Respectful, Responsible, Successful

Term 4

525,600 minutes

525,000 moments so dear

525,600 minutes

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights,

in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles,

 in laughter, in strife, in 525,600 minutes.

How do you measure a year in the life?

‘Seasons of Love’ by Jonathan Larson from ‘RENT’.

School Plan Update

One of the key features of Strategic Direction #2: flexible, future-focused and innovative teaching practices is our implementation of our Bring Your Own Device program which requires students to bring their learning devices to school each day.  We have made it easier for parents to purchase a simple and effective device to support BYOD at the following  website:

http://www.hpshopping.com.au/cecilhillsbyod

The cheapest laptop is $425.18 and is sufficient for students to engage in our online learning platform, Moodle, and other applications such as Google Classroom which is being used by many teachers.  In the 20th century, students brought a pencil case to school.  In the 21st century, students bring a laptop to school.  The expectations are the same and follow our FOCUS values of students being ‘responsible’ to become ‘successful’.

Year 12 (2019) HSC Information Evening

We held our HSC Information Evening earlier this week and it was another successful event.  Students and parents received important information on the HSC credential, our study room, processes for changing their pattern of study, home study routines, study notes, calculation of the ATAR, university, transition processes, assessment rules and senior expectations.  It is great to start the HSC year with this event and I repeat that every student is currently equal first in all of their courses and now is their opportunity to make a fantastic start to their HSC year.  In terms of my introductory quote, students have around 525,600 minutes until their HSC, so there is no better time to plan for success.

School Conference

Our teachers worked very hard at our annual school conference which was held on Friday, 19 October 2018 and Saturday, 20 October 2018.  The theme of the conference was ‘assessment’ and our teachers explored the NSW Quality Teaching . Framework and strategies to make the most engaging, differentiated and relevant assessment tasks for students.  Our teachers created the following word cloud to describe quality assessment:

30 years of service

Congratulations Alice Koloveros from the History and Languages faculty who has been recognised for thirty years of service to the NSW Department of Education. 

This is a significant achievement and we thank Ms Koloveros for her dedication to the students of Cecil Hills High School as an original staff member of the school.

Staff

I am very pleased to announce that Mr Andrew Faga has been successful in attaining a permanent position at Cecil Hills High School.

Mr Faga has taught with us for a number of years as a casual teacher, temporary teacher and now enters this permanent role. He has taught across many different faculty areas and currently teaches subjects as diverse as Music and Industrial Arts. He is one of our Year 7 (2019) Advisers and I know he is looking forward to this role. I know you will join me in congratulating Mr Faga on his appointment to this position.

Our next P&C Meeting

Our next P&C meeting will be held at 6:30pm on Monday, 5 November 2018.  There will be a repeat session at 9:30am on Thursday, 8 November 2018.

I look forward to continuing to work with the staff, students and parents of Cecil Hills High School, the best school in NSW.

Mark Sutton, Principal