Assistant 

Principal Report 

With Victoria starting to open up again, it has been awesome to see students back in school interacting with each other and their teachers. Our wider community has shown great resilience and patience through these trying times. The intricacies of the border and the border bubble have certainly made it difficult for everyone, but light is certainly at the end of the tunnel.

Two weeks we farewelled our group of Year 12 students. It is always with a mixture of sadness and pride that we wave goodbye to our Year 12 cohort and this year was no different. This cohort has endured two years of schooling under the weight of a pandemic and has done a fantastic job to reach the end of their secondary schooling. The Edenhope College community wishes Dusty, Danika, Tahlz, Jacko and Mim well in their examinations and the best for their future lives! We will formally send them off this Friday night with their formal being held at the Edenhope Football & Netball Club.

Our Year 11 exams will run from Monday November 22nd to the morning of Thursday the 25th, with the Head Start program kicking off from period 3 on the 25th. During the Year 11 & 12 Head Start program, content will be covered and homework will be set for 2022 subjects, as well as providing students with the opportunity to engage in a range of sessions and activities focused on building a sense of team, looking at pathways and careers and developing some life hacks to assist students as they move into further study and work. Activities will include: MasterChef, the Escape Room, an Amazing Race, Careers and Pathways, Study Skills (with a difference) and students will be privileged to work with John ‘Hendo’ Hendry, who has been doing a lot of work with the College around Relationship Based Education. The Head Start program enables us to get through the Year 12 courses in a timely manner, as this work is assessed but not re-taught in 2022.

Hunter Adams in Year 8 raised one of our lambs during the remote learning period and has since brought ‘Bobby’ back to school. The relationship that Bobby and Hunter have is unbelievable and has led to Hunter and Bobby working with a range of students to improve their social connections, reducing stress and anxiety, developing their empathy and improving physical activity. As Hunter is a key member of our Calf Leading Team, Bobby typically comes along for the journey, and we invite students to come with us to learn from Bobby. Alex Hunn, in Year 10, is one such student who has a great connection with Bobby.

Speaking of the Calf Leading Team, hours of work have been put into the calves and we are now starting to see the results of the Team’s hard work. The students have found that the leading is much better outside of the calves’ paddock so three times a week you can see the calves been walked down the road and onto the front oval at school (with Bobby following). Only in the country! Alana Ryan’s project has been such a success, there is no doubt that it will become an ongoing and sustainable part of our curriculum.

To support the College’s focus on improving and revamping the Ag program, the VCAL team has recently developed a program looking to refresh the Ag room at school. Students have emptied the room, and are now sourcing new flooring, a painting and cleaning schedule and looking at where their program may fit within the Ag program moving forward. We are blessed to have the abundance of resources we have, and it is awesome to see the kids engaged in making the most of what they do have.

The last half of Term 4 will be very busy with exams, transitions, Head Start and students really starting to reengage with school life. We are all really looking forward to 2022, which we are optimistic will not be impacted by remote learning and the range of restrictions we have all endured. It is really exciting to plan ahead with this in mind!

Chad Frost

Assistant Principal