Secondary
Year 8 Retreat Day
Year 8 participated in their Retreat day on Friday 25 May. The theme was "Called by God to be Agents of Change in the Year of Youth". Using the issue of Sorry Day and Reconciliation the students explored how they can impact and transform the world through their own actions.
Students enjoyed listening to Scott Darlow who is an Australian Aboriginal singer/songwriter. Combining acoustic rock and heartfelt lyrics with the didgeridoo, Scott spoke to students about his Indigenous culture and challenged them to help facilitate reconciliation and understanding. Scott spoke a lot about empathy as the foundation for any real change and challenged the students to take on attributes of his key word FLUTE- Forgiveness, Love, Understanding, Tolerance and Empathy.
The day finished with a Mass celebrated by Father Rodrigo.
The students were able to share a special day with their peers and Homeroom teachers.
Rita de Faria
Assistant Deputy Principal Year 8
Sorry Day and National Reconciliation Week
Prior to the commencement of the Senior School exams our students acknowledged Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week.
Our National Sorry Day is an annual event that has been held in Australia on 26 May, since 1998, to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of our country's Aboriginal people. National Reconciliation Week (NRW) was initiated in 1996 by Reconciliation Australia to celebrate Indigenous history and culture in Australia and to foster reconciliation discussions and activities. NRW theme this year is 'Don’t Keep History A Mystery'. This year’s theme looks to highlights some of the lesser known aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, histories, cultures, and achievements, to prompt Australians to ask themselves: what are some of the things I don’t know about our shared history?
During lunchtime our HASS department organised a Reconciliation sausage sizzle and music whilst students were able to engage with a series of stalls in the pavilion where they could learn more about what Sorry Day and Reconciliation mean.
Our Year 8 students were fortunate to participate in a Retreat program where Scott Darlow , an Aboriginal man from Yorta Yorta, country spoke to them about the Stolen Generation. The focus of his session was the acronym FLUTE - which stands for Forgiveness, Love, Understanding, Tolerance and Empathy.
Janeen Murphy
Director of Faith and Mission
HASS Week, 21-25 May
The HASS Department celebrated the individual disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences department during HASS Week. On Wednesday students in Year 8 participated in the Australian History Competition and students in Year 10 participated in the Australian Geography competition on Thursday.
Throughout the week students in Years 7-12 were involved in a Homeroom quiz, Monday Economics, Tuesday Geography, Wednesday History and Thursday Civics and Citizenship. It is my pleasure to recognise the following Homerooms for winning their respective year level quiz:
Year 7 – Campion
Year 8 - Campion
Year 9 – Koolyangarra
Year 10 – Campion
Year 11 – Loyola and Ward
Year 12 – Loreto and Ward
On Friday the HASS department cooked a lunchtime bbq for the students and organised acoustic duo ‘One Reception’ to play a live set in the Pavilion. This coincided with the celebration of reconciliation week activities.
Congratulations to all students who embraced HASS week and engaged wholeheartedly in the activities throughout the week.
Andrew Osnain
Head of Learning Area - HASS
myfuture - assist your child
New to myfuture, is a dedicated page for parents and carers looking to support and encourage young people with their career making decisions.
Assist your child feature page contains links to articles that provide tips and advice for parents and carers to assist their child with their career development. Our College has registered and paid an annual fee for the use. To log in, students need to use their school email address.
Margi Watson
Career Counsellor
World Environment Day
John XXIII College will be joining with the rest of the globe in engaging in sustainable activities to mark World Environment Day on Tuesday 5 June.
“Beat Plastic Pollution”, the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The theme of World Environment Day invites us all to consider how we can make changes in our everyday lives to reduce the heavy burden of plastic pollution on our natural places, our wildlife – and our own health.
With this in mind, the College is facilitating a session where students and staff can make their own reusable shopping bags from recycled material. With the phasing out of single use plastic bags in shopping centres around the country, these bags are not only environmentally friendly, but extremely practical and useful.
An introductory workshop will be held this Tuesday 5 June from 3:30-5:00pm in the Textiles Room at the College with the hope that further workshops will build on the number of students and staff attending and create a movement that will be able to affect real positive change.
This initiative is part of a broader grassroots sustainability initiative called Boomerang Bags, that works to reduce the use of plastic bags by engaging local communities in the making of Boomerang Bags – community made, using recycled materials. Boomerang Bags provide a free, fun, sustainable alternative to plastic bags.
As part of this initiative, the College is calling for donations of any unwanted sheets/fabrics/cloth materials (especially doona covers) to use as bag making material. Please leave any such material in the basket that will be situated at Student Reception.
For more information on Boomerang Bags head to boomerangbags.org/
Christian Thompson
Sustainability Coordinator
Year 9 Assembly
Glenn Gerber was our guest speaker at Year 9 assembly last week. With a background in competitive swimming and coaching, Glenn shared his story and challenged Year 9 students on their daily actions and environment. He asked questions such as; 'Why are you doing the things you do every day? Are they helping take you towards becoming the best you possibly can be or taking you away from that? Are they impacting your future for the better or the worse?' He provided students with lots of food for thought.
Skye MacMillan Year 9 wrote the following response about our speaker.
On Thursday Glenn came in to talk to the Year 9 students about 'future focus' and 'time management'. Future focus is your goals for the future. Where do you plan to be in three months, six months, nine months, or a years’ time? What do you want to have achieved by then? Glenn talked about working hard without yielding results often makes people give up right before a breakthrough, because all the work they put in had no results. Glenn told the Year 9 students that to be successful you have to struggle and it will 'succ', but success can’t be spelt without 'succ' and you won’t get any good results without struggling.
Glenn also discussed time management with us. If you did 20 additional minutes of study everyday unrelated to your homework six days a week, that is an extra two hours of study a week; if you do this every week of the school year (40 weeks) then you will end up doing an additional 80 hours of study. Although this is just a small 20 minutes extra every day, in the long run that makes a lot of difference. The importance of managing your time to make the best out of your life is possible, starting in small 20 minutes chunks you can improve so much.
Skye MacMillan
Year 9 student
Host families wanted for international exchange
Are you in a position to open your home and share your life for a short period of time with an international visitor from Japan?
Hosting is a wonderful opportunity to develop meaningful relationships and lifelong connections. It is an extraordinarily generous offer that will enrich our exchange student’s understanding of our local culture and customs whilst experiencing life at John XXIII College and learning English.
We are looking for two types of host families for Term Three.
- Are you able to host for 12 weeks?
We are looking for a family who will be able to host our Japanese Language Assistant, Hiromi Sensei, and her daughter (in Year 8) for 12 weeks commencing 9 July. Both Hiromi Sensei and her daughter attend John XXIII College each day and participate fully in College life. They willingly contribute to home-life and love to share all this entails. In addition, they contribute to expenses and accommodation costs. They have been here for one term and have settled very well into everyday life.
If you are able to host Hiromi Sensei and her daughter or would like further information, please email Shane Glass: shane.glass@cewa.edu.au
- Are you able to host for 2 weeks?
This will be our 20th exchange with Fujimi High School in Tokyo. We have 35 female students arriving for a period of two weeks from 29 July and departing on Saturday 11 August.
The students are approximately 15 years of age and have learnt English for about three years. If you have either a spare bed in a girl’s room or a spare bedroom, we would very much appreciate your willingness to host one of our Japanese exchange students. The exchange students are here to practice speaking English. They will contribute to expenses.
If you are able to host a Fujimi student, please return a completed Host Family Information Form, available below, or can be accessed in the Documents folder under General Secondary on SEQTA.
Shane Glass
Head of Learning Area (Languages)