Parent & Student Matters  

What's happening in the College? 

• Census Privacy Notice
• School and Sport Photos
• From the History Department
• Science Club - On this Thursday
• Exemplar Expression

Census Privacy Notice

Attached is a notice from the Australian Government regarding the collection of information from schools for the 2020 School Census.

Mr Nick Carson - Business Manager

School and Sport Photos

The Year/Individual and other Group Photos have been postponed until Monday August 3. More details are to follow with Order forms and the running order for the day.

The Summer Sports photos are being processed now.  Students will receive them early in Term 3.

Ms Leisa Proc - General Coordinator

From the History Department

St Pius Historians in the News

The State Library of NSW has a very useful page for students interested in taking the History Extension course in the HSC. This has been recently updated to include small video clips of students who have achieved highly in the course. They give very useful tips about a range of aspects of History Extension including the major project. Jasper Choi (SPX 2018) is featured in these videos a number of times. Jasper was awarded First in the State in 2018 in the course after receiving full marks in the HSC Examination. He has also generously offered his time to History Extension students at the College in the past two years. The link to the library’s page can be found at: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/learning/schools-and-teachers/hsc-history-extension. Those students considering this HSC course are strongly advised to peruse it.

In 2019, Greg Growden, father of Angus (2018), published a highly acclaimed book, Cricketers at War: Cricket Heroes Who Fought For Australia in Battle. Greg is one of Australia’s leading sport journalists. He has written several cricket books including his biography of Charles Fleetwood-Smith, A Wayward Genius, which was included in The Guardian’s list of the 100 best sporting books of the twentieth century. In the recent edition of The Cricketer magazine, the pre-eminent cricket writer and historian, David Frith, reviewed Cricketers at War. “Greg Growden has written some significant cricket books, but this crowns all.” The full review can be read below.

Mr Pat Rodgers - History/Legal Studies Coordinator

Science Club - On This Thursday

A reminder to all students in Years 7 and 8 that Science Club is on again this Thursday, 25 June.  It is being held in S2 at 1.00 pm.    

Mrs Joanne Schuster  - Science Coordinator

Exemplar Expression

Each week this term Year 11 Imaginative scripts that have been identified as exemplar pieces of writing will be published in Woodchatta.  We have never done this before and the students did not write these pieces with the expectation that they would be published in our school newsletter, however we felt that these particular scripts were so powerful that we wanted to share them.

Open your Eyes 

My eyes feel heavy as my body slowly  sinks  into  the comfort  of  my silk sheets.  Glancing over at the time,  to my surprise it read 11.44  pm. I couldn’t believe how my mind lost track of time so quickly engrossed in this book. The book was a tragedy about two  star-crossed lovers, something quite left of centre for me to read, but somehow, I found it near impossible to put down.  Coming to  the end of the sixteenth chapter, I put the scrap piece of paper that I used as a bookmark  into the book, switched off my bedside light and attempted to fall asleep with the raging storm  banging at my window. 

Just as I  was beginning to  drift off,  I realised that  I  had left my  bedroom door open. It’s almost a compulsive act that I need it closed, as I simply  cannot fall asleep with the door open because my mind  stays in a constant state of fear with no protective barrier to cocoon my slumber in. However tonight, I decided to face  my fears  sleeping with the door open. As I try gallantly to fall asleep, my mind betrays my efforts  and keeps me awake. My intrusive thoughts go  over  the many  features of my room. My  clock sits  close beside me  to  the right of  my bed and my work desk is roughly five steps from it.  My closet situated in the back of my room is small, but I manage to fit  all of  my clothes in there keeping it neat. Finally, my hallway  is ten steps away from my bedroom door, staying open on this  one  occasion  to face my crippling  fear. Oddly the  familiarity of these facts soothed my intrusive thought s  and I slowly fell into  a deep sleep. 

Not knowing how long I was in the grips of slumber, I  was suddenly  and abruptly shaken from my sleep state  with a deafening thud, coming from just down my hallway  leading to my room, but I  quickly dismiss it.  I rationalised my  thoughts, saying that an unbalanced dish could have fallen deeper into  the mountain of dishes that I had piled up in my kitchen sink, but a second and a third thud followed, almost mimicking the noise of  footsteps. I was now petrified, then again four,  five, six thuds  slowly grew louder  as if something was coming toward my room.  I try to move my body, but utterly immobilised and helpless, I laid in  my bed as still and heavy as a rock paralysed by fear. The unknown figure comes closer, until the point  where I know it is about to approach me. An uninvited slight weight places itself on  my left leg, and a quiet voice follows  the action, whispering ‘hey, open your eyes’. I do my best to  ignore  the voice, continuing  to keep my eyes closed. The voice continues to speak, “look at me, why  won’t  you look at me?”. I can feel someone’s slow and steady breaths now  breathing over my  ear.  The unknown figure continues to  whisper “I  will share a secret with you, I  have never seen myself before, I don’t know if I am even here, which is why I need you  to open  your eyes, so  you can tell me how I  look, but... I  am also shy, so  I might hide the moment you  do,  you  won’t  find me anywhere and soon you  will forget, like a faded  dream”. 

It pauses for  a moment, “I know  you’ re  not asleep,  you listen with those tiny ears of yours, they  look so fragile”. Something brushes past my  ear  as my terror intensifies.  My body begins to  tremble with fear as my mind blares alarms, trying  to figure  a way out from this nightmare. In a low voice, he  murmurs,” How do you  think  my eyes look, when our gazes finally  meet  … what will you  find? Suddenly a pair of  broken  eyes barged  into the depths of my consciousness piercing  into  my soul.  “I wonder what your eyes look like  under their vale of  flesh, round like pearls, shiny like  jewels.  “The night is  still and the rain  continues to bang on your window,  people are  good  at  closing  their  doors, you have one right there, a barrier to keep the bad out. The bad can be anything, a bad person, a bad smell, or sometimes me. I sometimes feel a great urge to be seen, desperately searching for an open door, covered in darkness  and for someone to be waiting at the other end of the door awake. My need  to  be seen is so  powerful sometimes I transcend the  realm into your consciousness and the physical reality. You had  your door open, welcoming visitors into  your room, yet you still refuse to acknowledge  my presence and continue to  believe that I  am not real… but I  am. Are  you scared? Are you afraid?  you mustn’t be since  we’ve been chatting  for so long. You haven’t chased me out, which means  that you welcome me”.  My body screams for some sort of  release from this prison that I have trapped myself within. “I  wonder  if your hands are  warm, people’s hands are  usually very … warm”  I feel something crawl along  my bedsheets to  clasp my hand. I  muster all the courage that I  can and shake my  body back to life, opening my eyes and  sporadically  trying to  switch on my bedside light. I scan my room for the unknown figure, certain t hat someone would be looming over me, but there was nothing, everything was how  I left it.  I race  to  shut  my door and retreat back  to  my bed. That night I  stayed up till sunrise, waiting until  the monster had left my room. Ever since that night, I  always closed my door knowing that  the unknown figure would try, but wouldn’t’ be able to enter the confines of my bedroom, protected by the barrier that would enable me to block out the horror and close my eyes…It’s only a door…but the door to my imagination where the  creature resides deep in my mind is a door  I pray stays locked.

by Ben Chua 

Mr David Webster - English Coordinator