From the Principal

Welcome Back

Welcome back to school to all students, families and new staff. We have had a fantastic start to the year with students engaging in their new subjects, new staff settling in with a great range of skills and plenty of support from our families.

Year 7 Transition

Ms Adams last year introduced a new transition program for the first few days to make sure our year 7 students felt completely at ease before they began the rigours of the teaching and learning program. This has continued in 2019 with students being oriented with the layout of the school including locating all classrooms, library, gym and music centre as well as the Food technology area which is the only building operating on the East Campus. Students have now settled with their lockers, combination locks, computer logons and program passwords along with assessments to be ready to learn. They are now on camp at Halls Gap getting to know each other and will return as fully fledged, inducted members of Baimbridge College, ready to take on their next challenge. Thank you to parents for their support of Ms Adams, her form teachers, Mrs Cook and Mr MacDonald this week.

Our Year 7's on Camp, more next issue.

New Staff

Last year saw us farewell a number of staff into retirement or to take up new challenges and some just taking a well earned long service break. This has given us the opportunity to welcome new staff into the school and we have been incredibly fortunate with the calibre of teachers we have attracted. The names of staff and their areas of teaching are listed below.

• Ms. Gemma Kemp – P.E/Outdoor Ed
• Ms. Hayley Boxall – P.E/Health
• Mr Phil Sanders – P.E/Health
• Ms. Molly Savage – Hums/English
• Mr James Tan – Chinese/Math/Science
• Ms. Samanthi Senaviratne- Humanities/Business Managment
• Ms. Kerrie Schulz – Food Tech.
• Mr. Tony Healy – Math/Science/Materials
• Ms. Konattu Sobha – Math/Science
• Mr. Mark Kuchel – Math/Science
• Mr. Jeremy Chen – Math/Science
• Ms. Hazel Weir – English/Hums
• Mr. Hong Nguyen – Math Science
• Ms. Lyn Collins – Pathways/Health HD
• Ms. Mary-Anne Porter – Food Tech

Students, Staff and Programs

Our goals this year centre on building student voice and leadership and as part of this aim we are delivering the first year of a School Wide Positive Behaviour program lead by Mr. Ewan Macdonald with a team of students and staff to support this initiative.

Another of the identified goals is to improve our school in terms of teacher leadership with a greater focus on improving student outcomes. The team consists of Ms. Lyn Collins as the Coordinator of VCE, VCAL and student pathways, Mr. Ewan Macdonald leading Engagement and Wellbeing, Mrs Pauline Cowland and Ms Samantha Eales focussing on Teaching and Learning across Literacy, Numeracy and Science and Mr Hill as the Assistant Principal of the school.

The final identified goal is to develop more personalised learning for all students by ensuring learning is visible, that all students are taught at their level and they know exactly what is expected of them

Compass Any Time Learning

You will start to see more learning tasks being published to compass as the term progresses so that students can access learning no matter where they may be and at any time. There is still a statewide expectation of 90% attendance for students at all level but this we hope will help to ensure students can show parents the work they are doing, catch up when away or if they are ill. Staff will still place assessments tasks in this space but will also place units of work for the day, week, or month with learning and success expectations known as learning intentions and success criteria.

Positive Vibe

There is a very positive feel to the beginning of this school year and I am asking students to speak up early if they are having any difficulty to ensure they are adequately catered for. I also now extend the invitation to parents to contact teachers, Year Level Coordinators and the leadership team should you need help. We all want the very best for our students and together we can ensure this wish is a reality.

Clarification

Yesterday you may have seen an image that looked like the East Campus was the victim of a large fire.  Whilst we do not wish to downplay the seriousness of the incident, the image in the media was the result of a large pile of sticks created after a tidy up under our gum trees on the East Campus near the friendlies oval and thankfully no people were harmed or buildings damaged.