Secondary

Year 8 Retreat

Year 8 students participated in their Retreat Day on Friday 22 May. The theme was ‘Seeking Justice – in this together’. A fitting theme for the current climate and a theme with multiple meanings! Students had the opportunity to unpack the terms Social Justice and Human Dignity by reflecting on the teaching of Jesus and how Jesus’ commandments to love are expressed through Catholic Social Teaching. The Year 8s were then encouraged to apply this understanding to the issues of Reconciliation and Social Justice in an Australian context.

A highlight for many was listening to Scott Darlow, a Yorta Yorta descendent, and singer-songwriter. Scott shared stories related to his Indigenous culture and challenged students to help facilitate Reconciliation and understanding. He spoke about empathy as the foundation for any real change and encouraged each student to adopt, and practice daily, attributes of his key acronym FLUTE - Forgiveness, Love, Understanding, Tolerance and Empathy.

Some Year 8s had the following to say about the day:

The message I took away from the Retreat is that everyone is different and we should follow Jesus’ example to love your neighbour because we are all made in the image of God.
The day taught me that we can learn about the mistakes we made in our history to ensure a better future.
I learnt about loving your neighbour means loving everyone around you and in the whole world, if we do this we can improve social justice.
Retreat helped me reflect on my relationship with God as by learning about social justice I learnt how to act like Jesus and how I can follow in his footsteps.
Today, I took away the message, ‘Make changes to the world’ by the ‘Scott Darlow’ talk. He taught me how lucky we are and treat other people with respect and dignity.

Kalo Bell

Assistant Deputy Principal - Year 8

HASS Week, 18-22 May

The HASS Department celebrated the individual disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences department during HASS Week. Under normal circumstances our Year 10 students would participate in the Geography Competition and our Year 8 Students would participate in the History competition, however this year the competitions have been postponed and cancelled respectively due to the impact of school closures across Australia.

Throughout the week students in Years 7-12 were involved in a Homeroom quiz, learning random facts about the members of the HASS department. The victorious homeroom will be announced on Monday morning. Thank you to Mr Tom Hooker for organising the quiz for the students.

On Friday Jarred Wall from ‘Boox Kid’ entertained our students on the Chapel lawn with an electronic music set. Mr Luke Bostelman and Ms Rita De Faria from the HASS department cooked a lunchtime bbq for students who pre-ordered via the canteen online ordering system, which helped the College adhere to preparation and distribution of food. It was fantastic to see both staff and students engage with the music whilst maintaining social distancing measures.

We are hoping the HASS competitions will resume from next year, and plan for a ‘bigger than Ben Hur’ HASS week in 2021.

Mr Andrew Osnain

Head of Learning Area, Humanities and Social Sciences