Principal's Report

Somewhere there’s a photograph of me aged 14 on the top of a mountain in the French Alps. I’m surrounded by about 30 of my peers, many of us never having set foot outside our inner-city estates before, let alone travelling to another country. Moments before, me and three mates had been dared by our guide/hotel owner to swim in a melted glacier to cool off from the 30 plus degree heat. I can still remember the feeling of the ice-cold water almost stopping our hearts and nearly taking away our breath - we had just enough in our lungs to issue some high-pitched yelps that brought out the previously invisible goat herders who pointed and laughed at us from the rocks above.

Every so often, the image pops up on my high school’s ex-student Facebook page and every time the comments on those shared memories are the same. There is a clear sense that this was a moment that stuck with us all forever, whether we knew it at the time. 

So much of the good stuff at schools happens outside of the classroom. Whilst we take for granted the maths that helps us work out the best price for car insurance, the red marks of English correction that make sure we now get our ideas across coherently in an email or any part of the science, technology or sport learned that shape our professions or how we navigate the world, the power of those extra-curricular experiences and how they made us feel still echoes across time. Although the advent of camera phones helps us capture more and more moments, the aim has to be to fill those frames with the best, most enriching, experiences that we can. We need to aim at helping our students make the best memories that they can.

At the time of writing, I am about to load up the car and head off to the High Country to join up with the team who are running the Year 7 Camp. By design, this camp takes place at the start of the year with the intention of strengthening relationships, testing limits and connecting home groups, who will be on their high school journey together, to each other. Over the course of the next six years there will be highs and lows, challenges and triumphs and heaps of moments that they will go through together. If the footage shared of the singsong on the bus home is anything to go by, parents and carers will have some tired, hoarse but happy children back home after an eventful three days. Experiential learning is an area that we need to explore further for our students at BHS because there will have been lessons learned about themselves by every student that they might take with them for life. And whilst the high-ropes, giant swing and rock climbing might test the boundaries of each student’s comfort zone, activities like orienteering and raft building is very much about teamwork and listening to others’ ideas. Seeing the quality of the work done at the Ballarat Tech School - and seeing the high levels of engagement with their learning shown by our students - suggests that there is a deeper way to learn that compliments the excellent instruction found at our school.

The school camp also provides opportunities for staff to better get to know their students to further strengthen relationships. The vision of the Year 7 Centre is one where students are not left to feel lost or alone as part of the transition process. Our students need to feel that they have advocates and people that they can turn to for support when things aren’t going how they planned. Of equal importance is the opportunity for students to co-habit with each other in order to get to know each other better. We want our students to be their authentic selves around their peers and not feel the pressure of having to be someone else in order to fit in. Additionally, each student needs to learn to accept others for who they are and who they choose to be. When they look back at the photographs of this trip, I hope they don’t see themselves apart, but that they see themselves as part of the whole. 

Dropping in to last week’s VM camp was a privilege to see how far they have come as a team and how they are shaping up for their final year at Ballarat High School. I am really proud of these students and how they have challenged themselves over the course of the time that I have known them. They have matured into caring, socially aware people who will really benefit from the further learning planned for them this year. To witness the respect they showed to their guest speakers, invited to let them know how their fundraising for the James Petrie fund is utilised and to speak to them about personal misfortune and action in the face of challenges, is to see the journey from camp to Year 12. They are driving their own growth and I know that they will achieve all that they aspire to this year and beyond. 

These magic moments sometimes can often be few and far between and it is extra-special when a whole season of effort, training and preparation results in a ‘winners-are-grinners’ photograph to look back on in years to come. Whilst the Rowing season winds up for another year and we prepare to regroup, debrief and reimagine our goals for next season, special mention must be made to the following crews for their success at the State Championships last weekend. I hope there are plenty more moments to shout about with our swimmers, cricketers and tennis players competing today. For now, well done to the following students: 

Senior Boys Division 1  Rhys Webster (bow), Jules Jumamoy (2 seat), Rick Barber (3 seat), Connor O'Dwyer (stroke), Jayden Howden (cox)

Senior Boys Division 2 Oliver Vermey (bow), Zac Marios (2 seat), Rufus Tomich (3 seat), Jed Murray (stroke), Jackson Davidge (cox)

Year 10 Boys Division 1  Jye Hamill (bow), Ronan Van Kempen (2 seat), Brady Davidge (3 seat), Patrick Hill (stroke), George English (cox)

Stephan Fields

Principal