PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Erin Wright - Principal

STRIVE

Upon our return on site from the remote learning period, DET has urged schools to stay focused on three main priorities:

Attendance – we want to prioritise students being at school so that we know that they are still connected to school and engaged in learning opportunities.  If your child’s mentor teacher or Learning Community Leader is in touch about any missed days, or sequences of absences, for your child/ren, please get back to us. We want to work in partnership to support all students to be at school all of the time.  The lock downs have proven this is the best place for them to be.

Wellbeing – if students are not happy and feeling positive emotions, then they are less likely to be able to engage in their learning.  A young person’s wellbeing is paramount to their ability to be ready to learn.  If you feel that your child/ren need support, reach out to their mentor teacher who can help connect them with Wellbeing supports at the College. We will soon have a School Nurse also joining the SCSC team to be able to further support our Health Promotion and facilitate proactive groups to enhance student wellbeing.

Learning and Teaching – whilst during remote learning our staff still do a great job of providing a quality learning program for our students, we are best at what we do with our students in front of us.  A priority currently is ensuring that we are engaging in using the information and data that we have about our students well and targeting teaching to the needs of our students as best we can. 

UNITE

I have lost count of the times that I have expressed thanks to the College community for your ability to work in strong partnership with each other to support our young people during remote learning periods.  Whilst this period of time was, thankfully, shorter than expected, I want to especially thank the staff that spent a significant amount of time on the Friday adjusting Canvas courses, adding in Discussion Boards, creating video tutorials, tidying up the structure of their modules and acting on the feedback that we received in the remote learning surveys undertaken by students the day prior.  We also thank the parents that contributed to these surveys and helped us to form a picture of the experience or remote learning from home.  This week, we are engaging some students in some forums to further explore the feedback also.  We truly hope that there is not another period of remote learning in the College this year, but we are pleased that our students in particular indicated that they feel well supported by their teachers and that they know where to reach out for help.  I have also included in this newsletter a summary (attached below) of the results of the surveys which was sent to the College community during the remote period.

RESPECT

Congratulations to our Year 10 students who have been engaging in volunteer work with Feed Me Surf Coast on Wednesday afternoons to assist with packaging and distributing food to those in need in our local community.  This is a great work experience opportunity, as well as a wonderful way for our young people to give back to the community.  The students participating have had to volunteer their time to be involved, and I commend them for the respectful way that they have been engaging in this work. We have had feedback from the Feed Me Surf Coast group about how our students are going above and beyond what is required of them at times in their visits.  We look forward to this week resuming tomorrow now that we are back on site.

FLOURISH

Congratulations to a number of students who have been active in our local community, sharing their views on important issues that affect us all and advocating for the experience of young people to be considered.

19 students participated in the Digital Youth Summit on Tuesday August 10th. This summit, Senior students were trained as summit facilitators to run workshops with small groups of students from younger year levels during the summit.  The intent of this summit was to give our local young people an opportunity to explore local and state youth health and wellbeing data and to develop project ideas that will contribute practical solutions in their local emerging community using design thinking processes.  I attended part of the day and I was so proud of how passionate and articulate all of the participants were. We shall share some of their work with you in the coming weeks.

Congratulations to the participants:

• Ashtyn A
• Joely A
• Olivia B
• Nina D
• Archie F
• Jasmine G
• Charlotte G
• Grace J
• Tobias K
• Finlay M
• Aisha M
• Jason S
• Shari S
• Khye T
• Olivia T
• Jax W
• Mila W
• Tyson W
• Taylor W

An extra special mention to our Vice Captain Tyson W. who was a facilitator in the Youth Summit but also attended a Mental Health Forum organised by Libby Coker MP and attended by Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health, Emma McBride. Tyson was featured in the Surf Coast Times and his insightful, mature comments about the need for improved access to services for young people was inspiring.  Well done Tyson!