Christway College Connection

From the Head of Campus' Desk

Dear Parents/Guardians

Hello to all of our Heatherton Christian College Community as we begin the 2020 school year.

 

We welcome our new students, families and staff to HCC and trust that you will quickly feel welcomed and be a part of our community. We will introduce our staff over the upcoming newsletters.

 

I do hope that you have had a wonderful Christmas season and holiday break – you may be wishing it was still going or you may be like me and looking forward to getting back into a regular routine again! Either way, I hope that this will be a significant year of growth and God's continued grace and blessings for you all.

 

I would like to use this, my first opportunity to communicate with you for 2020, to look back and to look forward.

 

Looking back to 2019

 

Our graduating VCE Class of 2019, achieved some wonderful results. I do congratulate them all on their contribution to our school and on their achievements and wish to particularly highlight our dux and school Captain, Talia Scott-Hayward. Talia achieved the highest ever ATAR for one of our students with a score of 99.45. This included a perfect study score of 50 for Further Mathematics – fantastic results for her and this, coupled with Talia’s strong work ethic, faith, humility and character, make us (and no doubt her parents!), incredibly proud of her. Overall, 100% of our students successfully achieved their VCE, 20% of our students achieved ATAR’s of over 90, and we achieved a Median score of 30.

 

Whilst it is easy to focus on these numbers and our top performers, behind each ATAR score is an individual with a story of their journey through school and a life pathway ahead of them – all this has been and will be part of God's plans for their life. The ATAR should not be the ultimate definer of a student’s outcome at school. Indeed, some of the student’s stories are truly inspirational as they have worked to overcome many challenges and difficulties in their lives, or experienced and contributed to the lives of other students and people in and out of the school.

 

Some students will be disappointed with their final scores, which in itself can be part of the growth for them to reflect on things they need to change or improve to achieve their best. This season of life at HCC has finished but the next season of their lives is just beginning so we look forward to hearing news of their progress and journey.

 

Looking forward to 2020 at HCC

 

We look forward to students enjoying their improved facilities here at HCC, including the extensive landscaping that has taken place at the back of the school, improvements to the Grade 5 & 6 portables, Music tuition rooms and student toilets (with more work to come on improving these later in the year) – please see the separate article outlining these improvements later in this newsletter.

 

This year we will also begin implementing our new Strategic plan with our 5 Strategic Priorities, these priorities being;

  • Faith in Action
  • Learning and Creativity
  • Growing Leaders
  • Health and Wellbeing
  • Innovation and Enterprise

 

Through these Strategic Priorities, our vision of, “Growing in Christ, striving for excellence, influencing the world”, and our “Five foundations of a whole, healthy child”, we will look to keep improving how we help our students grow spiritually, emotionally, academically, physically and socially, as well as in Christian character and skills. Regardless of what academic results students may achieve, we want them to know that God loves them unconditionally and they have been created with unique gifts passions and natures to serve Him and others – hopefully, they can develop and live out a God-given dream through this!

 

Helping Parents to grow

 

We are also wanting to play our part in helping you, as parents, build your capacity and effectiveness and so will be seeking to offer seminars this year on topics of interest and need. To assist us in our planning I would love to have your input into what topics you would see as being of greatest need and interest to you. Some possible topics could include:

 

Improving your child's cyber safety and security, reducing screen time, helping to reduce student anxiety, improving relationship skills, ways to help your child grow in their faith, setting healthy boundaries for teenagers, building resilience and helping your child bounce back from adversity, to name but a few.

 

The possibilities are numerous and, although we will never be able to meet all needs across parents of Years Prep to 12, if you can let us know what is most important to you we will try to meet the most common and pressing needs through arranging some seminars, as well as advertising relevant seminars or opportunities happening elsewhere through our newsletter. Please email your thoughts on what seminars you would like us to offer to our Events Coordinator, Kelsey Richards, on kelsey.richards@hcc.vic.edu.au by Friday 7 February to enable us to get our planning underway.

 

I wish you a year of meaning, growth and God’s ongoing blessings.

 

Phil Eastman

Head of Campus