Wider School News

Additional mental health support at Collingwood College

The Mental Health Practitioners initiative provided through DET will give all Victorian schools the ability to have more mental health support on-site by 2021

Under the new Mental Health Practitioners (MHP) initiative, the Victorian Government has committed to providing every government secondary school campus with funding to recruit an additional Mental Health Practitioner by 2022.

Collingwood College has expanded our existing Wellbeing Team through the recruitment of a psychologist, Michele Waters who will begin working with our team on Tuesday, 18 August. At the moment both Nisa Venerosa and Gareth Rego have been providing this service for the whole school. Our Wellbeing Team recently expanded with the addition of 2 Community Liaison personnel, Hassen Mohamed-Saeed and Hussein Ibrahim. Both Hassen and Hussein have been working with staff and families to increase our students’ and community’s connection with our school.

An extra member of the team means that our secondary school will have additional resources to support student mental health. The allocation of time for Michele to work as part of our team at Collingwood College is three days each fortnight.

Michele will be able to provide individual counselling for students, coordinate external supports for students with complex needs and develop wellbeing promotion and professional learning opportunities for staff.

School staff in other schools where a practitioner has already been appointed are embracing the opportunity to participate in reflective discussions, debrief and enhance their knowledge and skills in order to recognise and respond to the mental health needs of the students, and practise their own self-care. Our staff will also be able to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity and expand on the support already provided by our other Wellbeing team members.

More information will be distributed by our Wellbeing team when Michele begins her work here.

Michele will also be in touch with our school community to introduce herself and start to get to know students, families and staff.

OUR THOUGHTS ON OUR PRINCIPALS - by HERO & HIBO - OUR SCHOOL CAPTAINS

Hibo and I have been part of the Collingwood College School Community for most of our ‘learning lives.’ I started in grade 1 and Hibo from Prep. Our journey through Primary School was really good and as we got older we ventured into the Secondary school where we embarked on another more challenging journey as we were being prepared for our fast approaching adulthood. We have enjoyed being taught and looked after by all our teachers, whether they were our Home Group teachers or specialist/subject teachers. In our educational journey we have enjoyed the frivolity of youth (and acquiring important skills such as reading, writing, cognitive thinking) and then in our teenage years we have learnt higher order thinking and the acquisition of more refined skills of questioning, researching, literacy and numeracy, and many more other areas of importance. As well as this we have become more mindful of thinking about and making the right decisions for our future careers.

All the background I am providing is leading up to what Hibo and I feel we would like to share with the community about how we see the Principal and the Principal class in our school. We have heard stories from students from other schools about how scary their Principals are. Or how mean a Principal could be. If the Principal in Roald Dahl’s book ‘Matilda’ the nasty, pigtail pulling, torturous ‘Agatha Trunchball’ was a real person, they would not be around expressing how much they hated children so venomously and getting away with those negative, toxic behaviours in their positions.

We at Collingwood College feel privileged that our Principal class treat us positively, with compassion and care for every individual student. The fact that we are greeted, acknowledged and listened to gives us confidence to know and believe that our Principal and the Principal class have our best intentions at heart. Hibo and I have been members of the SRC for many years and we feel proud of the fact that our Student Voice is listened to and always welcome. We see our fellow students speak to our Principals in the corridors and know that these individuals put in many extra hours to ensure that the school runs as smoothly as possible. Not many students are aware that Hibo and I have PAG meetings with Sam (Principal’s Advisory Group) and express any concerns or queries that we or the student body may be feeling, a really mindful and relevant exercise.

I would like to take the time right now to state that this is how we see our three Principals. They are three of the most passionate, caring and enthusiastic leaders of our school. They strive to make this school as best as they can, always with a smile on their faces. With these three important roles, Sam, Judith and Margaret provide the best possible variation of skills and structure to lead this school to greatness. We just want to thank them for all they do for us and how committed they are to Collingwood College, as school most loved by its students.

The student Body appreciates your efforts. Dale was a much respected Principal too, and it is great to see he has left our school in such capable hands. In these difficult times we are grateful that there is open communication, nurturing of the students and major efforts made to look after everyone’s wellbeing. Thank you to all of you and we hope that you enjoyed your Principal’s Day last Friday. We are sorry we couldn’t be there to share these words in person, but thought we would post our sincere words in the Newsletter. We are nearing the end of this interesting Year 12 year, but we will always remember our time at Collingwood College with joy, love and respect.

HAPPY PRINCIPAL’S DAY! YOU DESERVE IT

Hero & Hibo

SRC Captains 2020

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO CLAIRE - OUR WONDERFUL SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGER

(30 JULY)

INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE - UPDATED 4 FEBRUARY

Please click on the attachment below to see a recently updated list of Stringed instruments for sale. If you have an instrument for sale please email Naomi at: nomssicle@gmail.com

Instruments for sale - UPDATED 4th Feb 2020.pdf

COLLINGWOOD COLLEGE ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM

Collingwood College is online! Feel free to follow us on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/collingwood.college/ and like us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/collingwood.vic.edu.au/ to keep up to date with everything that our school has to offer our students and the community.