Principal's Reports

College Council

Last Tuesday was the College Annual Reporting Meeting of the College Council.  Firstly, I would like to thank the members of the previous Council for their generous support of the school, with both time, energy and emotional investment. Their contributions have ensured that we have a strong and vibrant community partnership. Thank you to our 2017 School Captains, Lauren Sharpe and Alistair Payne, as well as parent representatives Vivienne Clare, Mitch Sharpe, Carolyn Minster, Ian Andrew, Leigh Goucher and our staff representative Allira Howe.  I wish them all well in their future endeavours and again thank them for their enthusiastic support of the staff, students and parents of the College. All council members had made me feel extremely supported and welcomed as Principal.  This is also an opportune time to welcome Kyle Joustra, Catherine Sim, Mary Roiniotis  and Gary Howell - parent member category, Jo O’Donnell – PFA representative, Jasmine Wolrige, Tom Shelley- School Captains and Marilyn Faithfull, Stace Kerr -  DET member category to the council.

I would also like to officially acknowledge the wonderful work of the PFA and great success for the Sausage Sizzle and Bake Sale held at Bunnings on Saturday 10 March. There were lots of great baking and camaraderie occurring on the Friday evening in the Food Tech room in preparation for the big event. I was astonished by the amount of goodies being made and also delivered and the great involvement which resulted in such a profitable day. Again thank you to the PFA from the whole College community.

Past and Present Student Activities and Events

I had the privilege of attending the Victorian School Sports Awards Thursday 15 March and witnessed Alistair Payne receiving a Sporting Blue Award for Hockey. This is a very prestigious award and many well-known elite athletes have received this awards in the past. It was a great event with Steve Moneghetti AM as the Master of Ceremonies supported by a number of Olympic medallists as presenters in the presence of James Merlino, the Minister of Education.

On the same evening I attended Monash University’s Scholarship Presentation and was proud to see Anna McLean being awarded a Dean’s Scholarship for Academic Excellence. This is a fantastic reward for Anna’s outstanding academic results, she was one of very few students to receive this generous scholarship to support her Medicine studies.

The recent Shave for a Cure lunchtime carnival run by the SRC was a great event. The student leaders did a wonderful job of organisation, catering and managing the festivities. A bake sale and BBQ was followed by the head shaving of a large number of staff and students. The haircuts were conducted by student apprentices from Box Hill Tafe. Over $5000 was raised, which is an excellent effort.

Staff Professional Learning Projects

At Koonung this year our staff are working on 3 major projects for Professional Learning. All are aimed at providing staff with the skills and confidence to support our students’ learning and wellbeing. The Projects are teenAid, Differentiation in Action and Literacy for Learning.

teenAID

Poor attendance and engagement, greater absences from school and an increased likelihood of self-harm are some of the effects of mental health issues on Australia’s school students, according to a national survey led by The University of Western Australia. The survey found mental disorders affected one in seven students in the previous 12 months and students with mental disorders scored lower on average than students without mental disorders in every test domain and year level.

Consequently, we were very excited when offered the opportunity to be involved in a project focusing on Mental Health Literacy. 22 members of the staff volunteered to complete the 14 hour out of hours teenAid Mental Health First Aid training. This project is run by Melbourne University and includes training for Year 10 students, staff and parents. The aim of the project is to give participants understanding of mental health issues faced by young people including depression, anxiety, eating disorders etc. Training will provide the skills to identify young people who are suffering with such conditions and knowledge to provide support for them and links to community providers. The outcome should be an increased awareness with a large team of people who are able to provide support for students as required and increased mental health literacy for our community.

Differentiation in Action

Catering for the diverse needs and experiences within each classroom is a great challenge and important practice for teachers. Twelve staff members are working with a team from Melbourne University in a research project on Differentiation. The aim of this research project is to provide meaningful and useful ways to support teachers as they further their understanding and enactment of differentiated instruction.   The project will use a collaborative action research model to help enable teachers to explore differentiation in their own teaching context. The results of this project may be published in academic journals, books, and presented at conferences. The teachers involved are working in teams of three and planning lessons, observing each other teach and producing an action plan. Providing time for teachers to work together to improve their practice will benefit our staff and students.

Literacy for Learning

We have recognized the need to support all students to have high level literacy so they can make meaning of multiple mediums and genres which will confront them in their educational, social and working lives. Therefore, we have committed to devise and implement a whole school Literacy Plan.

 All teachers are completing training in an accredited Literacy for Learning program. The aim of this program is to increase the capacity of teachers across all domains to improve literacy outcomes for all students particularly in writing.

We have joined with other schools, John Monash Science School, East Doncaster Secondary College and Camberwell High School in our work on this area via the FISO (Framework for Improving Student Outcomes) together we are planning professional development and working with teachers to implement strategies in classrooms which will support students to make meaning of text.

We have 8 staff members who are trained tutors in this program and are leading the teaching of other staff members.

It is very pleasing that staff members have committed to be involved in these valuable yet, demanding, projects and are demonstrating their desire to keep improving their practice so that we are supporting our students to achieve improved outcomes.

I would like to wish all members of our community a happy Easter and hope that the holiday break is a safe and restful one. Thank you to the staff, students and parent members who have worked hard to support our College and complete a productive term’s work.

Marianne Lee

Principal