From the Principal's Desk

Almost half way!

As I type, we are entering our final week for Semester 1 and beginning to consider the events and the expectations of Semester 2. By this stage in the year, we will all have established patterns of behaviour and, perhaps, patterns of thinking. Those patterns may be supporting us as we work towards our various goals, or they may be inhibiting us. 

The movement from Semester 1 into Semester 2 is a good time for some reflection on this point. Are our work practices efficient and sustainable? Are we using our energy in useful ways? Are there changes - even tiny changes - that we could make that would make the second half of the academic year either more fruitful or more joyful than the first half has been?

Embracing New Challenges

As you will see later in the newsletter, our students have been very successfully involved in a number of prestigious competitions in the last few weeks and, as usual, they have done us proud! Their achievements in sport, creative writing, science and public speaking are a testament to the consistent work which they do to prepare themselves for the wider world. These achievements are also a testament to their confidence and willingness to try hard things, despite the risk of failure, a confidence which is in part enabled by the support of the staff and peer groups with which they work each day.

In addition to the competitions in which our students have been involved, you will also see that our students continue to embrace the challenge of understanding the world in all its challenging complexity. Our Year 10 students recently attended excursions to the Holocaust Museum, the Shrine and to Casey Tech School. The juxtaposition is a reminder of the importance of understanding the past and then integrating that understanding into our engagement with present and future challenges and opportunities. 

"Proud Principal" Moments

As the leader of a school full of folk with both the drive and the capacity to work at the highest level, I am often filled with pride and admiration for the work done by our staff and students alike. In the last fortnight, I was pleased to be present for several different events which made me very proud indeed. On Tuesday 3 June I was grateful to be able to attend our VCE Theatre Studies performance of Caryl Churchill's Love and Information. Supported by members of our alumni along with staff and parents, the students demonstrated their growing expertise within this complex art form.

On Friday 6 June I was pleased to see our Year 12 students step onto the dance floor and enjoy themselves at their Formal. As our school leaders mention later in the newsletter, it was a much anticipated event and one in which our students comported themselves well. It was delightful to see them enjoying this time together.

On Tuesday 10 June I got to see our staff in action as a small group attended a data analysis workshop with colleagues from other Select Entry Network schools. The opportunity to deepen our understanding of our cohort and to share practice with our peers is always valuable, and I was proud of the thoughtful and challenging contributions which our staff made both in terms of the types of questions they were asking, and the level of expertise they were able to bring to the conversation.

Finally, on Friday 13 June I was lucky to be able to attend the launch of Top Scribe, an anthology of creative writing developed by the 2024 VCE Literature cohort and published as part of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority's annual Season of Excellence. Nossal High School was one of only two schools with multiple pieces in the anthology, which is a credit both to the students involved and to the staff who supported them throughout their time with us.

Finally, I was pleased to receive an email from one of our past staff members, Mrs Kamla Reddy, who was herself a recent recipient of an award from the Women's Federation for World Peace. In her email, she thanked two representatives from the school - Sejal Chadha and Wilbur Machado - for their contributions during a panel presentation on "Raising a Peaceful Next Generation" at a recent Monash Interfaith Gathering event. It's always great to see our students out in the community and contributing to debates in thoughtful and respectful ways.

A Full Stop for Building B Repairs

On a quite different note, the school was also recently able to draw a line under the repairs which affected our use of Building B for such a large part of 2024. In recent weeks, the final payment was made on the work which had to be done after a major flooding incident late in 2023. It's amazing to remember how large the scope of those repairs was, though I suspect that the students' memories of having to use the portable toilets are still quite fresh!

The school received support from the Department of Education (via the Victorian Schools Building Authority) to ensure that the flooding (which affected the toilets and change rooms, as well as the Meath Auditorium) was controlled and that the building was better protected against future potential floods, but the actual repair and reinstatement work was made possible by the contributions of parents past and present. 

For that work, we were obliged to draw heavily on the tax-deductible donations made by past parents into the school's Building Fund. Current parents who are keen to support this fund can do so by nominating their chosen level of donation when they make their annual Parent Contributions and help to ensure that the school's physical environment remains a safe and welcoming one.  

Tracey Mackin

Principal