Assistant Principals

Being safe online

In our ever changing world  social media is a reality for everyone.   With all the benefits of instant access to information along, with the ability to communicate at the click of a button, comes great responsibility.

The following advice for students is based on recommendations from Cyber Safety experts:

Being completely anonymous online is a thing of the past.  Anything that is shared on social media, publicly or privately, can be tracked back  and that person may be held accountable for sharing it.

Always use the 'Grandparent' rule.  If you wouldn’t want your grandparents, parents, teachers, or future employer to see something, don’t share it on social media.

There are some things that are  illegal to share on social media. Threatening posts and messages or sharing an inappropriate  photo of an underage person, even if that person is you,  can lead to legal action and police involvement.

Ensure that you have your privacy settings set appropriately.  Know exactly who can see a post, picture or tweet before you share it. If total strangers can see all of your information, pictures, and everything you post, they can use this information to track you or to hack your profile.

Public versus Private Privacy settings allow you to share appropriate content with friends and family while making sure that strangers can’t access your information. Carefully choose what information you want people that you don’t know to see when they view your social media profiles.

Private Isn’t “Secret”. Just because you have a piece of information, a photo, or a post set to “private” doesn’t mean that it can’t be shared with others. While privacy settings make it more difficult for others to see things you don’t want them to see, people inside your private network can still share photos and screenshots outside of the network.

The College assists our students  to better understand how to be safe on line in a variety of ways.  We are running a Cyber Safer evening for Year 7   students and their parents on May 1st.

Keeping Students Safe

To ensure student safety  the College has four different emergency drills for different situations.  We practice the drills during the year so students know what to do in a real emergency.

There will be a practice drill in the last week of term and parents will receive a Compass notification about the details on the day.     

Safety on the way to school

We want to ensure that all students arrive at school safely (and get home safely).   Can students and parents please ensure they do the following:

• Take care when walking past the entrance to Salford Park as residents are often driving out of their entrance
• Use the safe drop off zones in Harold Street and respect the pedestrian crossing by not parking too close and not using the Music Office car park entrance to turn around
• Ensuring that when crossing the road near the Ameysbury Avenue roundabout, students are aware of the traffic

Changes to the 1073 Bus route

On behalf of parents, Wantirna College requested a small extension to the 1073 bus route.  Ventura Bus lines have informed me that Public Transport Victoria have approved the extension.  This change will take place in Week 2 of next term. The new route and time should be on the Ventura website (www.venturabus.com.au during the upcoming school holidays.  The map below is the planned new route.

Bruce Churchward  Assistant Principal

Interim Reports and Parent Teacher Interviews

The development, production and publication of interim reports on Compass has been a very streamlined process from the College's perspective.  We were excited to see how quickly parents were accessing the information once the reports went live on Monday.  We hope being able to view the report and book the interviews all on the same site has made life easier for you as parents.  

The report comments on the behaviours that are indicated in educational research as leading to successful learning.  This year we have added a new behaviour "Independently uses literacy strategies."  Students are explicitly taught a range of literacy strategies to assist them in making meaning of different texts. These strategies are utilised throughout the College Curriculum and include visualisation, making connections, questioning and summarising.

Each of the behaviours is assessed as to how often it is demonstrated when needed in class: Consistently (all the time), Usually (more often that not), Sometimes (less than half the time) and Rarely (hardly ever).  Although it is ultimately desirable for students to show every behaviour all the time, this is not always realistic as students may need to develop their ability in particular areas.   

The Parent, Student, Teacher interview is an opportunity for parents and their children to discuss the report in more detail and to develop strategies that will allow students to improve and develop in relation to the learning behaviours and learning the skills and content related to the subject.  

Although interviews are booking quickly we strongly encourage all families to attend on Parent/Student/Teacher Interview Day, Thursday March 30th 1:00pm - 9:00pm.

Students are expected to attend their interviews.

Catherine Ford

Assistant Principal