Student Voice
End of Term 3: Student Voice
College Captains
Where has the time gone South Oakleigh! We have reached the end of Term 3! It has been a term that has zoomed past for all our 7-12 cohorts! This term has been filled with both academic and events, such as Wellfest Week, the school production as well as planning for the Year 12 Valedictory Dinner.
Before we cover the events mentioned above, we first have to travel back to the beginning of term. On Thursday 8 August, Genna and I with some senior leaders of our school, Ella Hayes, William D’Costa and Lucien Tarjan were invited to attend the Sir John Monash Commemorative Service.
Sir John Monash was a significant figure in Melbourne, with a lot of places in Melbourne named in honour of his work, including Monash Medical Centre and Monash University. Sir John Monash throughout his life took the view that no learning was wasted and always sought extra knowledge. His recommendation was always to; “adopt as your fundamental creed that you will equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community”, reflection Sir John Monash’s commitment to giving back to the community. The service was inspiring for us and we thank John Monash Science School for extending the invite to our school.
On August 5th to 9th, our Student Representative Council (S.R.C.) hosted the annual Wellfest Week for our college community. Wellfest Week aims to promote the importance of all dimensions of health to students and staff. To do this, our S.R.C. hosted various activities to boost student and community morale. We started the week off with Tag-a-Friend, an activity giving our staff and students the opportunity to write a kind message to one another. On the Tuesday, the S.R.C. had an out of uniform day, with a ‘cosy’ themed outfit, with funds going to StreetSmart Australia, an organisation working to combat the issue of homelessness. On the Wednesday, there was the MasterChef competition, where students went head-to-head in creating their sweet dishes. It was a tricky decision to make as the sweet dishes had their unique tastes, but congratulations to team “Classmates 7.11”, Edward Oliynyk, Nathan Cohen and Jeremy Tsitouridis for their cheesecake. The Wellfest Week program finished off with a celebratory breakfast club as well as a lunchtime karaoke by our performing arts students. Well done to the S.R.C. for organising a successful week of events for our college community.
On August 15th to 16th, the SOC Production, Newsies Jr was performed live in the theatre. A round of applause for the staff, crew and performers for a splendid performance! Throughout this term, our SOC Podcast “What’s Up SOC” has been in the scenes, capturing all of the action during the term. We just wanted to say a huge thankyou to our hosts, Stacey Maskas and Ella Hayes and our TV Studio crew, Mr Philip Clark, Athanasius and Antosha for the filming and editing. We hope that this initiative will continue well into South Oakleigh’s future and we look forward to seeing it evolve further.
Throughout this term, the Year 12 Valedictory Committee, in collaboration with Year 12 Leader, Ms Ferguson and Senior School Director, Ms Monga, have been involved in fundraising for our upcoming Year 12 Valedictory Dinner. We have organised fundraisers, which have been a bakesale and running a “guess how many lollies are in the jar” fundraiser, which will contribute towards funding for the dinner. We look forward to celebrating this special milestone with our family and friends on Monday 14th of October.
On to our year 12 cohort, our VCE and VCE-VM cohort have reached the end of Unit 4 studies, with the completion of all SACs, with the next step being exam revision and for our VCE-VM cohort, work placement. The Year 12 students have been working hard, putting full efforts towards their studies and showing their full commitment to achieving the best results. We would like to take this time to congratulate our Year 12’s for reaching this milestone. Term 3 has been a significant one for us, especially because it is nearing the end of our schooling. We want to extend our deepest gratitude to our Year 12 Teachers, students and family and friends who have supported us throughout our years of schooling. Our cohort is looking forward to spending our last two weeks of school in Term 4.
Furthermore, on Thursday the 12th of September, The 2025 Student Leadership Elections took place, with candidates for College Captain, Vice-College Captain, S.R.C. President/Vice President and House Captains. Well done to all the candidates for applying and presenting in front of our whole school. Stay tuned for the results! On another note, as our time as Year 12 students is concluding, so is our time being your 2024 College Captains. We will be forever grateful for giving us the opportunity to represent you. This role has made memories for us, with the connection with South Oakleigh being concrete. But don’t worry SOC, we’re not going anywhere just yet!
You will see us in the next 2 editions of Oak News as well as through the period of student leadership handover which will take place during term 4.
To end the term, our performing arts department hosted the annual South Oakleigh’s Got Talent! Well done to everyone for showcasing their amazing talents.
This brings us to the end of our term 3 update, we wish everyone a restful break and see you back in Term 4!
Greg Acciarito & Genna Windsor
College Captains
SRC Presidents
SRC Term 3 Newsletter
PRESIDENT REPORT
Term 3 is often SRC’s busiest term, with events like House Athletics, Wellfest Week, and R U OK day. It keeps us all busy as we work towards the end of the school year. House Athletics, as always was an incredible event, with so much help and support from all competitors, and helpers alike. Thank you all for the enthusiasm! Wellfest Week was the biggest event we ran this term, with 4 jam packed days full of activities for students to enjoy. There were Out of Uniform days, incursions and Fundraisers just to name a few. Overall, we hope students were satisfied with the week and it was able to achieve our aim of promoting all aspects of Health and Wellbeing throughout the school, whether is be physical, mental, spiritual, emotional or social. Thank you to all the support from every student who helped, donated, or was even there. We could’ve done it without you, and we hope every Wellfest Week can be as dynamic as this one!
Throughout the last few weeks, we hoped you would’ve seen the student nomination for leadership positions open up, including SRC president. As we approach the end of our term, we hope that you’ll give a warm welcome to our next set of Presidents. The work we’ve seen from this year yields good signs for the future of South Oakleigh SRC, and we have complete confidence in the new leaders to come next year. Good luck to everyone who’s applied, and we wish you well in the next stages of leadership! The next term will also include applications for 2025 SRC as well, so we encourage all of you to get involved and apply in term 4! We’ve enjoyed everything SRC’s had to offer, and we hope you will too!
Finally, our plans for the rest of this term and next term are still just as exciting! With fundraisers to come, we hope you’ll stay up to date with all SRC has to offer and get involved as much as possible! For any questions, queries, or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact Mackenzie or myself!
Ana Donnellon and Mackenzie Dickson
SRC Presidents
Communications
Coming into this new semester fresh with the new team members is going to be exciting! As we started the first few weeks, our Communications portfolio has begun reaching out to the whole school community by spreading news regarding our House Athletics Carnival. We had a mixture of verbal announcements, getting in touch with the “What’s Up SOC” podcast, as well as posters to make sure that everyone was notified about the event. Our next initiative is to promote the big event of Term 3 – Wellfest Week! We are excited to be sharing the news about each upcoming activities and events held during the week. With tons of fun upcoming projects, comes many promotions done by our portfolio. We’ll be making sure that the word about each and every one of the activities will be clearly shared and heard by the school community. Make sure to keep your eyes and ears open this week! In addition to that, we’re seeking to come up with more innovative ways to pass on the announcements of any upcoming events, to create more eye-catching and engaging notices so that no one would miss out on any information. Regardless, don’t forget to keep your eye on the bulletin boards, TV screens, and Compass newsfeed to catch up on the latest news provided by our portfolio!
Abigail Avienna
Breakfast Club
Over the course of Term 3, our dedicated school leaders have continued to run the Breakfast Club program with it thriving with large number of students, teachers and staff attending Breakfast Club to enjoy a nice nutritious breakfast just before the school day starts. It was rewarding to see our efforts in planning and organising paid off and positively impacted our school community. Our current menu consists of, cheese/and ham toasties and quesadillas, toast, tea, cereal, and milk. Over the course of the year, our Breakfast Club portfolio wishes to add more items to the menu to ensure that we have a large spread of foods that would satisfy the tastes of all our students. Our next Celebratory Breakfast Club will be held on the 19 September and the menu will consist of the normal menu plus, hashbrowns, milkshakes, bacon, eggs, pastries, juice and more. Overall, the Breakfast Club program is doing very well, and we hope to see even more people come to our Breakfast Clubs. We acknowledge all the students that come help us in their time to make the Breakfast Club continue to thrive, and it is deeply appreciated. If you have any questions or queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Stef Milanovic (smmiln@schools.vic.edu.au) via teams of email.
Stef Milanovic
Curriculum and Student Experience
The Curriculum and Student Experience Portfolio during Term 3 was responsible for assisting with various events that were held by the SRC during Wellfest Week. Some of these events include the Krispy Kreme fundraiser, the MasterChef competition, and the Tag-A-Friend morale booster. With this being the first term of our new portfolio reshuffle, we have been working very efficiently as a team while collaborating over the Wellfest Week activities and planning for next term. We have continued to work on the long-anticipated student led yearbook project and wish to finish it soon. With events ranging from the swimming carnival to the upcoming formal, jam packed with iconic photos, exclusive interviews, and great memories of the year past, we hope the yearbook will live up to expectations. In the near future we are planning for next term to organise study resources for students in preparation for semester two exams. In doing this, we are hoping to boost student experience during the stressful time that we know exams can be, and after the exams to help everyone achieve the best marks they can. In the term ahead the Curriculum team looks to continue our work helping to maximise student engagement with the school and the wonderful community that resides within it.
Jack Wright and Ezra Bernshaw
Connections and Wellbeing
The connections and wellbeing team has had a great term, with events like "Wellfest" Week making a productive term for us all.
Our largest project during this week was Tag a Friend, where each student received a supportive message from their peers. After long days of sorting, we were able to get these out a week later – we hope everyone enjoyed these messages! This Thursday we ran R U OK day to raise awareness for those going through difficult times in their lives and promote connectivity between peers.
Next term we have some amazing ideas for some events that we hope you’ll love! We’ll keep you posted, and always remember to keep an ear out for any events that Wellbeing and Connections will do!
JJ Syer
2024 Curriculum Portfolio Leading Representative
Student Representative Council
Monash Division Hockey Competition
On the 11 September, a squad of 30 Year 7s and 8s went to Hawthorn Hockey Club to participate in the Monash Division Junior Hockey competition.
The Year 7s started the morning with their first match against Brentwood. After being nil all for most of the match, a brilliant tap-in goal from an excellent series of passes in the last five minutes won us the match. After going off for our by-round, we discovered we had won the only match we needed to, as there were two Year 7 teams in the competition. We then played Brentwood’s Year 8s, holding a much fitter and more skilful team down to a 0-0 draw thanks to brilliant saves by our keeper and communication in our backline. Our goalkeeper’s kit was then requisitioned by the Year 8 team for their three-way shootout, so we played our final match- a friendly against Brentwood’s Year 7s- as 11 field players. The game followed a similar pattern; both sides locked in an arm wrestle before we pulled away after a brilliant flow of passes in a counterattack. A big shout out to Alex Robertson who coached the year 7’s.
On the other hand, the year 8's played against Brentwood and Wheelers Hill, drawing against both teams and entering a 3-way penalty shoot out. Though their structure and teamwork was great. Unfortunately we came 2nd in the shoot out leaving us second in the tournament. It was great to see the year 8's come together and improve their teamwork skills throughout the day. A special mention to Jack Wright for his wonderful coaching with the year 8’s.
Thank you so much to Ms Jenkins for taking us, and for both teams for coming to training every week. Good luck Year 7s at regionals and we hope to see both teams again next year.
Jack Wright (year 10) and Alex Robertson (year 9)
Coaches