Principal's Report
If no mistake you have made, but losing you are. A different game you should play.
Yoda, Jedi Master 896BBY-4ABY
Welcome back to Term 4.
As always at Uralla Central School Term 4 is chock full of activity for all concerned as we prepare to rollover in Week 5 and commence the 2019 academic year.
All of our Academy students have been working hard revising and utilising the skills of their teachers, as evidenced by the number of them that I know spent days at the school during the holidays and those that I have seen at the school during the examinations getting assistance from those teachers. We wish them every success and confidently know that who they are, the type of citizens that they will be is not determined by an examination and its outcome. We have been blessed with a particularly fine group of young women and men in Academy II and I am confident that they will venture forth from this place to wherever their individual destinies take them standing tall and walking proud. They go with our fondest regard and best wishes.
I welcome to our staff for the majority of this term Leah Kohne, who is in her final year of study at Indiana University, and has joined us to further her knowledge of teaching and learning. We are so fortunate to have her with us and I know that she is enjoying herself immensely - she's tried vegemite and loves pavlova; however, she was quite confused when I told her the other day that I was flat out like a lizard drinking.
At the assembly on Thursday we were able to award our very first Platinum Phoenix Awards since the implementation of our unified award system - congratulations to Jackson, Becky and Tom this is an outstanding achievement. I should mention that for Jackson he is now the first recipient of a Gold Phoenix award and the Platinum Phoenix.
Organisation is well underway for our annual Presentation Assemblies on Thursday 15 November and we hope to see many of you there; the day assembly commences at 10.00am and the night assembly at 6.00pm. It has been a stellar year for collective and personal achievement and collectively nearly 16, 500 merits have been earned across the school - well done to everybody.
Congratulations to everyone who was involved with our participation in the Thunderbolt Festival everything ran smoothly, our students looked fantastic and the staff involved did a great job. I also give thanks to our P&C for the wonderful work that they do and continue to do in supporting our school.
Finally, can I say how excited I am at the take up of the new uniform by our school community. As I walk around the school and in and out of classrooms I mentally make a count of the numbers of students and then the numbers in the new uniform. At this stage I believe we have around 60-70% of students in the new uniform which is just fantastic and far exceeds where I thought we'd be at this stage, 13 weeks since implementation. Our original plan was to have the new uniform fully phased in by the end of 2019 but I am hopeful that we will be there by the end of Term One 2019. It would be wonderful to see everyone in the new uniform for the annual school photos at the end of Term One next year. I think everyone will agree that it looks great.
Until the next newsletter have a great couple of weeks.
The capacity to learn is a gift;
The ability to learn is a skill;
The willingness to learn is a choice.
Frank Herbert (1920-1986) Author of Dune