Student News

Global Issues Club

Hi everyone, you may or may not have seen a lot of GIC posters scattered all around the school as well as GIC donation boxes near the front office, and in all house areas. We’ve set these up for our GIC Winter Drive, where we are seeking donations of suitable winter items (pillows, doonas, blankets, anything you have laying around at home for the chilly winter season and do not really need anymore!) to be handed over to a non-profit here in the Western suburbs that works with asylum seekers/refugees (West Welcome Wagon). We’ve extended the date of the drive until July 28th and are hopefully looking forward to some more eager donations from students and staff alike, to help out those who need support the most during these frigid months. Here are a few FAQs.

FAQs:

Where will the donations be going?

Your donated items will be going to the West Welcome Wagon, a volunteer-run organisation operating to provide assistance to asylum seekers in the local community, supporting over 500 households in Melbourne’s west, where SCHS is located. For more information on West Welcome Wagon, their website can be found here: https://www.westwelcomewagon.org.au/ 

Where can I donate?

There are labelled GIC donation boxes near the front office, and in every house area. All you have to do is place your donation there. 

Who can I contact for more information?

Amira: mah0021@suzannecoryhs.vic.edu.au

Hasset: zel0001@suzannecoryhs.vic.edu.au

Come to GIC club every Week A Tuesdays, in G8!

Have a great break,

Amira Mahmoud, R7

Berthe Mouchette competition

During week 7 of this term, several students in Years 9 + 10 participated in the annual Berthe Mouchette competition organised by the Alliance Française.  Students recited a poem in French by memory.  Congratulations to the following students who were involved:  

The LOTE Faculty is also excited to celebrate LOTE week during Week 9 of this term.  A variety of lunchtime activities such as our popular Hawker’s market, trivia competitions, open mic cultural performances, Henna art, and traditional dress day have raised funds to benefit the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.  Well done, SCHS!

LOTE WEEK 

LOTE Week started with a bang! Our annual Hawker’s market was an absolute success with many students donating their time and demonstrating their wonderful cooking skills to make this event an instant favourite. The market offered an impressive amount of food, with dishes from all over the world. The fact all the stalls sold out is a testimony of the quality of the products sold this year. I did notice some students even going for seconds. Why wouldn’t you? 

Like each year, the funds raised will go to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, so a big thank you to anyone who came and enjoyed the beautiful food and donated to this cause. 

Henna Hand Painting

On Thursday as part of our LOTE week activities, students ran a Henna Hand painting fundraiser for Oxfam.

The students did an amazing job painting these beautiful and intricate designs. 

Cultural Dress Day

Each year in LOTE week we invite students to come to school dressed in traditional dress. This year our students came in their finest traditional outfits which proudly represent their culture. 

The array of colour and variety of cultures represented made for a truly memorable last day of term, showing how lucky we are to have such diversity here at our school.

Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Bake Sale

On the 16th of July, Suzanne Cory students held a bake sale to collect funds for the ongoing humanitarian crisis affecting thousands of people in Gaza, Palestine. It was a great opportunity to see our school community come together to recognise where our help is needed the most and act on the issue. It was a symbol of the connectivity within our school culture and a great representation of how all of our students strive to have the values of respect, aspiration and contribution built into not only their academic lives, but their involvement with their community as well.

I would like to thank all students involved in baking, helping, and donating and this could not be done without you. We had a great turn out with all the baked goods being sold and plenty of happy faces around the school. We successfully raised a fantastic amount of $1591.80 which will all be going to the not-for-profit organisation, MATW project who are running a fundraiser for the humanitarian work they do in Gaza.

Thank you all for your involvement in the school and let’s continue supporting each other and the wider community.

-Taha Kamran 

Bollywood Dance Club

Suzanne Cory has introduced the Bollywood Dance Club with a vision of bringing students from different year levels together to spread the love, joy and passion of dance. The aim of this club is to learn new styles and dance choreographies. 

While dancing is a major part of what we do as a club, fitness is also something that we strive to achieve. 

In the first few classes, we learnt the popular, well-known classics, ‘Chammak Challo’, followed by ‘Kala Chashma’ and ‘Naach Punjaban’. 

Over the course of this year, we will dance to a wide range of Bollywood songs - old and new. The Bollywood dance forms will range from Bollywood, to Semi-classical, Hip-hop, Bhangra and different fusions. 

We are seeking opportunities for our club to be able to step up and perform on special occasions and events around the school, during the coming months.  

Looking forward to some upcoming performances by the club!

 Anshika Thakur (K8)

PAW Club 

This term, PAW Club has further endeavoured to promote the welfare of our furry friends through various initiatives. Our main mission this term has been to promote animal adoption, and encourage those around the school to adopt a pet when looking for one. We believe that increasing animal adoption numbers is an effective way of reducing the strain on animal rescues, as it allows for them to have greater capacity to care for more lost and injured animals. 

We raised awareness through the display of a very detailed poster around the school, in order to address key concerns and questions about adopting animals.

We hope to bring more events and initiatives next term, so keep your eyes peeled :) 

Hridey Kapoor (B7) and Richard Lee (B9)

Ecocore

Throughout Semester 1, Ecocore has been busy organising a myriad of initiatives that have shown remarkable success in uniting SCHS for the cause of our environment. Here are the highlights of Term 2!!!

Ecocore kicked off with a bake sale, in which members sold a variety of baked goods, cultural dishes, and drinks. The day was a great success, raising a total of $398.98, which will be used to continue to fund Ecocore’s upcoming projects. This high level of engagement between Ecocore and our school community is truly encouraging and speaks to our shared efforts in minimising environmental impact. Within the bake sale, Ecocore encouraged students to bring their own reusable containers, increasing efforts of reusability. Our bake sale was also conducted without the use of any disposable plastics, instilling key principles of limiting waste generation and utilising renewable resources instead. Ultimately, the bake sale proved to be an excellent opportunity to host an eco-friendly event. 

Further in the semester, Ecocore planned and held an environment themed debate, the topic being ‘Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) should be banned, do you agree or disagree?’. The debaters raised many great points throughout their arguments, with the negative team winning the debate. This debate inspired students to conduct individual research on current environmental issues to further develop our own understanding of our environment and the actions we can take to become eco-friendly members of society. 

All in all, the efforts of the Ecocore team are to be commended, and I hope that the bridge being built between tackling environmental issues and the SCHS community continues to grow. 

On behalf of the Ecocore team, I would like to say a big thank you to our Ecocore captains, Aleena Kayani and Melody Chong, as well as Mr Drummond for all your efforts that have been put into organising and successfully running these events. Here's to an exciting and busy Semester 2!

• Riya Khandhar (2023 Ecocore Media Team member)

Celebrating Unit 1 Media students’ work. 

Here are a couple of wonderful mini productions by some of our talented yr11 students. 

Rida Hussain (C2) and Kriti Chandrasekar (R4) collaborated to plan the following production and Rida took the photos. 

Their intention : 

This photography production is going to focus on representing emotions. This is because we’re interested in how different colours are used to represent different emotions. We want to explore this through the use of colours combined with different lighting and colours in order to create a very clear and distinct emotional experience in every portrait. We will use red clothes and high contrast lighting, and lots of red lights in the picture to communicate a feeling of anger. Blue will be used for sadness, but rather than being sharp and high contrast like anger, we will make it more slow and blurry, to create a feeling of sadness, or being trapped, and etc. This will engage the audience as it will reflect the emotions they feel, and provide them with a platform to express and confront their emotions in a healthy way, especially as they are into different forms of art and media. This will make them feel comfortable and more engaged with the production.

(insert images here / Angry / Sad / Happy)

Wana Saifudin (R1), Susanna Yi (K1) and Keerat Sidhu (R8) collaborated on a magazine challenging gender norms. Here is the front page of their production. 

Their intention : 

I am aiming to represent the beauty of males and females defying restrictive gender norms in a professional but playful manner. For the girl’s spread, I want to emphasise the superficiality of the fashion and beauty industry and the pressures women experience to maintain their appearance. Typically, fashion magazines focus on women who conform to gender stereotypes and perpetuate unrealistic standards. The magazine will aim to subvert this by portraying women through a different lens, while both embracing their femininity but also subverting feminine stereotypes and portraying a more masculine appearance. Additionally, with the boy’s spread, I want to portray men in a playful, collage manner, defying male stereotypes of hypermasculinity, strength, and aggression to be softer, and more vulnerable. This will be achieved through a ‘vogue’ or ‘harpers bazaar’ style layout for the girl’s magazine. This will be clean, and professional, focusing on the bold and strong appearance of the female subject. Comparatively, with the boy’s spread, I want to have a playful collage layout where the boys are posing in unconventional ways and there are bright colours and graphic elements. To engage the audience, I will use bold typography to capture attention to titles and captions that aim to target the harmfulness of gender stereotypes. This will engage the audience in the issue and challenge them to change their perspectives.

Year 11 Applied Computing Drones

In the past few weeks, you might have spotted a Year 11 Applied Computing class having fun with several drones down in the Agora. This is because this term, the Unit 1/2 Applied Computing students were given the excellent opportunity to code Tello drones as a part of their Unit 1, Area Study 2 Outcome folio task. This was the first time that we had worked with such technology at school, and it was the same for many of our classmates. To say the least, working with the Tello drones was not only interactive and engaging but also a wonderful learning experience. 

The purpose of this project was to be able to program the Tello drones to complete an obstacle course through Python efficiently. We first created a prototype using Pygame software and later coded the actual drone using the Tello software commands. It wasn’t long before we were able to not only successfully code and control the drones, but also get them to do fun tricks such as flips. 

While the Computing students were in the process of coding their drones, many of them found the Tello drone commands to be “very easy to understand” and “convenient,” as mentioned by an anonymous student. Another anonymous student expressed that the drones “are precise and swift in their movements” which makes it an “enjoyable experience” to fly them. It was evident just by looking at the Year 11 students’ smiling faces that they were having an amazing time with their friends while working diligently on their assessment tasks.

Another feature of the drone that we enjoyed working with was the built-in cameras. Not only were they great for high-angled selfies, but they also gave us the opportunity to see the school from a perspective that we had never seen before. Additionally, the camera quality of the drones was impressive and it was pretty easy to control through the Tello phone app.

Overall, working with the Tello drones was a fantastic experience and we thank D1Store for providing us with the incredible Tello drones. This opportunity provided us with knowledge that we can apply in the future and offered us a wonderful insight into what technology is shaping into for the future. 

 Bhargavi Patil (B7), Kriti Chandrasekar (R4) & Hania Rizvi (R9)

Push Up Challenge

The push up challenge has come to an end for 2023, with a phenomenal effort from everyone. We're so proud of you all!!! We've raised $400 for Lifeline, and hopefully your mental health has been positively impacted by all that exercise! 

Rothwell took out the top spot for the house mini challenge, with Kororoit second, Blackwood third and Cottrell fourth. The overall standings are on compass, so go check them out. Thank you all for such an inspiring month, and we hope all of you take the time out to push up for yourself next year too

~ Keerthana, Sid and Sargun 

Ancient History Hellenic Museum Excursion 

On the 6th of June, the Unit 3&4 Ancient History students went on an excursion to the city to visit the Hellenic Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria. The trip started off with us meeting Ms Fenby at Flagstaff station. From there we made a quick stop to 7/11, where some of us got slurpees, hot chocolates and pastries. The Hellenic Museum had a no food or drink policy, so those with the slurpee had to chug it down. There were immense brain freezes, it was quite funny actually, but you had to be there in the moment. From there, we entered the museum and were given a guided tour by Evelyn. The tour was VERY thorough as Evelyn made sure to not miss out on a single detail. In my opinion, the best part of the tour was when we all got locked up in the vault with the

valuable artefacts. Ojas had made a joke about the possibility of the seven of us being locked in the small vault,  and it turns out Evelyn and Ms Fenby took this as inspiration and closed

the door on us! Thankfully we got a few pictures in before getting let out. Once the tour had concluded, we were led upstairs where we were able to look at hoplite helmets, Olympic torches and replicas of statues located in Greece. At around midday, we were let out for our lunch break and made our way to Melbourne Central. By the time we had finished our lunch we decided to make a TikTok on the way to Muji. We made the first two parts of the TikTok and realised we had lost Ojas! The rest of us were frantically looking around for Ojas, messaging him, calling him, but he wasn't picking up on any call. Juliette seemed to be the most worried, relating Ojas to her younger brother. We thought that Ojas had walked ahead of us to make his way to Muji, and so after a few minutes we finally made our way to Muji. By the time I got off the escalator, I looked back and I just saw Ojas with his Bubble Tea! Though it was a relief (especially for Juliette) we were super confused how he was behind us and how he got bubble tea. When it hit 1:15pm we met up with Ms Fenby at the NGV. As soon as we got off the tram, Juliette did a little headcount to make sure that Ojas hadn’t wandered off anywhere. The Greece section of the NGV was quite interesting as we could apply the knowledge that Evelyn had given us in the morning about the Greek gods and how the construction of the pottery could allude to what its function was. Just before we left, we made a stop at the painting of The Banquet of Cleopatra. The painting was quite strange because the lines that were made on the floor tiles in the painting could change direction depending on what side of the painting you were on, the left or the right. Once we found this out, we were making journeys to the other side of the painting to see the change in direction of the tiles. All together, the day out for the Ancient excursion was very fun! 

We had made a lot of fun memories, lost a person, learned a lot and overall had a great day! 

Sarah G., K9