Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

VCE results and DUX 2021

We wish all our Year 12 students the very best on Thursday 16 December when they will be receiving their final results. We will be holding a special celebration morning tea for students, parents, and staff on this day. Emma White, our Senior School Pathways Coordinator, will also be available throughout the day and Friday for any change of preference appointments for their choice of university or TAFE courses. Once I get approval from the dux to release their name, I will organise for this to be posted on social media and will send an email out to all families to announce.

Awards Night

To recognise and celebrate the achievements of our students across all year levels this year, we prepared a pre-recorded video which I released to all parents, carers and students last Wednesday afternoon (December 8) via Compass. Please refer to this email for the link if you still haven’t had the opportunity to watch. Included in my email was also the program listing all of our student award winners. Students who were nominated for two or more Academic Excellence Awards, Sport Awards, Music and Art awards, various subject awards and our special sponsored awards were all recognised in our video. Although it looks very different to our usual event at the Moorabbin Town Hall, it was still really important that we took the time to recognise our students’ efforts, positive work ethic and achievements in another extraordinary year. Our School Captains, Meike Berg and Lorenzo Mortimer, were our MCs for this event. They did a terrific job and they also gave very inspiring speeches.

I would like to highlight our DUX award for each year level based on close examination of achievement data over the year and the students with the highest number of academic excellence awards, to determine the highest performing student. The dux for each year level was only revealed at the time of recording, and even though you may not have been able to notice on the video, there was genuine joy and excitement from each winner and, after we stopped filming this section, the rest of their year level who had received an award, all gathered around the winner/s to congratulate.

Congratulations to the following students:

DUX of Year 7: Liv Patterson

DUX of Year 8: Linh Nguyen & Leilani Tovia

DUX of Year 9: Charlotte Zaph

DUX of Year 10: Anna Kuppe and Tia Roberts

DUX of Year 11: Tamsyn Russell

DUX of Year 12: to be announced on Thursday 16 December on release of the Year 12 results

School Production

Along with the link to our Awards night video I also sent a link to the performance numbers from our School Production - a recording of the main numbers from "We Will Rock You" - this video goes for approximately 30 minutes, showcasing numbers from our production this year. Congratulations to students and staff who came together at the end of the year to rehearse and then film the key numbers, so we could celebrate all of the work that went into this show prior to lockdown and the cancellation of the live shows.

Staff Service Awards

On the afternoon of Friday December 3, we held the Mordialloc College school service awards. This is an annual event we have held since 2016 to celebrate and recognise staff who have spent a considerable part of their career to date at Mordialloc College. It is a most worthwhile event sponsored by the College Council. This year we had four staff being recognised. We acknowledged Yvonne Aird, Rachael Pierce, and Vicky Vrettos for 15 years and Matina Rodrigues for 10 years’ service. Rachael and Matina were not able to attend on Friday, and therefore presented with their certificates the following Monday.

Building Program Update

We are still on track for an end of Term 1 handover of our new two storey building. Internal plastering and painting are well on the way, joinery has commenced, ground floor sliding doors have been installed, and the glazing and external cladding completed. As I mentioned in my last newsletter article, the in-ground stormwater works will be commencing soon and then the pathway can be completed from the gate currently locked up so students will have access to this main entry and exit point from the start of the school year in 2022.

It’s Academic

An event we always look forward to is the annual Mordialloc College Academic Challenge for our feeder primary schools’ Grade 5 students. This was held on Monday December 6 online due to the restrictions in place at the time. The event was run by our Middle School Captains. This year we had four of our feeder primary schools competing - Aspendale Gardens PS, Bonbeach PS, Chelsea PS and Mordialloc Beach PS. It not only offers a unique taste of secondary school life, whilst making learning fun and relevant; it also provides valuable leadership and event management skills for our Year 9 Middle School leaders.

Congratulations to Aspendale Gardens PS who were the winners this year, closely followed by Mordialloc Beach PS who were second (by one point!). Thanks to Director of Middle School, Daniel Williams and our Middle School captains Charlotte Zaph, Lachlan Welsh, Caity Ford and Antonio Marques Vaz Serra for organising the event. Daniel will be visiting each primary school that participated this week to deliver the certificates and medals. In addition, I will present the big trophy for first place at a whole school assembly. The winning school gets to keep this in their school for a year, until the next event!

Staffing 2022

We go into 2022 with not many changes to staffing. We mainly have new staff covering maternity/family leave.

Miku Nonaka – is replacing Megan Champ who has started maternity leave prior to Headstart. Miku is teaching French 7-10.

Ayako Lyons – is replacing Megan Carlson (Baker) who started maternity leave from Headstart. Ayako is teaching Japanese 7-12.

Kym Lenc – returns from family leave and will be teaching Health and PE, three days a week.

Liz Ireson – replaced Peter Vicary (who is taking leave for 12 months) teaching Communication (English/Humanities) earlier this term in Year 7 and is following the students up to Year 8 from Headstart.

Emma Walker – continues to cover Ariana Nickou who is on family leave, teaching Year 7 Discovery until the end of Term 1.

Alex Myer – joining our Leadership Team as Director of STEM (including Science and Digital Technologies Learning Area leader). Alex is a leading STEM educator in WA and is relocating to Melbourne over the summer break. Alex will be teaching some of our STEM based electives, digital technology, and science.

Courtney Richmond – senior English teacher, due to growth in student numbers. Previously head of English at Ivanhoe Grammar.

Shane Galloway – Physics, Science and Maths – replacing David Bentley who is taking 12 months LWOP to pursue a career in data analysis.

Melanie Raike - Mental Health Practitioner (Social Worker) replacing Annette Matov who is taking LWOP for 12 months to fulfill a new role in a private school and Alexis Reinheimer who is moving to Berendale full time

Phil Steinberg and Rosemary Russo have been appointed to our Numeracy tutor roles. We are still working through the selection process to appoint our Literacy tutors.

We have appointed several new integration aides to support new PSD students starting next year, and our Tier 2 students with the new disability inclusion funding. We welcome Angela Hately, Yasmin Berjaoui, Divya Sumanth and Natalie Wikman to our team; and we are still hoping to appoint a speech pathologist.

Julia Agar Wilson, currently working as one of our attendance officers and Middle School education support staff member, is taking over the role of VASS, reporting and library technician next year with the retirement of Janine Danckert. Janine has fulfilled several roles in her time at the College and is so efficient and well organised. We will miss her and thank her for her wonderful contribution to the school over her fourteen years with us!

With Julia taking on her new role, we have appointed Kirsten Roe as her replacement for six months, and then Beth Hogan returns from family leave from Term 3.

We are currently working through the selection process for an English teacher to replace Caroline Lazarus, who will be going on maternity leave mid-term 1; and a maths/science teacher in Year 8 to replace Phoebe Macreadie who has decided to move into a fieldwork role in Geoscience next year.

We held a two-day induction program on December 3 and 6 to welcome our new staff and introduce to the key processes and policies of the College, along with Professional Learning on our instructional model and coaching program. They are all very excited to have achieved a position at our College.

School Magazine

As advised a few weeks ago the 2021 Venture magazine was prepared for print and delivered to the printers prior to their production deadline; however, we were advised that industry-wide delays meant that our magazine would not be printed and bound until after most students have finished for the term. It is scheduled to be delivered on 13 December.

If you would like to collect your copy of the magazine prior to the new year, you may collect it from the General Office from 14 December until the end of the school day on 16 December. Anyone who does not collect their copy this year will receive their magazine in the first week of 2022.

The College apologises for any disappointment this may cause. We recognise that the magazine is an important opportunity to reflect on the year, and we look forward to sharing it with you. We hope it can be kept as a memento of 2021 for many years to come. My thanks to teacher, James Nicklen for leading the development of this year’s magazine.

Reports

A reminder that the Semester 2, 2021 reports have been available via the Compass Parent and Student Portals since Friday 3 December, and the 2022 Headstart progress reports will be available today, Wednesday 15 December. Please contact the College if you have any trouble accessing or if you would like a hard copy. I hope parents take the opportunity to discuss the report/s with their student/s including appropriate actions to put in place to address any areas for improvement highlighted.

As this will be the last newsletter for the year, I would like to recognise our committed and dedicated teaching staff and education support staff at the College and thank them sincerely for all of their hard work throughout another extraordinary and turbulent year on behalf of the students. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the parents and teachers on our College Council and all members of the College leadership team for their leadership and commitment to the ongoing improvement of the College.

Finally I would like to thank all members of the College community for their ongoing support. I wish everyone a safe and restful Christmas and holiday break with family and friends and I look forward to seeing you all in 2022, hopefully a much more settled and brighter year awaits us all.

Michelle Roberts

Principal

Holiday wellbeing