Cafe Society: Vision to remove classroom walls

The founder of an after-school and holiday program says it has so much more potential to transform our kids, starting with a shake-up of the traditional classroom.

Alison Stone founded Glenorchy’s innovative All Stars Club for children. Picture: ZAK SIMMONDS

ALISON Stone says she is nobody special. I find myself wishing it were true, for an abundance of Alisons would surely bring more everyday wonder to the lives of more Tassie kids.

“I just like to create opportunities for children and young people in my local area,” says the educator and 2018 Tasmanian Australian of the Year finalist, who founded Glenorchy’s innovative All Stars Club for children, an after-school and holiday program for children aged 6-12.

A school holiday mountain biking course is the All Stars’ latest outdoor education offering, following activities including boxing (with Olympian and pro boxer Luke Jackson), swimming, karate, football, hockey, drumming, drama and circus skills.

If they have one, children bring a gold coin donation to attend sessions, and so far more than 400 kids have participated in programs. Otherwise, it’s free (a one-off donation from an unnamed woman, pledged after we ran a story on the All Stars in 2017, has helped fund activities, and independent Clark MP Andrew Wilkie has been a brick, giving $100 every month).

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Keen to hear what else Alison would do if she ran the circus, so to speak, and had more funding to realise her vision for helping less privileged kids flourish, we meet at the Coffee Club in Glenorchy’s Northgate shopping centre. Over an extra-large latte, the former primary school teacher, childcare worker and PhD candidate shares her ideas for boosting the confidence and connections of children in the northern suburbs, where she also grew up.

Her proposal for a Glenorchy Outdoor Kindergarten is literally a grassroots vision. One thing the municipality has in abundance is vacant land, she says, so let’s transform some of it into nature classrooms. Let’s make outdoor learning a real thing in the northern suburbs. Something it can be known for excellence in.

“In Glenorchy we have the potential to set up a nature kindergarten for children three and up to have the experience of growing vegetables from seed all the way through to the table, and making bread right from wheat,” Alison says.

“The children could make their own lunch and light fires with their own flint. The more we can scaffold onto those types of experiences, the more they are going to continue to learn.

“Making outdoor space an everyday part of life is just a matter of making sure the kids have the clothing and shoes. It’s about bringing out the love of nature and what you can do in it. Kids love sticks and rocks and puddles and all of those things.”

Alison is a fan of Dr Claire Warden’s approach to outdoor learning, with plenty of tree-climbing and digging for worms. Some of the schools the living classroom consultant has mentored now spend 90 per cent of class-time outside, she says, and that’s in the bleak United Kingdom.

The hardy Swedes call this free-air life “Friluftsliv”, also taking credit for the maxim “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”.

It’s a familiar line in nature-loving Tasmania, and Alison says we should take it more to heart.

Through the All Stars Club, Alison has seen how skills-based programs can open up a whole other range of opportunities.

“Creating environments for kids [to learn more skills] also increases their social networks and from that you see a whole other range of opportunities opening up to them,” she says. “The more people they meet, the more choices they will have. I know from the amount of kids I have met through All Stars that we have so much talent [in Glenorchy], but we don’t have infrastructure in place to provide them with more opportunities.”

Strong relationships built on shared learning are key Alison’s approach. “If you have a good relationship with people, you can achieve anything,” she says.

She is concerned by the limited recreational resources and avenues for older children and teenagers in the northern suburbs, too.

She describes “the crappiest parks” and limited school-based extra-curricular activities compared with further down the Derwent in Sandy Bay and Taroona.

“We accept things too easily,” she says. “How do we go about changing that and making sure everyone has equal opportunities no matter what their postcode?”

You bring the community together more, she says, calling on local businesses to help open teenagers’ eyes to different career paths. We spend a minute imagining what a local café such as the jam-packed one we are sitting in might do to help.

A free mini-barista course on a weekend for teens interested in hospitality, Alison suggests. We talk about the goodwill it could generate for the business and the sense of ownership participants might feel afterwards.

“And when kids came down here and saw kids they knew doing the wrong thing, they would say ‘don’t do it’, because they have the connections,” she adds.

It’s win-win.