Principal Team Report

Principal Team Report 

National Reconciliation Week - 27 May - 3 June

Next week is National Reconciliation Week. As part of the celebration, I will join a group from the college in the National Sorry Day flag raising event at the City of Whitehorse on Sunday morning. 

From the NRW website, we learn that the National Reconciliation Week theme for 2024, Now More Than Ever, is a reminder to all of us that no matter what, the fight for justice and the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will —and must —continue. 

There have been many moments in Australia’s reconciliation journey that make us want to turn away. But when things are divisive, the worst thing we can do is disengage or disconnect. Now more than ever, we need to tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation. We know that the 6.2 million Australians who voted YES are committed to better outcomes for First Nations people, and are with us. Reconciliation supporters must stand up to defend and uphold the rights of First Nations peoples. To call out racism wherever we encounter it, and to actively reinforce the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across this continent. Now more than ever, the work continues. In treaty making, in truth-telling, in understanding our history, in education, and in tackling racism. We need connection. We need respect. We need action. And we need change. Now more than ever, we need reconciliation.

As a college, we have taken the first critical step in reviewing our curriculum to ensure it includes and accurately reflects First Nations culture, with Year 7 English, Visual Arts and Humanities being our starting point.

Recognising our ES team

Last week on Thursday 16th May, we celebrated Education Support (ES) Personnel Day, a day to recognise the extraordinary contribution education support staff make to public education. Whilst the core business in a school takes place within the classroom, where teachers and students collaborate on a learning journey within the range of specialist subject areas, our educational support personnel provide a diverse range of critical services which enable us to provide a rich and engaging experience for students.

Educational support staff includes: administration and office staff; wellbeing counsellors; inclusion aides; IT specialist technicians; library technicians; German language assistants; food technology and science laboratory support staff; and grounds and maintenance staff. This week, we celebrated and thanked each of our valued education support staff for their ongoing commitment and effort to our Mullauna Community.

Supporting our community

A school’s work involves the complex interaction of learning and wellbeing, for all of our community members: students, staff and families. Generally, the focus is inwards, but two outward looking projects warrant comment here:

Our Rafter House leaders, supported by the whole SRC and the staff liaison, Kathy Halpin, are coordinating the college’s participation in the Push-Up Challenge. This is open to all Mullauna community members, and we encourage you to get involved, either through direct participation (there is a range of alternatives to doing push-ups!), or simply through a donation.

This year, our college event will be supported by Nick McGowan MLC – we thank him for his support.

You may also have noticed our recent Facebook post and another real estate board up on the Springfield Road boundary advertising a local community fund and awareness raising event ‘A Peace for Patryk’, targeting youth mental health and suicide prevention. 

Mid-year Music Concert and Year 7 Melodic Minors Debut

Last evening, our Music team presented its second major musical event of the year, the Mid-year Concert, with one highlight being, as always, the Debut of our Year 7 Instrumental Music students, the Melodic Minors. Our thanks to Peter Brodie and Kelsey De Prada for their leadership and coordination of the event, Kathy Halpin and Adam Verrel for their ‘green room’ supervision, our music students and support crew who participated, and the many parents and family members who attended. A team from our P&CA ensured that tea and coffee were readily available at interval.

A further highlight was the recognition of our Year 12 students in their final year of six year’s participation in the Mullauna Music program: Tynan Forster, Sophie Skinner, Ryan Taylor, Harry Jones, Ethan Oxley and KayLi Pollard. Several of these students will also perform at next week’s NEVR Hamer Hall Concert and the State Schools’ Spectacular in September.

Staffing update

This term we have welcomed the addition of several new members of staff. Adam Rae has commenced in a tutoring role, with a particular focus on supporting our VCE Vocational Major students with numeracy. Anastasia Ruuska and Eric Yeap, both experienced chemistry teachers, have joined our growing Science faculty, Nele Keller has joined our German faculty as a language assistant, Omar Mustafa has joined our performing arts faculty as a voice teacher and Grace Jenkin, Kelly Masters and Kerry Posthoorn have joined our Inclusion Team as teacher aides.

What’s been happening since the start of term?

We certainly ‘hit the ground running’ this term with our annual whole

school athletics carnival. 

Like the swimming carnival in Term 1, the Athletics Carnival is another opportunity for students and teachers to come together to participate in and celebrate achievement in a broad range of athletic events. We were lucky with the weather and the day ran smoothly with some outstanding efforts by many students. The success of this day also prompted our Health and PE faculty to commence immediate planning to re-introduce a whole-school cross country carnival which took place last week. Again, the weather was perfect and the effort and behaviour of all students was outstanding. Taking advantage of our excellent local facilities, the circuit included Halliday Park and our own ovals, finishing on our hard courts with a well-earned icy pole. We now have over 50 students attending division cross country competition at the end of the month.

In the second week of term, we acknowledged the sacrifice of our community with an ANZAC day assembly run by our School Captains. Key speakers, College Principal Mr Harry Ruff reflected on community and guest speaker Mr Mohammad Abdul Rahman, Shrine Governor who spoke about the Spirit of Anzac.  

The experience for students and staff was enriched by the live performance of the Last Post by our brass music teacher Mr Peter Brodie followed by local bagpiper, Mr Mick Ryan playing Amazing Grace. We are immensely proud of the behaviour, maturity and attitude of our students during these ceremonies which bring our community closer together. Thankyou also to the Audio Visual captains Abbey, Ada & Daniel, who manage the lights and sound for these events; they continuously do a great job.

For more highlights from the Anzac Day Assembly please read the Anzac Day page.

Open night 

Open Night is another key event that occurred in the first weeks of term. This was our opportunity to share the elements that make Mullauna College the school of choice for the families within our local community. For those parents and students investigating their options for secondary education in the area, they did not leave disappointed after their experience in meeting our staff and students and looking at our facilities and programs. The consistent feedback I was given by families throughout the night was that our staff are friendly, passionate and knowledgeable and that our students, whether leading a tour group or assisting in a learning space were true ambassadors of the college with their willingness to engage with parents and future students in a warm and confident manner and always with a smile. 

Open Night Memories …

Open Night started an hour earlier this year, with a school tour for Mitcham High School alumni at 5pm. It was wonderful to engage with this group of past students and to enjoy their many anecdotes of the early days of MHS. Things have definitely changed at the school and in state education in general. We hope to continue to improve links and interaction with this group and use this as a catalyst for more recent past students to reconnect with the college. The alumni group is discussing how to better support their old school, including establishing a student scholarship. Earlier this year they donated the proceeds of their October 2023 reunion,  $320, to the college to assist students being supported by the Wellbeing team.

What’s coming up over the remainder of the term?

With the academic semester concluding in just a few weeks, the focus for students in Years 9 – 11 is on the mid-year exams. Exam practice is an important step in developing the necessary skills to achieve success in VCE studies where examinations continue to be a major form of assessment.

The examination timetable will be published to students next week on Compass. Students are expected to attend all scheduled exams and should a student have an exam clash with another school event, such as Division Cross Country, their exam will be rescheduled to another time. Students are to see their relevant YLC if this is the case. We wish all our students the best for their upcoming exams.

Report Writing Day is on Friday 14th June. This student free day is to allow teachers to conclude their assessment marking (including exams) and provide any further feedback on published learning tasks.  Semester 1 reports will be published on the last day of term. 

This semester, we will include an overall grade for each subject. This grade is based on the weighted average of each learning task and semester exam where applicable. This change will allow students, parents and teachers to reflect more clearly on the overall performance of a student across the range of tasks that were undertaken throughout the semester. It will also assist students to identify growth from one semester to another in the core, year- long subjects.

The other change for this semester is the addition of the same learning behaviours that were assessed on the term 1 progress reports. These same learning behaviours will now be assessed each term and provided in either the terms 1 and 3 progress reports or the semester reports. This will also enable us to review changes and improvements from one term to the next.

Harry Ruff, Jeff McMillin and Michael Bray

The MC Principal Team