Clontarf Academy

St Patrick’s Clontarf Academy has recently welcomed Darren Burns to the team. Darren has previously worked with the boys in his role as St Patrick’s College Indigenous Education Facilitator and we look forward to Darren bringing his passion and experience to our program. 

We have commenced our 715 health checks, teaming up with BADAC Medical Centre to deliver these important screens. The Health Checks are a major part of academies across the country with the aim of early intervention and de stigmatising health checks. The aim is to have each one of our boys have a health check once a year and it's great that BADAC have come on board to support the cause.

Our boys recently hosted the College Student Leadership team in the Academy room for a Top Bunch Lunch. The lunch was a great chance to put into action some of the things our boys spoke about during Reconciliation Week in sharing and acknowledging the past. It was great to see so many conversations happening around the room and a really important step in helping our student leaders understand the role they can play in reconciliation.

It was great to host local Woolworths managers for a morning training in the gym. Woolworths are one of Clontarf’s partners and have been very pro-active in supporting the program in a variety of ways. One of these has been providing work opportunities for our boys. The Woolworths staff are always happy to give up their time to help the boys with their online applications and give the boys their first taste of work.

On Wednesday afternoon we had the privilege to host Uncle Zaine Harris for a session with our boys on making Bundi’s, a traditional club made from local eucalyptus species. Uncle Zaine took the boys out to collect the Bundi’s, showing the boys what to look for and how to dig them up. We look forward to Uncle Zaine retuning in a couple of weeks to finish off the work in stripping, shaping and burning designs into their own Bundi.

With only a couple of weeks to before the end of the term our focus has tuned to our upcoming Yrs 7/8 camp, exams and a trip down the freeway to watch the NRL State of Origin Game 2 for our Top Trainers.