ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS’ REPORT

ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS

Ryan Mills   Bradley Headlam   Sarah Bridges

Soroptimists International Geelong Women’s Day Breakfast

The senior sub school organised for our student leaders to attend the Soroptimists International Geelong Women’s Day breakfast. Lucinda Goodwin was the guest speaker who is a music photographer and has photographed Elton John, Foo Fighters and Katy Perry. In 2023 she was a finalist in the Australian Women in Music Awards. Lucinda was an inspiration to overcoming naysayers and achieved her goals. The prelude to her presentation were our students Malika Niazi and Maryana Narooz who were invited to speak as recipients of an SI scholarship to assist with their studies. The two stunned the crowd with their incredible story to overcome adversity in their home country before coming to Australia. Their fondness towards staff, students and community, warmed all the hearts in the room and they were incredibly impressive speakers.  

NAPLAN

A reminder to parents/guardians and students that NAPLAN testing begins next week. Students in Year 7 and Year 9 will follow the timetable below and are reminded that they must bring a charged device and a book to read if they finish early.

BE BOLD BE HEARD

The Be Bold Be Heard initiative has now grown to include 15 schools and 140 students. It is fantastic for our 15-20 students to be involved and interact with such a diverse range of students from Geelong and surrounding schools. On 5th March, at GMHBA stadium our students took part in the first BBBH Forum for 2024. Nya Tut (NGSC student leader and member of BBBH for two years) opened the day with an enthralling speech that impressed students, staff and community leaders immensely. The first Forum is to inspire students to start identifying changes in class, college and community that they would like to pursue (to tackle student engagement, voice and agency) and Nya certainly launched them into this successfully. Students were then given guidance and advice on starting to allocate roles within a working team and some team building activities, led by Respectful Relationships leaders Raelene Newton and Rachel Johnston. After a quick morning tea, students, filled with jam doughnuts, danishes and fruit, received further inspirations from our guest panel. 

Lyndelle Zuccolin, who is the founder and managing director of strategic management consultancy Just Add Colour and board director of Skate Australia and likes to challenge the way we think. Jade Hamilton, the General Manager of Lazarus Community Centre, social worker who loves helping those that cannot help themselves, encouraged students to ‘find their tribe’. Michelle Geardtz is currently Chair for the AFL Barwon and eager to have netball equal to AFL in all the clubs. As many of the guests highlighted she also has had numerous roles in programs and from her experiences, encouraged the students to “embrace those people who embrace you, attach yourself to positive people and keep encouraging others”. Allyson Brown, the director of Everheal and the 4-Step LIFE formula programs, encouraged the students to not let adversity be a barrier, embrace it positively and reset your journey. She told students to “set goals, know the why and do what you are passionate about”. Nova Clough is from the Geelong Project, which supports young people at risk of being homeless, stay in touch with their learning pathway. Her cheerful presence provided the girls with confidence to reach out to others for support during tough circumstances and again highlighted the importance of being surrounded with the right people to achieve your own goals. Renee Garing, a PE teacher and ex-AFLW player for Geelong, talked of overcoming mental health challenges and also valued the importance of having the right people around you. Mick O’Malley, the first male panellist for BBBH was overwhelmed by the discussion and acknowledged that he had not really considered (regrettably) the female perspective until he had his own daughter. Mick organises Kokoda treks and was invited to speak about his approach to empowering young people during such gruelling journeys. He talked about friendships, and highlighted hardship in his teens that reaffirmed this. He shared a quote he recalled “show me your friends and I will tell you all about you”. In addition to this he encouraged the girls to really consider two things about yourself: “The Who and The What”.

The guests then went from table to table answering all the questions the students had conjured up. This was excellent and the students even formed some positive potential partnerships to support their actions going forward.

Full of inspiration, the students had a fantastic lunch and then went into some structured ‘quick wins’ led by Respectful Relationship’s Rachel Johnston. Interestingly, the room was still buzzing at the end of a long day and some of the quick wins and goals discussed were really exciting. We, at North Geelong Secondary, are exploring how to develop effective school mentors (staff and students). The next forum is in term 2, where students will organise an action plan for the year.

SPORT UNIFORM

Can parents please remind their children that they are only to wear the sports uniform when they have practical classes? In the event they do not have the correct uniform they will be given a lunchtime detention. In the event there is a legitimate reason for no uniform then please provide them with a note explaining the situation.

SCHOOL ASSESSED COURSEWORK (SAC)

Our senior students have either completed or are approaching their first SAC for 2024. SACs are assessments in which students must achieve a result of at least 40% to be considered Satisfactory (S). If a student receives an N (Not Satisfactory) they will be given a chance to redeem their result on Tuesday afternoons, directly after school. If students do not successfully redeem their N result, they could be in danger of receiving an N for the unit in that subject. If students or parents/guardians have any questions regarding the redemption process, can you please contact the relevant Year Level Coordinator. 

ATTENDANCE

Congratulations to 9C who completed a perfect day of attendance, what a wonderful picture! Well-done 9C.

PT Conferences: Wednesday 27 March 11:30-6:30

Making a Parent Teacher Conference Booking

You (the parent/guardian/user) can click the notification to proceed to make a booking.  To access all their conference cycles, you can click the Community menu (two people icon) and choose 'Conferences'. When you click the notification, you will be taken into that specific cycle.  If a Description was included in the cycle settings, the user will see this information.  You can click either 'Start Booking Now' or 'Show me How to Book' to proceed'. 

If you click 'Show me How to Book' this will take you to an instruction screen which you can proceed to be guided through or Skip.     

When proceeding to make a booking, you will see the child the booking screen is in relation to, in the top right corner.    

If you have more than one child enrolled in this cycle, you will be able to select which child you are making bookings for (students making a booking will only have access to their own bookings).

The possible classes or groups that bookings can be made for in relation to the student will display under their name.     

This will display to the target group when they go into the cycle to make their bookings. See below for an example of how this appears to the Target group when first entering the interview booking screen.

There are two ways to make bookings, by 'Timeslot' or by 'Teacher'.

Timeslot

To book by timeslot, you will click the timeslot you are wanting to make the booking for.  The teachers that you are eligible to book will be selectable on the right-hand list if they are available at that time.  If a teacher in the list is not available at the selected timeslot, they will be greyed out.    

You then need to click the staff member on the right that you want to book with at that selected time.  A confirmation will pop-up and you can then click 'OK' to make the booking.

The timeslot and correlating staff member will show as green indicating a booking is in place.  Any staff in your list that they have made a booking with will show as green. White indicates they are yet to be booked with by you.     

Teacher

To book by Teacher, you need to click the teacher from the list on the right that they want to make a booking with.  This will cause any time slots that the teacher is still available for to display.     

You can then click the timeslot they want to book with that teacher for. The confirmation will pop-up and they can then click 'OK' to make the booking.

The timeslot and correlating staff member will show as green indicating the user has a booking in place.   

You can also click the timeslot you have a booking for and make changes.

Booking Schedule

When you have completed making you bookings, you can use the 'Email my bookings' option by clicking the button.  The email issued will contain a list of each booking detailing the staff member, the booking date/time, the subject, the location and the student it relates to (for parents with more than one student in the conference cycle)

If you need to access bookings on another occasion, provided a cycle is set as 'Open' or 'Read-Only' for the target audience, you can go to their Conferences page (under the Community menu) and click into the applicable cycle. You can then either email the list to yourself again or click 'Print Preview' to view your booking schedule.

This will show you a list of your bookings.    

If you want to print a hard-copy, you can click 'Print Bookings' and a printer friendly version can be sent to your available printer.