From the Deputy Principal

By Chris Shaw

Overview of Semester One

If we finished Term 1 of our 150th year understanding our roots and rituals, this term has been full of creativity and courage. As our seasons of celebration continue it is great to see the many things Loreto students have engaged in.

Now heavily in the season of the Arts, Newsies in conjunction with St. Pats, was a triumph of creative performance. The House Arts Festival preparations are well underway, and we have enjoyed performances from our Theatre Studies classes and our musicians. In particular, the first Year 7 Da Capo concerts displayed the ongoing strong development of music skills this program is providing for our students.

The Art classrooms and Materials Technology (Food) classroom are two favourites to visit. Seeing our VCD students develop models with multiple mediums and creative approaches in Food to the re-imagined Australian lamingtons has been a recent highlight. 

When it comes to courage, the Cross Country Team have ventured out to challenging courses for State Championships in difficult weather and pushed themselves to finish achieving some outstanding results. Basketball and Netball teams have been competing in regional and state level competitions and the Girls’ Football – Players for Pink team took it right up to BCC, to just fall short in a friendly fundraiser.

The balance of experiential learning and an academic focus is where we continue to look for opportunities for student growth. We see this in our VM students as they work with many in the community groups to build their skills and develop their creativity and courage. 

A few weeks ago at a conference, I heard Simon Kuestenmacher (geographer and demographer) from the Demographics group Australia speak about the future of learning and our workforce. Australia is very much positioned to transform into a knowledge economy where research is growing, but hands on skills are not. And trends are changing fast- agriculture is shrinking and health care is growing. New generations are seeking quicker solutions and short time in work and our students are good at following such trends.

At Loreto we continue to look for ways to equip our students with a wide range of skills, knowledge and attributes that will position them well for their future, a fast-paced and everchanging world. To develop these skills, they need to engage in creativity and courage growing their possibilities for a future of choice.