Article from the Education Gazette July 2006
In 2002, at an ASDAN celebration day in the Hawke’s Bay, two students from the Marist Learning Centre – an alternative education centre in the North Shore – asked their tutor, Melodie McDonald, if they could present to an audience of more than 100 people. Both girls had completed and achieved Gold awards and had stories of failed school situations. One of the girls had moved five times around the country, been involved with drugs and gangs and was eventually sent to the Marist centre where she embarked on ASDAN and got her self esteem and her self belief back. The parents she had given so much grief to were there to hear her story that day and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. In her speech that day, she told the audience that she really enjoyed the challenges in the scheme since they were “real life” situations and not just theoretical. “The practical aspects in planning, researching and presenting the work allowed for my creative and imaginative abilities to be discovered. The satisfaction of seeing the tasks completed, approved and rewarded was enormous,” she said. Melodie has countless such success stories from the programme. The centre originally introduced ASDAN because it was unable to offer any formal qualification such as School Certificate. The first six ASDAN files they submitted passed and Melodie says the difference in the students once they had achieved something was “huge”. “It was always a struggle to get students to come to school, and now our attendance is up over 90 per cent. We can’t get rid of them,” says Melodie. “At the moment we have a flu going through the centre. They’re all sick but keep coming into the school to work on their programme. And we’re talking about students who were all once non-attenders.” Melodie comments that with ASDAN, she sees herself in a facilitating, rather than teaching role. “Students have to think for themselves and it teaches them independence, and coming out of the school system they’re not taught that. So once they’ve got through the bronze system and are working independently I can walk out of the room for half an hour and come back and they’re still working away.”
2005 Award Ceremony