Principal's Report
NEVR Concert
Congratulations to all of our students and teachers involved in the North Eastern Victoria Regional concert this week. The concert was held at Hamer Hall in the Arts Centre precinct. This is a world class venue where some of Australia's best orchestras perform, so it was no wonder our students were excited! The Region goes all the way to the border of NSW, so many students had to travel a long way. There were many outstanding performances from students from other schools, but I admit that it is most exciting when our students are performing! Amelia Bruninink blew the audience away with her solo rendition of the Sal Tlay Ka Siti, from the Book of Mormon. She looked every inch the professional singing in London or New York, and sounded just as good. Marten Visser accompanied her. Our Senior Choir made up a large part of the Combined Secondary Choir and they mesmerised the audience as they walked in single file towards the stage, singing as they went. The three part harmony they sang was incredibly difficult and incredibly beautiful.
The finale of the evening was the Wind Symphony, lead by our very own Danny Van Bergen. Ms Kim Green was the Manager of the group. There were many Wantirna students in the group and they reprised one of my favourite performances from our Mid Year Arts festival, Peter Allen's The Boy From Oz medley. It was outstanding music and so engaging for the audience. I always find enjoy music I can recognise and the rest of the audience was the same, tapping their feet and almost singing along.
I would like to congratulate all of our students and instrumental music staff for their remarkable energy and their entertaining performances.
Thank you also to Mr Shane Kruger and Mr Andrew Lewis for volunteering to work backstage. Shane was allowed free reign with the Stage Management, showing how his expertise is appreciated by the professionals. And Andrew's work was acknowledged as the professional Hamer Hall staff allowed him to work side by side with them. I heard a rumour that they actually had fun! A special thanks to Mr Marten Visser for his continued inspiration in our Music Program and for continually finding these events that stretch our students, and build their musicality.
I would also like to publicly thank the NEVR of the Department of Education and Training, and our Regional Director, Ms Judy Rose, for providing this world class opportunity for our students. Thank you to the Regional Instrumental Music Team, Carl Williams, Val Becker and Sheryl Morrow for their tireless work for music in the east.
Thank you also to Ian from John Travers Photography, who were the official photographers for the night, for so quickly releasing the photos of Amelia for this newsletter. Photos of the other groups will be released soon.
Recent Leaks of Confidential information
You may have read in the papers over the last two weeks of the leaks of confidential information from the computer systems of two schools, Blackburn High School and Camberwell High School. The Compass Learning Management system was mentioned in the articles, but in no way were its security systems breached in either case. The problem came about in one case through a student entering the system through a teacher laptop, and something similar in the other case. They sent emails to parents pretending to be the school and asking for credit card numbers. Some people obliged.
OUR COLLEGE WILL NEVER SEND YOU AN EMAIL ASKING YOU TO SEND BACK YOUR CREDIT CARD DETAILS.
Our main point of payment is becoming credit card through the highly encrypted and secure Compass system.
We are taking action to ensure we are even more secure. Teachers will shortly be moving to new 12 character passwords, and every student will be adopting a new complex 8 password. Please encourage them not to share their passwords with anyone. While on passwords, I'd like to remind you not to share your parent password for Compass with your child. That is for you alone.
Safety to and from School
This isn't a topic I like discussing, but is an important one for you to know about and take a reasoned approach. All state schools are on a shared emergency management network. If something of concern happens in another school, I receive an email about it. I am saddened when I hear of students being approached by people they don't know on the way to or from school, or followed or think they are being photographed by someone they don't know. Each week I would receive an email about this for another school. We had our first incident this week. We will talk to students about what to do if they are approached, and we hope you can also discuss basic personal safety with them. It is part of our world, and as adults we all take precautions when we are out and about. Our young people need to learn what we know. If this type of thing happens for your child please ask them to go immediately to an adult they know for assistance.
Cyber safety Night
The Cyber Safety Night has had nothing but rave reviews. I think I have had more emails from parents about this night than most other topics. The presenter said we had the most number of parents attending from all the schools they'd spoken at recently, which shows you think it is an important topic. Your emails have talked about the strong family conversations you've had since about keeping safe in the world of the internet. You clearly found the information useful, so we will do it again next year. We are always really happy to organise events like this which you find useful - let us know if there is anyone else you would like to hear speak.
Thank you to Mrs Dina Mingos and the Middle Years Team for organising this.
Year 12 production of The Crucible
I'm not sure if I should tell you how remarkable this production is - there are only two nights of the show left and I don't know if there are any tickets! I've probably seen this iconic Arthur Miller play performed professionally 3 times, many times by school groups and I've taught it as a Year 12 English text. But I don't think I have ever been as captivated and as emotionally engaged as the performance I saw last night. At the end, when the audience was meant to break into rapturous applause there was momentary silence - we were all so captured in the emotion that applause seemed like it would break the spell.
I reflected on why and the word that kept coming to mind was 'powerful'. The performance of each character was powerful; the actors were living their characters. At no time during the performance did they drop their characters. There are some quite long court room scenes where some of the actors say little, but as you watched their faces it was like they were those people living in the moment and reacting to the 'real' scene before them.
The lead characters had to contend with very complex speeches with 'old English' language but the way they delivered it made it totally easy to understand, and I think my understanding of the play deepened because of their acting. Symbolically Miller was commenting on the 1950s USA ostracizing of communists, called McCarthyism. There are so many parallels in today's world that the play is still remarkable relevant.
Congratulations to all of the cast -
John Proctor – Patrick Rogers
Abigail Williams – Amelia Bruinink
Ann Putnam & Elizabeth Proctor – Gabi Cameron
Reverend Samuel Parris – Matt McKenna
Reverend John Hale – Lockie Evans
Mary Warren & Susanna Walcott – Kaitlin Austin
Deputy Governor Danforth – Sumaiyah Noor Babar
Betty Parris, Sarah Good & Martha Corey – Tea Le Gassick
Judge Hathorne & Thomas Putnam – Stacey Alexander
Tituba – Tineque Law
Mercy Lewis – Ailina Kumar
Rebecca Nurse – Rebecca Smedley
Giles Corey – James Keam
Francis Nurse – Liam Papic
Marshal Herrick Ezekiel Cheever –Nikhil De Silva
Four of the students above aren't actually in the class, but thought they would volunteer and help out. Wantirna College students continue to amaze me with their generosity and willingness to have a go!
Congratulations to Lochie Evans as the production's director and to their teacher, Shane Kruger, who set them such a challenging task.
Sue Bell
Principal