Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

Welcome to Week 3 and what a fantastic start to the year for all our students. It has been a jam packed schedule of new classes, new friends and extra-curricular activities to ensure the best transition for all our new and returning students.

As you are probably aware, 2024 is Mordialloc College’s 100th year. As a school we have a series of events and ways to celebrate this significant milestone. To kick off our Centenary Celebrations, last week our students and staff formed the number ‘100’ on our oval. This was such a great moment for our school community. You could sense the school pride and the specialness of the moment as the students undertook the brief perfectly.

You can see how fantastic the finished result is below. The drone footage was created by https://dronepilotpete.com.au/ who did an awesome job.

Leadership Conference

On Tuesday 13 February the Senior and Middle School leaders of our Mordialloc College School Council participated in a leadership conference. The conference was run by an organisation called GRIP that brought together people from different backgrounds. Many schools from around the state attended and participated in workshops encouraging collaboration to enhance their leadership skills. The feedback from the students was positive with many motivated for their leadership role for 2024.

Responsibility

Each of the last three terms we have had a whole school focus on one of our school values. This term the focus is on ‘Responsibility’. Each week there will be a different theme revolving around responsibility such as Responsibility: my Study Habits, Taking Responsibility for my actions, and Digital Responsibility. This is a great way for students and staff to focus their conversations and assemblies as a whole school for better understanding of how we can all be more responsible in our studies, our friendships at school and in our communities.

MyMahi and House Points

Last week our Director of Student Engagement, Ms Julia Hockey, sent through information on how parents and carers can access MyMahi. As mentioned parents can connect with their child’s profile and can access their Homework Diary and House Points. This is a great way to stay connected with your child and their school. The instructions on how to connect to your MyMahi can be found under a Compass Newsfeed.

Next week on Thursday 22 February we are all looking forward to our House Swimming Carnival. This is always such a great day in and out of the pool. Please remind your child to sign up for swimming and diving events throughout the day on the google form that has been shared with all students. Out of the pool we will have karaoke, limbo and a fashion parade to name a few. The fashion parade is one of my highlights as it's a great opportunity to earn House Points. We really encourage students to bring a packed lunch as the pool’s canteen can prove expensive and the queues were very long last year. Also please remember to ask your child to pack a hat and sunscreen.

Ms Hockey has also shared information on Compass regarding lunchtime and after school clubs and extracurricular activities. These clubs are such a great way for all students to make new friends with similar interests, and students are awarded House Points for attending: too easy!

Below is a summary of House Points for Week 3, as you can see Bunurong has taken the lead but with so many opportunities for being awarded House Points in the near future it will be interesting to see if they can maintain this lead.

Annual privacy reminder for our school community

Our school collects and uses student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy and the Schools’ Privacy Collection Notice.

Our Photographing, Filming and Recording Students Policy (see attachment below), describes how we collect and use photographs, video and recordings of students. The policy also explains when parent consent is required and how it can be provided and withdrawn.

We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use Microsoft 365/Google Workspace for Education safely at the school and what parents can do to further protect their child’s information. If after reviewing the guidance, you have any questions or concerns regarding your child using Microsoft 365/Google Workspace for Education, please contact the school.

For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in ten community languages: Amharic, Arabic, Dari, Gujarati, Mandarin, Somali, Sudanese, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

Simon Cummins

Assistant Principal

2024 Richard Williams Scholarship