College News
Construction Students Taken to Hospital!!
(The headline no Construction teacher ever wants to see)
Far from an emergency it was a well planned and organised educational visit when the eight members of the Year 11 Construction class visited the Armidale Hospital extension recently. Seeing a multi story building under construction in Armidale is rare enough. Getting a guided tour by the site manager of that multi story building is a privilege.
But when that multi story building is a hospital, it is a real treat because the codes and specifications to build a hospital are quite extreme. Construction students, who must complete 70 hours of mandatory work placement, become fairly familiar with domestic or cottage type construction in and around Armidale but seeing a hospital under construction is quite another thing.
The students, who had to have their White Card, wear steel cap boots, hard hats, safety specs and hivis vests were quite amazed at some of the facts and figures they learned about.
Such as the fact that this $60m building is built to withstand a Category 5 earthquake, using 40 to 50mPa strength concrete (more than two times the normal strength), 480 cubic metres of concrete in one floor alone, poured on one day, delivered by seven ready-mix trucks starting at 3.00am and finishing at 4.00pm. Impressive stuff. Well, to builders anyway.
It was quite an insight for the students of the Year 11 Construction class who go out on work placement in Week 1 of Term 3.
And all agreed the best way to be ‘taken to hospital’ was on a school excursion!
Our thanks to Mr Chris Petrov, site manager for Richard Crookes Constructions for his time.
Glen Watson
T.A.S
Z Club News
Z Club have made a slight change to the executive positions for this year. Samantha Archer will take on Presidency and Phoebe Biddle will step into the Vice President role, after Brydie Hawthorne stepped down from her position. We look forward to working with this leadership team.
Z Club had a special guest at their monthly May meeting. Emma Collins, a student from Armidale High is in the process of setting up a Z club at her school. Emma was able to see how we run our meetings, and touch base with our executive members. This is very exciting news for our town and we look forward to developing greater contact with Emma and her new members as she takes on this venture.
Birthing kit assembly at O'Connor Catholic College on Saturday May 13th. It was a wonderful morning with many helpers including members of Zonta Club, grandparents, parents and students.
We packed 400 and feel pretty competent in this amount. But we would like to push ourselves beyond this comfort zone and double this number next year.
Year 8 R.E
Year 12 student Zahoor Muhammad, better known as 'Honey', visited Mrs Roff's Year 8 RE to continue educating and informing students about Islam. They asked many questions which Honey patiently and thoughtfully answered. We are so fortunate to have Honey as a positive role model, and the students were delighted to hear Honey tell them how accepted he feels as part of our College community. Thank you for everything you do Honey...you are a fine young man with a wonderful future as a peacemaker in our world.
Principal Awards
Year 11 students Grace Toakley, Nick Troon and Sam Frazier were awarded prestigious Principal Awards at assembly.
These students have all received teacher commendations for their academic efforts and participation in school and community events.
What wonderful student role models we have for our juniors to emulate...keep up the good work and BE involved!
Artist of the Month
Congratulations to Year 9 student Zoe Minehan
and Year 11 student Caitlyn Black
who were awarded Artists of the Month at assembly.
Year 9 Child Studies
Textiles
Some of the 10TX class with their completed projects for Dress A Girl Around the World project.
SRC Wrap
O’Connor Catholic College’s Student Representative Council has endeavoured to interact with our surrounding school’s student leaders and give back to the school and local community so far for the duration of 2017.
Our first term has required us to participate in the Autumn Festival and later on, Armidale’s ANZAC Day celebrations, attending the dawn service and afternoon ceremony.
In Term 2, the SRC commenced our “Brekky Club” held every Friday morning. Essentially, the money collected assists the SRC in giving back to our community. In 2016 we supported Olive Russell with her ongoing medical condition.
However, our goals in 2017 now consist of providing for Eliza Clark’s trip to East Timor with the United Nations Youth Australia.
Additionally, the SRC also would like to donate money to the Children's Hospital this year as well as providing Olive with another donation. We have also taken fundraiser opportunities such as running the canteen this term and catering at our cross country event.
Recently, an SRC representative from each year sat with members of the school board to discuss changes to the school premises. From this we hope to gain appropriate yet exciting architectural advances which provide a more comfortable and engaging space for students to occupy during breaks and some classes.
Although our efforts as SRC has mostly been to serve the needs of our communities, this year we've expanded our reach towards the student leaders of other local high schools. After school earlier in the term, we invited the SRC members from all Armidale schools for a meeting consisting of introductory games and activities to familiarise ourselves with each other, and of course, an exchange of ideas on how to fundraise and combine the efforts of all Armidale high schools.
We plan to continue this as a tradition every term, accumulating new ideas and inevitably, friendly relations between school communities.
We look forward to the rest of the year and thank each of you for contributing in one way or the other.
Your friendly SRC
Tonya McQuilty