Christway College Connection

From the Head of Campus' Desk

Dear Parents/Guardians

It is great to see the 2021 Secondary Student Leadership team on the cover photo of our newsletter (even though they are a little hard to distinguish behind their masks!). The Leadership team consists of our College Captains, Jade Smith and Hannes De Beer, our Prefects and our House Captains. We will mention about these students further in an upcoming newsletter.

 

HCC Strategic Priorities 

We are continuing in our series of articles focussing on each of our 5 Strategic Priorities – one priority per newsletter. The Strategic Priorities are intended to guide our efforts to enhance your child’s future, both whilst at Heatherton Christian College and beyond. The five Strategic Priorities are:

• Faith in Action

• Learning and Creativity

• Innovation and Enterprise

• Growing Leaders

• Health and Wellbeing

 

Priority 3 - Innovation and Enterprise 

Our objective in this priority is to raise Christian thinkers, designers and entrepreneurs who solve problems and create ethical and sustainable social and business solutions.

 

The associated goals for this priority are to:

  • encourage all students and staff to be innovative, enterprising and entrepreneurial in seeking to develop skills and mindsets to identify and solve societal and/or College based issues in an ethical and Christian values- based manner.
  • enhance business and employment opportunities for students both within and outside of HCC.

Increasingly we read how the world of employment is changing and the sets of skills and mindsets required by our children into the future will be different – a good ATAR or university degree, whilst still important, needs to be accompanied by an ability to learn and innovate, to be of good character, to be effective in communication, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration. The world increasingly needs people who are able to generate innovative solutions and products in an ethical manner. Hence our desire to make this objective one of our Priorities.

 

Where I think we are doing well at the moment

We currently have a number of curriculum programs in place that provide a space to innovate and develop enterprise skills. These include:

  • Year 4 Year in the Yard
  • Year 5 & 6 Financial Literacy ‘Benson Bucks’ program
  • Year 7 & 8 Entrepreneurial Studies elective class
  • Year 9 & 10 Business and Enterprise Studies elective class
  • Hospitality program
  • VCE Business Management

In Year 7&8 we have offered an elective that develops entrepreneurial skills and mindsets as students start up their own enterprise. Students are applying the knowledge, understanding and skills they have developed to solve a problem or implement a project. The process involves students generating an idea, and then working to develop this idea into a viable business that produces a product or service. At the conclusion of the elective, students reflect on and analyse their business model and their experience as an entrepreneur.

 

Some of the areas where we will seek to grow further

 

We have started on this journey and are moving forward with the implementation of ‘E School’ – a core subject for our Year 7 & 8 students and an elective in Year 9s in 2021. This will build up and extend the enterprise mindsets and practical skills of the students.

 

We are intending to build this entrepreneurial mindset both upwards into the Senior school through offering options such as a VET entrepreneurial qualification, providing external mentoring and internships, as well as working to build further innovative options to support student skills and purpose.

 

We are also seeking to partner with local and community businesses to provide additional enterprise opportunities for our students. 

 

Finally, we are currently looking to develop networks with other schools to share ideas and thoughts on entrepreneurial programs. We are excited to grow in this space to better serve the students for their lives in and beyond Heatherton Christian College.

 

We are looking forward to the journey ahead!

 

Phil Eastman

Head of Campus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Thank you to Mrs Christina Douglas, our Careers and Enterprise Skills Teacher, for her input on this article.