Sydenham Campus Principal Message

Sydenham Campus - 2023 Champions Together

Principal’s Report

Welcome back to all our students and families for a busy Term 3. The weather is still cold but students have been enjoying being back on campus after the term 2 holidays.

This term, we welcome new staff; Liam Bretag, Kellie Phan, Stephen Scanlon and Joanna Christopher to our campus and hope that all have an enjoyable rest of the school year.

We have also farewelled Tuan Le, Elsa Ramirez and Marlee Conlan, who have taken up positions at new schools. We thank them for their contributions to the College during their time at Copperfield.

Thank you to our Pathways Team who have been assisting Campus and Team Leaders to work with students from Years 8-10 with 2024 subject selections. We have had a very busy few weeks with the Year 8-9 Expo, Year 9-10 course counselling and the Year 10 Course Finalisation Day. Students in Year 9 will also be completing interviews with Career’s counsellors on their Morrisby Profiles during this week.

Work Experience for Year 10 students continues this semester. It is a valuable program for interested students and the feedback is always positive. Tate from Year 10 had the following observation: ‘I finished a primary school teaching internship because I was interested in a career in education. I believe gaining work experience was important since it gave me a taste of what my future career would be like. It was a positive conclusion since I learned from my work experience that I did not enjoy teaching. As a result, I was stopped from choosing teaching as my profession and entering a field I knew I would not enjoy.’

Transition Team Leader, Krystal Allison has been working with Campus scholarship and leadership students in visiting neighbouring primary schools. Sydenham students have been speaking with Grade 5 and 6 students about ‘life at secondary school.’ There have also been dance and music workshops to showcase our Performing Arts program.

Ms Allison has also communicated with all our neighbouring primary schools about the fantastic opportunity for students who are enrolled into Copperfield College for 2024. The College is offering generous scholarships, the due date for the submission of applications is the 3rd of October 2023.

More details about our scholarship program can be found on our website, and https://copperfieldcollege.vic.edu.au/prospective-families/scholarships/

Thank you to Karen Martin who has been Acting Campus Principal during semester 1. Mrs Martin has been our Campus ABCN liaison and as well as organising student programs with ABCN mentors, she has co ordinated the roll out of donated laptops.

We thank KPMG for their generous donations.

Year 8 Snow Day has been postponed due to unfavourable weather conditions. The new date is August 14th and we thank Year 7/8 Campus Leader, Ercan Hasip and Lorraine Dedman for all of their work in organising the event.

Harmony Day will be celebrated on Friday August 11th. Sydenham Leadership students have been working with College Captains and Delahey Leadership students to organise the day. Thank you to 9/10 Campus Leader Mirand Orford for her support, encouragement, and organisation.

Year 10 Well Being Day is being organised for next month. Thank you to the Well Being Team members who have sourced relevant speakers and for putting together a program that aims to highlight the importance to students of looking after their mental health.

Semester 1 reports have been available for students and their families to view. We encourage the reading of these reports and ask students to set goals for semester 2. These goals can be showcased in Student Led Presentations to be held on 31/08 and 1/09.

NAPLAN reports for students in Years 7 and 9 were recently sent out to families. Again, we encourage students and their families to read through the reports and accompanying information and to contact the campus if there are any questions.

We will hold our mid term campus assembly next week and we aim to continue to highlight our campus goals;

Increase student attendance and connectedness.
Seating Arrangements based on Student Data
Increase in positive incidents 6:1 – let’s catch the students doing the right thing.
Fostering pride in our environment- classrooms, corridors and in the yard

Mr Andrew Atherton and Ms Mary Chiodo Campus Principals