From the Principal Class

Monday 14th June - Queens Birthday Public HolidayTuesday 15th June - Student Free Day (Correction Day)

Dear Viewbank Community,

It is great to have students back onsite today.

PLEASE- remind students to bring and wear masks according to Government guidelines. We have been supplying masks and asking students to wear them appropriately, but we need everyone’s support.

Until this recent lockdown, the College had been back and in full swing. Students have really engaged in the full range of extra-curricular activities including:

Many successes at round robin sports across all Year levels; division athletics; State swimming and State softball (our intermediate girls narrowly missing the final)
Production rehearsals have continued
Music workshops have been conducted in preparation for the Winter Nights Concert and the Winter Brunch. These events have been postponed until later in the year
Year 7 & 8 camps run consecutively. Huge thanks to the teachers, some of whom attended consecutive camps, to ensure the program went ahead.
Vocational Education Options meeting -huge thanks to Sandra Vaina, our pathways coordinator, who managed to flip this to an on-line format at the last minute.
Some Presentation Ball dance lessons and suit fittings

Work Experience, Exams and GAT

We have continued with our scheduled Year 10 & 11 exams. With fewer students onsite, we have been able to distance students, although the Department has not set density limits on students.

Unfortunately, with all the uncertainty, we will not be able to go ahead with Work Experience in the last week of term. We are looking for dates to reschedule.

VCE Students

This is the time to really put heads down and consolidate your efforts. Many students have struggled with motivation and routine. There is still plenty of time to pick up effort and seek support with your learning through study groups, homework club and mentor support.

Remote Learning

Students and staff were been able to flip into remote learning with relative ease. Staff have been well supported, with our Learning Specialist for Innovation, Genelle Lentini, running workshops to enable best practice use of Teams.

We have been acutely aware of monitoring both student and staff wellbeing during remote learning and since we have been back onsite. Please seek support through our House Leaders or Wellbeing if needed.

We have had some issues with social media use in the junior years and have Libby West, our Youth Resource Officer from Heidelberg Police coming to run some sessions with or Year 7 students on Cyberbullying and other online behaviours.

We have also continued to provide workshops for our Senior students to address Consent issues and these will continue through term 3 & 4.

Recognition of service:

Thank you to Kris Tsorlinis-

Kris has given 36 years of service to public education, starting as a teachers assistant at Watsonia Tech before attaining a teaching position at Greensborough College in 1991.

After 14 years at Greensborough, Kris arrived at Viewbank College and has remained until now.

Kris has worked predominantly as a member of our Humanities domain and particularly enjoyed teaching in the junior years.

She has spent semester 1 on long service leave, considering her teaching future and came to the decision that retirement suits her very well!

Thanks you to Ruth Perkins

Ruth started as a graduate teacher in 2010 here at Viewbank.

She had previously had a corporate career, with roles in project management. Ruth retrained as a food tech teacher, but followed an interest moving into careers and pathways provision.

This has become a huge area of interest and passion for Ruth. She reimagined and re-energised this area of the College as a Leading Teacher, proving an invaluable member of the leadership team.

Ruth is now pursuing this passion and has taken a position with VCAA to develop and support schools with the introduction of the new VCE/VCAL/VET single senior certificate.

We will miss her, but we know that she will add tremendous value to her new team at VCAA. Thanks to Ruth also, for her contribution to College Council

Thanks also to Sally Ho

Sally has been a very important member of the mathematics and science team, teaching physics and junior mathematics. Sally has been with the college for 7 years and in that time has been a mathematics domain leader and a numeracy specialist. We wish Sally our very best in her new role at Our Ladies of Mercy in Heidelberg.

All the best for the future Kris, Ruth and Sally.

Viewbank Market Day - Expression of Interest!

The Senior student leaders have been working on organising a Market Day for Saturday August 7th.

We are hoping to collaborate with small businesses to hold stalls at the day, so we can celebrate our wonderful community. We are looking for Food Trucks, Market Stalls and even people willing to participate in car boot sales. We are also running a raffle, and are looking for any donations to contribute to the prize pool.

If you would like to take part in the college Market Day, shoot an email to partnerships@viewbank.vic.edu.au

Proceeds from the registration fees and the raffle will be put towards the college SRC, and donated to Minus18.

To find out more about Minus18 and their incredible work: https://www.minus18.org.au/about

Viewbank Market will be proudly supporting Minus 18:

Ms Lentini on behalf of our Student Leaders

A bit of fun in Remote Learning

These pictures are a bit random but last week Ms Chong brought back her Lockdown 2020 trend of dressing up as some key literary characters for her Literature class.

As a Kahoot prize, Ms Chongs class get to choose her character for the next lesson.

Screen shots of Crazy Hair/Hat day - 7J German class

Ms Fleming

Screen shots of Crazy Hair/Hat day - 7D, 7F and Year 8 students

Ms Curnow

Year 10 Project Runway

Whilst working remotely isn’t ideal for many subjects, Miss Rank’s Year 10 Project Runway team took it in their stride creating some marketing material for their collections, instead of sewing up a storm in the classroom. Students were asked to complete a ‘fake’ Instagram post as well as magazine covers to market their collections based around the theme ‘The Elements’. Here’s a taster of what to expect on the final catwalk, hopefully to be showcased in term 3!