From the Principals' Desk

As I sit here and contemplate another week of our school and the community operating in isolation, I look out my window to a bright sunny day and I feel gratitude for where I live, where I work and for the health of those near and dear to me. And as I reflect, the word ‘gratitude’ prompts me to think of a whole range of things about Nossal that we can all be grateful for during this COVID Lockdown. Here is my acronym for gratitude, what's yours? 

G  is for generous. There have been so many people, students, staff and parents who have given freely of their time and talents to make this time easier and better for others within our school community. In all my contacts with others at Nossal over recent weeks, I am yet to hear of anyone doing less than what they were, prior to us entering either the earlier partial shutdown or the current total shutdown of the school. Students are maintaining their commitment to their studies, staff are working long hours to conduct their courses and maintain services, while parents and friends continue to work and support the school through associations like the School Council, the PFA and other less formal groups as well as just being caring parents to their own families.

R is for remote. As the school’s student leaders said in their inspiring video message, this is a year none of us saw coming or could have ever imagined. Despite being keen to return to our face to face lessons and work with friends and colleagues, remote learning has become our ‘normal’ and the Nossal community has accepted it and made the transition very successfully. Our students, despite being isolated, have continued to learn and develop their skills. They have continued to be inquisitive and willing participants in the classroom and beyond. Learning remotely hasn’t been easy, but in the true spirit of Nossal, our students have stuck with it and achieved great results.

A is for appreciative. I am appreciative of the fact that I have my health, my employment, our school and the leadership provided by our Principal, Roger Page. Nossal is a wonderful place to work and study, and we can all be grateful that we belong to the community we do. Talking with colleagues in other schools, it quickly becomes clear that some of them are finding it hard to operate because of a lack of direction and a lack of vision. In other places, the work of staff and students is made more challenging by the structures they are having to use. For example, at some schools students are expected to be online at the start of the week to receive directions for what they need to achieve by the next Monday, and are then left to download materials to work with. Nossal is fortunate to have entered this difficult period with a strong understanding of the skills and resources that support online learning, and with the infrastructure to explore these. In addition, students as well as staff have been actively working together to make things better.

For Nossal's teachers, one of the most valuable assets the school has is the high level of student engagement. In some of the settings described above, students are not only failing to do and complete the set work, but they are also often simply not logging in at the start of the week or at any other checkpoint throughout the week. Coordinators are then having to chase up these students and try to get them re-engaged. I appreciate the fact that at our school students and staff work to support each other and commit themselves to making the best of the situation we are in.  

T is for team. While it is easy to say that it should be easier because the staff don’t have to travel to and from school and they therefore have more time in their day, it is in fact quite the opposite. Our teachers are working extremely hard to ensure the students of Nossal are impacted as little as possible because of their remote learning. Unable to do any form of physical feedback, as would normally occur in the classroom, teachers have had to change their approach and provide more written feedback, which takes much longer. All this change and adaption is also taking place in an environment where staff are perhaps also responsible for older parents who need support through the lockdown, or are parents of younger children balancing the demands of being a teacher to Nossal students and a teacher to their own remote learning children.

The teachers are also being assisted by the education support (ES) staff, who are working to ensure the administration of the school and its programs continues seamlessly. Our ES group form a vital part of the staff team and ensure our phones continue to be answered, student attendance recorded, accounts are paid and other resources and programs are maintained. 

I is for initiative. There are examples of initiative being shown by any number of people within our school community to continue traditions and maintain engagement. Whether it be Batman making an appearance in Mr Witt’s Maths classes, the student leaders producing personal messages of support or Ms Coffa’s introduction of the Nossal Lockdown Olympics, Nossalonians of all types have continued to contribute to ensuring that our community doesn't just survive, but thrives.

T is for temperament. I want to acknowledge the temperament that has been shown at Nossal throughout this very disrupted year. It would have been very easy for our students to become disengaged with school and be unable to keep up with their learning, especially for our Year 9s who were last at Nossal in late Term 1. To their credit, and the credit in fact of all our students and staff, Nossal has successfully made the switch from onsite learning to online learning and given the circumstances, it is something I think we can all be very proud of and grateful for.

U is for united, especially through events and activities. I mentioned above that we can all be grateful for those who have shown initiative and introduced new things into our calendar, but likewise we can also be grateful to those who have kept regular activities going. Thank you to the School Captains for their leadership and thank you to the people who have lead and arranged for Careers Information and Course Selections, Morrisby interviews, Book Week, City Week, Debating in various forms and Science Week. We also appreciate those who enabled our students to participate in the PESA, Alliance Francais, Maths and Science Olympiad competitions.

D is for dedicated. I am grateful for the dedication of everyone associated with Nossal which has ensured that we have been a strong, effective and safe school throughout 2020.    

E is embrace, as in our school’s motto, “Embrace the Challenge”. Clearly the events of this year have tested our resolve and yet our school has been a living example of our motto. When we come to look back on the year, we will all be able to identify numerous challenges we have faced individually and collectively. Despite how large or hard they have seemed, each has been met and overcome. 

Yes, I am grateful for many things and one of them is to be a Nossalonian. 

Keith Butler

Assistant Principal