Welcome to Term1, 2024

Welcome/ Wominjeka to Term 1, 2024.

Wominjeka in Woiwurung language means in short, to come, I invite you to come here with purpose.

We are all here for a common purpose and it’s important that we are clear on that purpose.

We are here to learn and to teach and belong to a community. We’re here to learn new things, stuff we didn’t know before, that’s what supports our growth.

 I want us to be open to learning, open to growth, to have or build a growth mindset.

It has been a vibrant and energetic start with all students coming back with clear expectations of learning. Our new year 7 students have started well, becoming an important part of our team. We look forward to camp next week, which will help them set up connections with each other and to the whole year 7 learning community – Camps are such an exciting way to learn.

We have many new staff both teaching and non-teaching, new leaders, and new students across a range of year levels. We are building a new and strong team at Diamond Valley College to make this the best school for our community.

Year 12 students started well with a study camp to Anglesea, and it was such a privilege to have dinner with students and experience our guest speaker Scott Harris, who focused on a story of resilience, change and growth. Such an inspiration to have courage, to be stronger and strive for excellence, even through the most difficult adversity.

We look forward to working with our brilliant school captains and have high expectations of what they can achieve based on their work so far.

I feel very privileged to be Acting Principal for term one. We are well and truly back into a routine of learning, building understanding and connecting with others socially, emotionally and academically. We have a lot of new and exciting challenges this year, moving to a 5 session day and other changes throughout the school with many new staff, new rooms, changes in our canteen and new facilities being arranged throughout this term. This will include new tables and chairs in classrooms, and a lot of new seating outside. This was done after extensive feedback from students and SRC and is an outcome of student voice being recognised in our school. We expect all students to please respect our facilities and our grounds and ensure you clean up areas after yourself and always put your rubbish in the bin.

Thank you to all staff who worked so hard last year and over the holidays to get the school ready for us, we could not possibly achieve what we are without their commitment and dedication.

Importantly, I want to acknowledge the extensive work of Allison Bennett, our former Principal, as she officially retired at the start of term. She has been a feature of this school community for 32 years and has seen many changes and developments of the school in that time. Allison has had an unwavering commitment and shown courage in leadership for many years and should be a role model for any of us to aspire to aim high and achieve great things for our community. We will celebrate Allison soon with a community retirement celebration.

I ask you to have Courage with a capital DVC this term and put yourself into everything you do wholeheartedly!