Principal's Update

Dear Members of the Mordialloc College Community,

I hope everyone was able to enjoy the holiday break and are now refreshed and ready to focus on the final stretch. 

Congratulations to Jessica House

At the 2023 VCE Leadership awards ceremony held on Friday 8 September at Treasury Theatre, Jessica was announced as one of eight outstanding young leaders in Victoria who inspire others to strive for positive change. The award recipients were chosen from a pool of fifty-three nominees across all school sectors. Jessica (third from the right in the photo below) was presented with her award by VCAA CEO Stephen Gniel, Education Minister, Natalie Hutchins MP and VCAA Board Chair, Diane Joseph. 

In her opening address, Minister for Education and Minister for Women Natalie Hutchins congratulated the VCE Leaders. ‘You have given your time to support people and causes you really believe in – not for your own benefit but for the benefit of all. A true leader can unite people and inspire action. That is what I see in all of you.’

VCAA Chief Executive Officer and MC for the event Stephen Gniel noted in his opening remarks: ‘These students engage and inspire others through their advocacy work to bring about social, regional, and global change.’

2023 is the first year that the VCE Leadership Awards included Vocational Major students. The VCAA acknowledged VCE Leader Jessica House from Mordialloc College as a champion of the Vocational Major within our school and community. Such a wonderful achievement for Jessica to be recognised and celebrated at this event.

Focused on achieving Personal Best

Thanks to our Director of Senior School, Susan Cochrane and Year 12 Coordinator, Tim Randell, and all Year 12 staff for the timely completion of Unit 4 content to enable our practice exams in all subjects to be completed during the last week of term three. This has provided more focused time on targeted revision in the lead up to the important final Year 12 exams starting on Tuesday 24 October with English. My thanks to all teachers for their timely marking of the papers, to provide students with valuable feedback to assist their preparation for their final exams at the College. During the exam period, students can be onsite to study and/or see their respective teachers for assistance. Teachers may also continue to run classes in the lead up to their respective exam. Students are encouraged to maximise time with their teachers in person for revision work and support in the lead up to each of their exams. 

All students in Years 10-11 will be completing final assessments and continuing the rigorous planning and preparation for their final exam weeks that are fast approaching. It is so important for all students to remain focused and use class and home study time effectively. Students should seek help from their teachers to work on any identified weaknesses, complete unit summaries and continue to work on exam performance by completing past exam papers under the exam time constraints. 

Students in Years 7 to 9 will also be completing assessments throughout the term leading into the final reporting period. All students in Years 7 to 9 also need to present a Student Led Conference to celebrate their achievements for this year before moving up to the next year level in our 2024 Headstart program beginning on 20 November. More information will follow about the Student Led Conference arrangements occurring during week seven this term. It is our clearly stated expectation of everyone to continue to strive to achieve their personal best in everything they do.

Study Tour

As reported in my last newsletter article, using my prize money from the 2019 Victorian Education Excellence Awards, provided a wonderful opportunity for myself and two members of my leadership team (Aaron Davis and Jamie Towsey) to travel overseas on a study tour of some of the most innovative schools in the world over the last week of Term 3. The tour led by Future Schools co-founder Dave Runge and Education consultant David Chapman, commenced in San Francisco, and finished in San Diego. We visited the following schools: Brightworks School in San Francisco, d. school at Stanford University, Millennium School, and Nueva School (for gifted students) both in San Francisco, Design 39 in San Diego, Del Lago Academy campus of Applied Science and then two days immersion at High Tech High in Dan Diego.

We had the opportunity to visit a number of well-known innovative schools in California that focus on project-based learning. Although the implementation and structure of this differed across schools the underlying principles of design thinking and student teacher partnership in co-designing the learning was evident. Viewing these various models provided us with the opportunity to gain insight in how such could be practically applied in our context. PBL promotes student engagement, critical thinking, student voice and agency, intrinsic motivation and provides students with the skills and attitudes they will need in an academic sense and real-world application. In addition, it also facilitates student ownership in learning as students have choice in the integrated projects, they complete often related to real community issues identified by students or real-world problems, which helps to lead a sense of responsibility and self-direction. All schools demonstrated a strong commitment to the Social Emotional Learning curriculum and student wellbeing. It was affirming to see some common approaches to pedagogy and our instructional model in the schools visited.

In addition, we have developed relationships with some very innovative schools within Australia who joined us on this tour and allowed us to share common challenges we are faced with and co-design possible solutions in our particular contexts. We have also made international connections at each of the schools visited that we will be able to tap into in the future.

Mordialloc College Student Council 2024

Kerry Archer has been overseeing the Mordialloc College Student Council since Term 3. During the last few weeks of Term 3 along with myself and our current captains, we spoke at Year Level assemblies to promote the council and explained the application process to Years 7 to 11 students, for the formation of the new student council in readiness for Headstart 2024. The key goal of this structure has been to provide opportunity for greater student voice, agency, and leadership across the College. 

A reminder we still have our School Captains and Vice Captains, along with Middle School Captains and Vice Captains. Then we have six sub-committees lead by a Year 12 leader and teacher to assist. House Captains for each year level will be able to join one of these sub-committees. The aim has been to have a spread of student leaders across each sub-committee with these leaders, reporting back to their respective year levels in our weekly Year Level Assemblies.

• Performing Arts
• Visual Arts
• Community and Student Wellbeing
• Curriculum (Years 7-12) including Vocational Major 
• Facilities and Environment
• Promotions and Fundraising
• Sports

The selection process includes an application letter, speech to the sub-school and interview and we have a timeline to complete such during the first half of term four. House Captains from each year level will not have to give a speech. We are hoping to get more students involved in each subsequent year of this relatively new structure. The applications for our 2024 Mordialloc College Student Council close at the end of this week for the Captains and Year 12 leader roles, with the sub-committee member applications due the following Friday.

Annual Art show

We look forward to our Annual Art Show, with our opening night to be held next week on Tuesday 10 October from 6.00 pm in the EZ. This is part of our Arts Celebration Week and is a true community event with the talents of our students and staff on show. All members of our community are invited to attend to celebrate the works of our Year 7-12 students, across the visual and performing arts. Our local MP, Mr Tim Richardson will be in attendance to officially open the night.

An incredible amount of work has gone into the preparations for this significant event and the Art and Technology Team deserves the highest praise for their commitment to the College and dedication in ensuring the successful delivery of this quality event. Special thanks to Leah Bright for coordinating this event, with our assistant coordinators Alex Trevisan and Quinn Daly.

Facility Development 

The refurbishment of our balcony to an enclosed area upstairs and the entire back wall and internal corridor upstairs and downstairs of our front two storey building has been completed, with just some minor painting touch ups to occur. 

We currently have a major leak under the Hub and works commenced during the school holidays and will be continuing over the next couple of weeks to rectify this. 

On Monday 4 September, Parliamentary Secretary for Schools, Vicki Ward MP representing the Minister for Education and our local member Tim Richardson MP, attended the school to make the official announcement of our funding, $12.6 million for the development of a STEAM Centre. They met our Senior School and Middle School Captains, had morning tea with staff and then I took them on a quick tour of the Year 7 and 8 Learning Centre, our Wellbeing Centre and then the Arts/Technology Area, which will be the focus of our next project.

I have begun the planning process with Minx Architecture and the VSBA (Victorian Schools Building Authority) for the development of our new Arts/Technology Centre. The planning process can take up to a year, so I am not able to provide a timeline yet for the actual start date and anticipated completion date of this project. We do require the rest of the project funding (beyond planning funding) to be officially allocated in next year’s state budget. 

Staffing

Our wonderful Business Manager, Yvonne Aird is retiring. Her last day was Friday 1st September and she is on long service leave until the end of this year. Yvonne had been in the Business Manager role for 6 months before I started here in July 2010, so we have worked closely together for a long time. Yvonne has loved working here and still may come back to do some casual work if needed. However, she is looking forward to some more travelling time. I would like to acknowledge her excellent service to our school, she will be missed!

The arrangements for the rest of the year to fill this role is that two of our current administrative staff will have the opportunity to share the Business Manager role, each working part-time with one common cross over day. Samm Hughes and Julie Cook will be in this acting role for the rest of the year. Julia Cooper from reception has moved into the accounts receivable role and Jackie Fox-Pollard has been appointed to work in reception.

Jo Langhorne started this year with us working part-time in Careers and as our VASS Coordinator. Jo has another position with a LLEN – Local Learning and Employment Network starting from this term. We are currently working through the recruitment process for a replacement for the Careers role. Karen Dewberry, our Senior School Assistant is now working full time to include VASS Coordinator in her role. 

Andrew Fisher is on long service leave this term and is being replaced by Chloe Purtell. Any queries around our Sports Excellence program should be directed to Andrew Potter. Georgia Davey is also on leave this term and is being replaced by Paige Remfrey. Bella Barker is the Year 10 Year Level Coordinator. We also have Nicole Boyd and Indigo Yorke on leave for the first 3 weeks of term and their classes are being taken by casual relief teachers.  

Year 7 2024 Transition information video and Q&A session

We have a video presentation for our new parents, carers and students that has been sent to families via email this week. This important 30-minute video includes information about our Bring Your Own Device program operating at the College. As a follow up to this video, there will be the opportunity for parents and carers to attend an online Q&A session via Webex on Tuesday 17 October at 6.30pm. All key leaders will be in attendance to answer any questions parents/carers may have from watching the video. Again, details of this session were communicated to families via email this week. There is also a detailed information pack to be collected from the reception over the next couple of weeks.

We look forward to welcoming all our new Year 7 students for next year officially to the school on the state-wide Orientation Day on Tuesday 12 December.

Ms Michelle Roberts

Principal