Co-curricular Corner

Debating Workshops 

The 2025 Debating season has begun with workshops held in Week 6 for both experienced and new debaters to get a feel for what debating is and signing up for the 2025 teams. Thank you to our 2025 Debating Captains, Lizzie and Imogen, for helping prepare this event, as well as Senior debaters, Hannah and Emma, for stepping up to deliver parts of the workshops. 

College Song 

Our Choir Captains for 2025 have strongly started their captaincy by speaking at assembly around the College song, Beginning our Journey. Matilda and Emily are encouraging students to sing this loudly and with enthusiasm. See their infographic below outlining the notes in Beginning our Journey and comparing it to Love Story by Taylor Swift! 

TOM Recap!

As you may have seen on socials, our STEM Tournament of Minds team had a great time in Sydney and ended up coming away with Honours in their category! We are so proud of 

them. 

Chloe in Year 8 has written a little more about her experience of the competition day below:

Finally, competition day had come. We were all nervously excited as we got ready and were on the bus by 7am Sydney time, or 6am Brisbane time. With the other Queensland teams, we made our way to the UNSW campus whereby the end of the day we would know who had won. 

We got a debrief in a small hall with all the other teams as well as all the supplies we would need for the challenge. As we made our way to the rooms, we took last minute photos before we had to put our phones away for the three hours. The time spent preparing in that room felt like a blur as we divided up into groups to work on different parts of the task. With two and a half hours to go we were on track and working well, two hours to go still going strong. But, about halfway through, the machine wasn't working as expected, one hour to go and it still wasn’t working! Tensions started to run high with half an hour left. I was panicking on the inside, 10 minutes left and... It worked!! We were all so relieved that it had finally worked but we weren't out of the clear yet, we still had the performance to do. We went back to the original hall where we had started the day to perform, which went as well as expected. We only managed to pass over one of the three items but made people laugh all through the performance, which I think gained us a few extra points.

Finally, it was time for the announcements, we all held our breath waiting for them to announce it when we heard, “STEM Secondary Honours goes to… Mount Alvernia College, Queensland!” We all cheered with joy as we ran down the steps to the stage to get the certificate and out medals. You just couldn't wipe that happy smile off my face.

That night, I lay exhausted in my bed still in my TOM uniform thinking over the day and how hard we worked to earn our reward.