Dear Parents, Guardians, Students and Staff,

What a term it’s been! This is the first term that has run its full duration since the Pandemic commenced in 2020. Continuing to live with the COVID virus has again presented us all with a number of challenges. A big congratulations to all students for powering through and experiencing wonderful achievements in your learning and academic and personal growth this term.

Some Highlights from Term 1

Swimming Sports Day – Was one of the first days we have been able to experience as a whole school community in quite some time. It was an extremely rewarding experience for our students and staff to be able able to come together and enjoy either participating in various swimming events or cheering on the competitors from their House. We saw some very impressive sporting talent in the swimming pool!

We congratulate the organisers, School House captains and all the students for their involvement in making this such an enjoyable and successful event.

Sporting Competitions – Have been a highlight with many competitions going ahead this Term. It is great to see many of our aspiring athletes participating and succeeding in these competitions. Keep up the great work!

Camps: We ran Year 7, 8, and 12 camps successfully this Term with students excited to be with their friends once again engaging in obstacle courses, team building activities, building peer relationships and learning how to prepare for the school year ahead.

Unfortunately, the Year 11 Camp did not go ahead as planned due to DET contingency plans that could not be met at such short notice. However, this event is being rescheduled to later on in the year. Please keep an eye out for further information.

Courage to Care was a whole school initiative to address discriminatory behaviour and promote upstander behaviour within the Brighton Secondary School Community. The workshops were targeted at the importance of standing up to discrimination, empowering each student with practical strategies when confronted with prejudice and bullying. The program aims at inspiring students with the skills and knowledge to make a difference by standing up and taking action, creating real change in the schoolyard, workplace and in communities beyond the students high school years. Students were immersed in the program and were provided with the opportunity to hear real life accounts of victims of discrimination and making recommendations as upstanders on how to eliminate discriminatory behaviour.

PEP – Bullying no Way – As part of our Personal Excellence Program (PEP), our leadership students were involved in organising activities and teacher resources for our school program for the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence (NDA) on 18th March. This is an important day to mark Australian school communities standing together against bullying and violence.

We celebrated this day on the 24th March, with a program designed by students for students, to allow for interaction, fun, exploring, thinking and brainstorming strategies that could be used with peers when confronted with bullying. Interaction with peers beyond their friendship groups is encouraged, to highlight the importance of and acknowledge, tolerance, kindness, respect, and upstander behavior.

We are extremely proud that our students are able to have a say regarding how we teach valuable life skills, and congratulate them for their successful implementation of the bullying no way program.

Artists of the Week – We have enjoyed seeing the work of some of our highly talented students that has been shared weekly through Compass News Feeds and Highlights throughout this term. A huge congratulations to all our aspiring artists that have been recognised for their artwork. Keep inspiring us!

Library -

We have had a busy and productive term in the library, running lots of competitions and events including:

Year 7 Design a bookmark competition
Year 7 Reading Challenge
International Women’s Day celebrations
Chess club every Wednesday and Thursday lunchtime
Easter bunny and Easter egg hunt

Chess club

Chess club has been going strong this term. It is held every Wednesday and Thursday lunchtime in the library and we have participants from many different year levels attending every week.

This week a number of our enthusiastic Chess Club members attended a Chess Tournament held at Brighton Grammar.

Elevate

Elevate, a program designed to assist in equipping students and parents/guardians with the study skills necessary for success in school and future studies, ran several sessions across the term for all year levels and workshops for parents. The feedback we received from both parents and students was positive and worthwhile. Thank you to all who participated and we hope that you find the next seminars and workshops just as valuable.

World’s Greatest Shave – As you may be aware, Brighton Secondary College ran a fundraiser, the 'World's Great Shave' on the March 18th. As part of the fundraiser, numerous students cut/shaved their hair for wigs for cancer patients, and to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation. As part of the fundraiser, we had a Decade Theme Day. The assigned decade for each year level was really colourful and fun for all students with:

Year 7 - 2010s;

Year 8 – 1970s;

Year 9 - 1960s;

Year 10 - 1990s;

Year 11 - 1980s; and

Year 12 - 2000s.

In order to participate in the theme day, students made gold coin (or more) to donate to the Leukaemia Foundation.

The SRC and several of the IB students had been working tirelessly to raise money for this great cause. We have already surpassed last year’s total and have raised the incredible amount of $14,446.44.

Congratulations to all involved!!

Victorian High Ability Program (VHAP) - During Term 1, several Year 8 students will be participating in the Victorian High Ability Program (VHAP). It is an English and Maths extension program run by the Department of Education and Virtual Schools Victoria.

Environment Duty - School Environment Duty is an incentive we promote for all our students to participate in. Environment duties aim to build school pride and develop collective responsibility and collective action to keep our school environment clean, and to further teach our students that learning extends outside the classroom by regularly scheduling students to pick up litter on the school grounds. Well done to all our environmentalists for their work and school pride this term.

Thank all of our students, parents/guardians and staff for their ongoing support, we look forward to continuing to working with our students in their learning growth and also to celebrating more community events and our student achievements and successes in Term 2.

Have a safe, well deserved and restful two-week break!

Warmest regards,

Effie Fran and Mark Doyle

Heads of School

CALENDAR DATES

TERM 1