116 | COMMUNITY Salisbury School: Fitzgerald Construction Your Nelson & Tasman Glass Specialists Glass & Retrofit • Balustrades & Fencing • Automotive & Marine • Specialised Glass richmondglass.co.nz 03 544 8189 sales@richmondglass.co.nz timmillerplumbing.co.nz 0800 PLUMBING merv@timmillerplumbing.co.nz 03 547 4532 T T Virginia Wright Purpose-built classrooms a huge boost Salisbury works in partnership with students, their whānau and home schools to support individual learning, wellbeing and future pathways during their time at Salisbury. Nelson’s specialist, residential school, now called Salisbury School, dates back to 1916 when the property became the Richmond Special School for girls. Renamed in 1963, it’s unique in Australasia as a residential school for girls only, taking pupils from ages eight to 15 years on enrolment. With complex backgrounds, behavioural, and/ or social issues, the students have met certain Ministry of Education criteria before being accepted into Salisbury School. Considered a short-term intervention school, Salisbury works in partnership with students, their whānau and home schools to support individual learning, wellbeing and future pathways during their time at Salisbury “Our young people have diverse learning support needs, so it’s different from going to college with a hostel attached to it,” says Ellie Salcin-Watts, who has been principal there since 2020. “We work with our students across the normal school day, but our curriculum continues when they go into the residential setting where they learn to manage themselves with the skills of daily living, social skills, learning to live with others and so on. All of that continues in a very planned way.” The school caters for the top 2% to 3% of young people with complex needs in the country, and Ellie has been there long enough to have a very good understanding of both the school and the cohort they are there to serve. The school provides a 24/7 environment, with intensive wraparound and supportive learning, designed to get students’ life skills and self-regulation back on track. Achieving that outcome has been at the forefront of decision-making as Ellie has overseen the carefully planned modernisation of their three classrooms. “Our students have complex and diverse needs, so it’s important that we provide an environment that feels manageable and supportive, with the specialist focus needed to achieve meaningful outcomes,” she says. Each of the 20 pupils goes into a classroom with a curriculum individually tailored to their specific needs and to the national curriculum. It’s an adapted learning programme intended to close the gap and catch them up with essentials like literacy and numeracy within the classroom – no longer making do with 100-year-old classrooms makes that task considerably easier. Fitzgerald Construction won the tender for the Day School, and then worked closely with Salisbury School to achieve an outcome that not only met, but surpassed everything the principal had hoped for, she says. “They had OMB (Offsite Modular Buildings) stock available in Nelson, which meant we could work quickly, but they enabled us, with so much tailoring, to provide a contemporary, purpose-designed learning environment really fast. It’s been amazing.” Fitzgerald Construction and Red Box Architects collaborated with the school, paying close attention to how they worked in their space to understand how the students could benefit from a purpose-built environment where practical infrastructure takes diverse learning- support needs into consideration. They broke ground in January and had three classrooms, a break-out space, internal toilets and an office for the deputy principal ready for term 3, complete with a wraparound verandah going out onto an outdoor seating quadrangle. Given the range of sensory needs, special attention was paid to both window placement and lighting as well as acoustic treatment to keep the sound clear and concise, but dampened. Each classroom has a built-in ‘maker-space’ designed for experiential, hands-on learning. One entire wall is storage for all the different subject needs, which means desks and benches are kept clear. “Books and laptops are put away when they’re not in use, helping to minimise visual distractions and create a calm, purposeful learning environment. This helps our young people focus their attention and energy on their learning,” says Ellie. Having activities seamlessly transitioning within the same space makes the most of every learning window, and the positive impact is already obvious, she says.
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