time?

Not really a hack, but definitely a saving grace – collaboration is my ‘hack’!

Working with my colleague by dividing the workload. We take control of one cohort and do all the planning for both of our classes.

It minimises having to stretch yourself over all assigned cohorts (6 at a time) and instead allows us to focus on the course (3 at a time). It promotes consistency to the lessons and alleviates pressure in lesson planning and assessment design for the educator.

Q5: What’s one book, website or podcast you’d recommend to educators keen to build the entrepreneurial mindsets of their students?

This year I became a member of A School for Tomorrow’.

With that platform I have come across a myriad of resources that has developed my pedagogical approach to educating our future citizens. I highly recommend subscribing for access to the podcast, articles and resource recommendations.

The first podcast any educator should listen to is “Game Changers” by Phillip Cummins and Adriano Di Prato.

Meet this week’s Empowering Educator, Marianna Carlino.

Marianna is an experienced and passionate educator and is currently Faculty Coordinator of Languages at St Augustine’s College, a Catholic community she has served for the past 16 years

Marianna values the balance of spirituality, wellbeing and academic instruction for students and staff. She advocates the importance of a holistic approach to nurture our future global citizens, to develop a skill set that can add to society in a positive fashion. Her key strength is the ability to form positive and authentic relationships with students, colleagues, parents and members of the wider community. She strives to be a lifelong learner with the ambition to continually broaden her cognitive horizons.

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