Principal's Update

Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

VCE results and DUX 2020

This year students will be receiving their results on the morning of Wednesday 30 December. Emma White, our Pathways Coordinator, Jo Greenhalgh, Director of Senior School, and I will be onsite to congratulate students who want to visit to celebrate and, most importantly, for any students who need to speak to Emma or Jo regarding advice on change of preferences for their choice of university or TAFE and courses. There will be an appointment schedule set up for this day that the Senior School team will communicate to our Year 12 students. Once I get approval from the Dux to release their name, I will organise for this to be posted on social media and will send an email out to all families to announce.

Awards Night

To recognise and celebrate the achievements of our students across all year levels this year, we prepared a pre-recorded video which I released to all parents, carers and students on Wednesday 9 December via Compass. Please refer to this email for the link if you still haven’t had the opportunity to watch. The video will be permanently stored on our YouTube channel. Included in my email was also the program listing all of our student award winners. Students who were nominated for Academic Excellence Awards, Sport Awards, Music and Art awards, various subject awards and our special sponsored awards were all recognised in our video. Although it looks very different to our usual event at the Moorabbin Town Hall, mainly due to mandated instructions from the Department at the time of recording that we all needed to wear masks unless giving a speech, it was still really important that we took the time to recognise our students’ efforts, positive work ethic and achievements in this extraordinary year. Our School Captains, Elisa Barone and Jack Phillpotts, were our MCs for this event and did a terrific job. They also gave very thoughtful speeches.

I would like to highlight our Dux award for each year level based on close examination of achievement data over the year to determine the highest performing student. The Dux for each year level was only revealed at the time of recording and, even though you may not have been able to notice on the video (due to mask wearing), there was genuine joy and excitement from each winner. After we stopped filming this section the rest of their year level, who had received an award, all gathered around the winner to congratulate them.

Congratulations to the following students:

Dux of Year 7: Kylie Wolfe

Dux of Year 8: Jake Hickey

Dux of Year 9: Harry Maginness

Dux of Year 9: Reema Ababneh

Dux of Year 10: Timothy Whitford

Dux of Year 11: Fasika Abera

Dux of Year 12: To be announced on Wednesday 30 December upon release of the Year 12 results

Building Program and Construction Site in 2021

From the recent tender process, Neo Construct has been awarded our project of building a two storey Year 7 & 8 Learning Centre. This appointment was made by the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA). We have met with them this week and they will be setting up in January to have the construction site ready for Stage 1, which is at the Year 7 end of the school. This just involves building the new bike shed and a new locker shed. Once these are constructed, the cricket nets, old bike shed and current Year 8 locker shed will be removed, and the Stage 2 construction site will be set up for our new two storey Year 7 & 8 Learning Centre. At this time, the main entry and exit points of the school off the walking track near the Discovery Centre will be blocked off for the rest of the year. Students coming from the train station, bus stop or from biking or walking along the track will need to proceed to the current Year 7 Learning Centre end of the school to enter or use the entrance on Attenborough Road. As we get closer to this happening, we will distribute our school map showing the temporary out of bounds areas and construction zone to students and families.  

It’s Academic

An event we always look forward to is the annual Mordialloc College Academic Challenge for our feeder primary schools’ Grade 5 students. This was held on Friday 4 December online due to the restrictions in place at the time. The event was run by our Middle School Captains. This year we had four of our feeder primary schools competing - Chelsea Heights PS, Bonbeach PS, Chelsea PS and Mordialloc Beach PS. It not only offers a unique taste of secondary school life, while making learning fun and relevant, it also provides valuable leadership and event management skills for our Year 9 Middle School leaders.

Congratulations to Chelsea PS who were the winners this year, closely followed by Chelsea Heights PS who were second (by one point!). Thanks to Director of Middle School, Daniel Williams, and our Middle School captains, Madi Galland, Jeremy Thai-Chan, Jasmine Cane and Thomas Toth for organising the event. Daniel will be visiting each primary school that participated this week to deliver the certificates and medals, along with the big trophy for first place that the winning school gets to keep in their school for a year, until the next event.

School Magazine

All students should have received a copy of our 2020 Venture School Magazine last Friday during last period - a valuable memento for all students. Year 12 students can come in and collect their copy from the Senior School Office or Reception and any other student who missed out can also collect a copy from Reception. My thanks to teacher, James Nicklen, for leading the development of this year’s magazine.

Richard Williams Scholarship Fund for Mordialloc College students

Please see page 4 of the Alumni newsletter (link below) to learn more about this opportunity for one of our students in 2021, and then in subsequent years. Applications have opened and will close on 01 March 2021. Richard Williams was an unsung local hero. He worked tirelessly for others and always put other people before himself. After his passing this year a few of his close friends, who have known him since they were students here together, got together to create this Scholarship Fund in his memory. On behalf of our students I thank the Alumni for working with Richard’s friends to set up this fund.

Mordialloc College Zone – in top 10 for Real estate price increases

In a recent school zones report on Domain.com.au, we feature in the top 10 for the highest growth rates, significantly surpassing Melbourne’s annual house price growth. Channel 7 also featured a story on Melbourne’s best public schools pushing up house prices, mentioning Mordialloc College!

Staffing 2021

This week we are farewelling a number of staff:  some staff who have achieved a promotion, others relocating for personal reasons and some who are taking family leave. Great schools build capacity and even though we are losing some significant staff members this year, we are all part of the one system and we can be proud our teachers are highly sought after!! I thank them all for their wonderful contributions to our College over their time with us. They will be missed by everyone and we wish them the very best in their new roles.

As a result we have employed (or are in the process of employing) a number of new staff and leaders to the College. We held a two day induction program on 4 and 7 December to welcome our new staff and introduce them to the key processes and policies of the College, along with Professional Learning on our instructional model and coaching program. They are all very excited to have achieved a teaching position at our College.

Leaving/Taking Leave

• Amy Webber – Psychology/History - relocating to the country for personal reasons and has a learning specialist leadership position at Euroa HS. Amy has been at the College for four years and has been a member of my leadership team.
   
• Dylan Piubello – History/English – promotion to a learning specialist leadership role at Cranbourne East SC. Dylan started out with us as a graduate teacher four years ago, so this is a significant appointment for him.
   
• Stuart McIntyre – PDT/STEM – after over 10 years at the College is taking up a new challenge at Prahran HS, a new school moving up to Year 9 next year. Stuart is setting up their technology rooms and programs.
   
• Alana Singh – Maths/Science – taking family leave to have her second child.
   
• Katrina Doros - Maths/Science – taking family leave to have her second child.
   
• Kaja Strzalka – currently on family leave and has been successful in securing a leading teacher position with the Department policy branch for 2021.
• Melvin Dang – seeking other employment opportunities.
   
• Justin Wischusen – Biology/STEM – relocating to the other side of Melbourne for personal reasons. He has secured a teaching position at University HS. Justin has been at the College for 11 years and is a member of my leadership team. I am currently working through the selection process for the appointment of a new teacher to take his teaching load. Maria Bitzios, a current staff member has been appointed to the Acting STEM / Science Learning Area learning specialist position and will join our leadership team.
   
• Andrew McConchie – Senior English and our Leader of Literacy Improvement (including Learning Area Leader for English) and our recent award winner, has secured a promotion to a role he has been aspiring to, Assistant Principal at Geelong HS. It also allows Andrew to relocate close to his family. Andrew has been at the College four years and is a member of my leadership team. This leadership role and teaching load is currently advertised and I hope to have an appointment by the start of the 2021 school year.

Returning/New

• Indigo York – started in Headstart, replacing Kym Lenc on family leave, Lauren Hibell will take over the load from Term 2 when she returns from family leave.
   
• Jillian Samuels – started in Headstart replacing Jenny Tran on family leave until mid-year 2021.
   
• Rachael Pierce – current staff member returning to teaching duties, leading VCAL literacy
   
• Emma Walker – Maths/Science – experienced teacher from Sandringham, 6 month contract until Liz Commons returns from family leave mid-year.
   
• Madeline Hutton – English/Humanities – graduate teacher to teach in our Year 8 program.
   
• Peter Adams – experienced PDT teacher – to replace Stuart McIntyre.
   
• Paige Buenemann – Psychology/Humanities - second year out teacher, replacing Amy Webber.
   
• Kate Duggan – History/Psychology – graduate teacher replacing Dylan Piubello.
   
• Phoebe Macreadie – Maths/Science – graduate teacher replacing Alana/Katrina.
   
• Lorna Griss – experienced teacher replacing Kaja 0.6 EAL teacher and Melvin 0.4 International Student Coordinator.
   
• Alexis Reinheimer – new social worker (mental health practitioner) joining the Wellbeing Team.

Two appointments are still to be made to replace Justin and Andrew.

We are also in the process of appointing our tutors for the Department tutoring initiative for Years 7-12 students in 2021, as I mentioned in my last newsletter article.

Note: Sally Mitchell, a current Leading Teacher, was successful in her application to take over Amy’s learning specialist role – VCE achievement, and Simon Cummins (former YLC) has been appointed to the Acting Leading Teacher role – Student Engagement.

Reports

A reminder that the Semester 2, 2020 reports have been available via the Compass Parent and Student Portals since Wednesday 2 December, and the 2021 Headstart progress reports will be available on Friday 18 December. Please contact the College if you have any trouble accessing them or if you would like a hard copy. I hope parents take the opportunity to discuss the report/s with their student/s including appropriate actions to put in place to address any areas for improvement highlighted.

As this will be the last newsletter for the year, I would like to recognise our committed and dedicated teaching and education support staff at the College and thank them sincerely for all of their hard work throughout this extraordinary year on behalf of the students. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the parents and teachers on our College Council and all members of the College leadership team for their leadership and commitment to the ongoing improvement of the College.

Finally I would like to thank all members of the College community for their ongoing support. I wish everyone a safe and restful Christmas and holiday break with family and friends and I look forward to seeing you all in 2021. Hopefully a much more settled and brighter year awaits us.

Ms. Michelle Roberts

Principal