At the end of October, 50 educators travelled from as far afield as Port Lincoln, South Australia, to join the YDC team for the seventh annual YDC Sharing Summit at QUT Kelvin Grove in sunny Brisbane (or ‘Paradise’ as one participant wrote on the feedback form).
Attendees enjoyed a wonderful variety of presentations (choosing from 16 in all) that shared the many different ways schools are implementing YuMi Deadly Maths in their classrooms. As usual, the practical demonstrations of lessons, activities and resources were a highlight. Attendees also enjoyed hearing about how schools are promoting sustainability and adopting YDM across all year levels.
The summit began with an inspiring Welcome to Country from Uncle Joe Kirk, who spoke of his work with young Indigenous students linking traditional and cultural education to literacy and numeracy. After a warm welcome from Professor Kar-Tin Lee on behalf of the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, the audience then enjoyed a brief but thought-provoking speech from Dr Andrew Laming MP on behalf of the Minister for Education and Training, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham.
The keynote from Colin Saltmere, Managing Director of the Myuma Group of companies, described how Myuma’s award-winning training programs for Indigenous youth in Camooweal, Queensland, embed Indigenous knowledge and connect the trainees to their Indigenous history, identity and culture, as a pathway to their wellbeing and success.
Teachers commented that attending the summit ‘always revitalises and invigorates’ their YuMi pedagogy and ‘reinforces that YDM is a great pedagogy and whole school collaboration seems to yield the greatest success’.
We’ll be doing it all again at the same time next year (29–30 October), so please mark your diaries and start planning!