From the Senior Leadership

It has been a wonderful start to the 2024 school year and I thank you sincerely for everything you do to ensure your daughter is well prepared for the next stage of her learning journey at Chisholm. Wherever your daughter is at in her journey, she will be incredibly well supported to achieve her goals here at our fine college. We have a great deal to be proud of as we return to the 2024 school year. Our HSC 2023 were once again very impressive,  with a number of students achieving Band 6 results placing them on the NESA distinguished achievers list. All students achieving these high band results are recognised by NESA and also acknowledged at our upcoming high achievers assembly on Friday 16 February. As well as this, we will acknowledge students who attained NESA nominations and selections in dance, drama, music, visual arts, and design and technology .  We are all extremely proud of these exceptional results that have been achieved through dedication and commitment to their practical subjects where they demonstrated a passion for learning. Congratulations to our HSC 2023 students who have proven that ability alone is not enough, it is a consistent application to learning and their willingness to learn from failures that enables further growth and empowerment!

As we embark on the 2024 school year, as a staff we will remain focused on the importance of our high expectations in all that we do in our college community to ensure our Chisholm girls are able to achieve their potential. We are always looking for innovative ways to strengthen our learning culture through best practices in teaching, learning and assessment. The staff have engaged in professional learning in the first days of the 2024 school year in preparation for another fabulous year of growth academically, spiritually, socially and emotionally. I have every faith that every Chisholm girl will step up and continue to be a self-reflective learner, seek feedback from peers and teachers and work at recrafting work to improve their results.

I am very excited for the next stage of our college transformation, and we are well placed to ensure that your daughter’s learning, faith formation and wellbeing are always at the forefront. Your daughter will be setting personal learning goals across all courses and measuring their growth during each unit of work with their teachers. When they reach their goals, these will be celebrated and acknowledged in classes and as a community. Our 2024 focus is: “Let’s lift together” as we seek to be positive, challenging and supportive to empower all girls to be ‘growth focused’ not results focused in achieving their personal goals. 

You may have noticed that we have introduced a College diary to assist your daughter/s in their learning organisation and management. I am pleased that the girls have seen great value in the diary and are using it well in the first first weeks. It would be appreciated if you could encourage your daughter to use the diary each day in writing down her homework to complete each evening. Please use this to write notes to us regarding your daughter leaving the college for an appointment which will be approved by the homeroom teacher and presented to the Students Service office at the time of exiting the college. We hope you love the special 50th Anniversary edition of the college diary as much as we do!

Thank you for your wonderful support with the next stage of our mobile phone policy. In the first days of returning to school, students have shown impressive commitment to this, by keeping their phones turned off in their bags during the school day enabling them to be focused and committed to their learning and increasing their opportunities to socialise, play games and activities. 

I hope you have had an opportunity to look over our new Wellbeing resource, SCHOOL TV located on our website under the school bag icon on the right hand side of the page. Hope that you will find a wealth of helpful information and resources to assist you in navigating adolescence and the key issues of concern such as mental health, body image and cyberbullying. SCHOOL TV is available for staff, students and parents to empower you with knowledge and skills relating to all wellbeing issues with factual information and useful video clips.

Congratulations to our students who attended the Australian Space Design Competition during the last school holidays in January. I have included a brief report from our College Captains, Sofia Maiorana, Aurelia Parsley and Audrey Cocks who all embraced the opportunity to engage in this experience along with other senior students. Thank you to Mrs Moore and Mrs Rossetto for supervising the girls too!

In January this year, a group of students from the college attended the Australian Space Design National Finals in Brisbane. The ASDC Finals comprised 10 schools from across Australia that made it through the qualifying stage. Over the weekend-long competition, each school had to join other students from other schools to be a part of a ‘company’ and complete our Request For Tender, or RFT. The final RFT was then presented to a panel of judges within a 20-minute time limit during a ceremony at the end of the competition. 

The competition began with each school being placed in their ‘companies’. Our school was partnered with St. Laurence’s College Brisbane in the company Magellan. A crucial aspect of this competition is establishing specific roles and responsibilities for each individual, which includes delegating roles such as CEO and department heads. At our school, Aurelia Parsley was the team CEO, Sofia Maiorana was the department head for Human Factors and Shwithi Nimmagadda was the General manager for commerce. All other students in our team arranged themselves between the 4 main departments: Human factors, Operations and infrastructure, structural design and automation. 

At 11:30 am, after a series of technical sessions that targeted different areas of space travel, we received the Request for tender, which outlined the requirements that our final design had to meet. This year, the design required us to design a space settlement capable of capturing asteroids in solar orbit up to 16.1km in diameter along with any smaller debris encountered. In addition to this, it was required to house 9000 permanent residents, 350 transient residents and facilitate research, business, transport, residence and recreation. 

Our team worked diligently for the next 27 and a half hours on the design, covering everything from power sources, artificial gravity and the net capturing system to housing designs, agriculture and finances. At 3pm on Sunday, we raced out of our company door to deliver the final project on a USB stick to the SDCA staff. From here, we all took a deep breath and began racing to finish scripts and change into uniforms before the presentations. 

One by one each team presented, showcasing their hard work. Once presentations were done the judges decided the winner and other members of the ASDC team decided those who would receive special awards. Although our team did not win, 3 of our team members won awards. Two of them, Aurelia Parsley and Sofia Maiorana won both of the Highly Commended Speaker Awards and our third member Audrey Cocks won the Leadership Award. It was a great experience for the whole team, fingers crossed we qualify again. 

Our 2024 CCC Australian Space design team: Aurelia Parsley, Sofia Maiorana, Shwithi Nimmagadda, Audrey Cocks, Kanesha Kaur, Prisha Tapasiya, Hasrat Bhattal, Sophie Hall, Namika Talusani, Aleena Dutta and Diya Bose

Finally, congratulations to our new students to the college, in particular Year 7 who have all settled in extremely well forming beautiful friendships and looking for ways to support each other. The 2024 Year 7 year group are happy, calm, settled and adapting to the new demands of life as a secondary student.

I look forward to connecting with all new families at our Welcome Gathering next  Tuesday 13 February 4:30-6pm at the college. We hope to see you there and look forward to making new friends as valued members of our learning and faith community.

May God bless you and keep you safe

Mrs Tania Cairns

Principal Leader