From the Head of Junior School

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our parent community for the level of support and understanding that we, as a school, have received this week. Last week, we lost a much-loved member of the Girton community. Thom Hosking joined Girton in Year 3; many of our Junior School staff taught him and are devastated by this tragedy. 

As we process our grief in Junior School, I want to reiterate the support that is available to our students and families. In a P-12 school such as ours, there will be varying levels of grief. While many of our younger Junior School students were not directly connected to Thom, they may still be impacted by observing the impact that this is having for those who were more closely connected. There will be students in our upper years who will have known Thom through shared interests or through connections with older siblings. It is important to acknowledge that everyone will process grief differently. 

Dr O'Rielly provided an update earlier in the week that gave links to support materials and services. I have included a link to this communication and have selected two of these links that I believe are most useful in helping parents with younger students.

Support resources for you and your children (Astra) 

• Grief and Children - Aged 6-12 Grief Australia – from Grief Australia
• Supporting children and young people affected by grief – from Beyond Blue

One of our School Counsellors, Mr Glynn Chambers, will be facilitating a parent session on understanding the grieving process and supporting your child through grief. Details are available at the Astra page linked here. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us should you or your child require support.

Drop Off/Pick Up

Our interim school entry and pick up zones are now operational on MacKenzie and Vine Streets. To those parents who drop off their children in MacKenzie Street, thank you for your patience and consideration. We have opened Vine Street as the main entry, but have also opened the top MacKenzie Street gate each morning to ease congestion. This will continue until the double MacKenzie gates are operational again.

We have observed some parents parking on the opposite side of Vine Street and walking their children straight across the road to the gate. We ask that parents please use the manned crossing on the intersection of MacKenzie and Vine to cross Vine Street. 

Chess

In Issue 12 of the eLink, I wrote about our Junior School chess players and their success at the Northern Star Zone Chess Tournament. Our team won the Champion School trophy, Ahaan Tadakamadla was Champion Player and Reyansh Kukarni, Ahaan Tadakamadla and Liam Wood all qualified to play at the State Semi Final. On Thursday, they competed in the Semis and Ahaan and Liam finished with 4.5 points, qualifying them for the State Finals with Reyansh only missing out by one point. 

Late last term, our players travelled to Castlemaine to compete in the Chess Victoria Zone competition. The team consisted of Ahaan Tadakamadla, Yohan Shetty, Samarth Kolli, Anvay Rao, Heath Beck, Liam Wood, Sebastian Collie, Leo Faganel, Remi Faganel and Raphael Zhao. Once again, the team was successful, with Girton winning Champion School and Liam Wood winning Champion Player. They have all qualified for the State Chess Semi Finals to be held in Melbourne next week.

Mr Don Thompson

Head of Junior School