Principal's Report

Dear Parents and Carers,

Our final newsletter for 2020! What a year, thankyou for your support and I look forward to working with you next year. I wish all our students who are leaving our school and families who are moving from Armidale all the best. I hope you look back on your time at O’Connor with fond memories.

Starting Days 2021

Staffing 2021

Yesterday we farewelled Mrs Cath Deshon who returns to St Joseph’s Walgett. Cath has worked as Literacy and RE teacher for the past two years. The care she has shown our students has been amazing and I thank her for her hard work. We wish Cath all the best as she leaves our O’Connor Community.

We also farewelled Mitchell Smidt and Elitia Parry. Both Mitch and Elitia have been on leave this year working at UNE and have resigned their positions at O’Connor. 

Mitch has been at O’Connor for over 10 years and held many leadership positions including Leader of Learning (Science) and Leader of Learning (Curriculum). He has made a significant contribution to our community and fostered a love of Science in our students. Mitch’s passion is biology and he worked hard to make this relevant to all our students with practical experiences like field trips. We wish Mitch all the best for the future.

Elitia has worked in our English KLA and in the literacy area since joining O’Connor. She is an outstanding educator and worked hard with our students to bring out their best. Elitia’s passion for English was evident in her work with our students, especially senior English students. We wish Elitia well for the future.

We thanked a number of staff who are finishing up their leadership positions and recognised their significant contribution to our community. We thanked and recognised Michael Wooster for his work as Leader of Learning (English) and Lloyd Honnery and Peter McLeish for their work as Pastoral Academic Care Leaders.  We thanked Delwyn Smidt for her work in HSIE faculty this term and Natalie Mellowship-Brown for her work as Learning Manager. 

Mrs Melissa Killen will be taking six months leave and we wish her all the best. We look forward to her returning in Semester 2 to work with us on our next musical!

Our Leaders for 2021 are;

Leaders of Learning

Year 7 Natalie Mellowship-Brown

Year 8 Kath Czinner

Year 9 James Russell

Year 10 Amanda Bell/Frank Patricks

Year 11 Vicki Channon

Year 12 Mark Fulloon

English Lauren Donnelly

Maths Mark Harris

HSIE Cherie Stoessel

Science Daniel Fittler/Lilly Moar

TAS Jon Hawthorne

PDHPE Camilla Clydsdale  

CAPA Melita Roache 

VETinschool Jim Healey

EVET Lilly Moar

Enrichment Jenny Roff

ICT Mark Harris

Roles - 

Inclusion Support Teachers Katie Biddle/Natalie Gurr 

ATSI Teacher James Russell

Learning Manager Melanie Sampson 

Sport Mark Honeysett

Literacy Coach Michael Wooster

Leadership Team

AP Damian Roff

AP/Leader of Pedagogy Stephen Chapman

LOL (PAC&Wellbeing) Mellissa Bell

LOL (Inclusion) Katie Biddle

Principal Regina Menz

I wish you all a Happy and Holy Christmas and a wonderful holiday.

What new learning will you undertake this week?

Regina Menz