Student Leadership

In the past fortnight, Year 10 and Year 11 students have undertaken leadership days in preparation for nominating themselves and voting for student leaders next year. This week the Year 11 students voted for the Student Executive for 2020 to determine who goes forward for the interview process. The Student Executive consists of the Arts Captain, Environment Captain, Liturgy Captain, Social Justice Captain and Sports Captains (male & female).

The whole College community voted for the School Captain nominees who spoke before the Campus Assembly on Tuesday. All staff and students (Years 7-11) vote in this election which also guides the process to interview. All speeches from these students were well prepared and impressive showing a sincere commitment to the process and a deep understanding of servant leadership. We thank all the students who have shown great courage to nominate for and speak publicly about leadership. The successful leaders will be announced next Tuesday, 3 September 2019. The next part of the process for choosing Student Leadership will be speeches, voting and interviews for our 2020 House Captains.

Campus Assembly

Aside from the focus on Student Leadership, there were a number of other important items covered at our Campus Assembly this week.

We watched a video that included a number of songs written and performed by our Year 9 students under the guidance of Ms Laura Appleby.
We were introduced to our Japanese exchange students, Yuka and Moeka, who spoke courageously to the whole campus in impeccable English.
We congratulated Raksa Kan for creating an insightful and well designed Japanese banner.
We learnt about the upcoming VCAL plans for RUOK? Day and Get Active Day.
We awarded medals to the SIS champions in Intermediate Volleyball and Table Tennis.
We celebrated and prepared for a number of Term 3 House Competitions.
Finally, we celebrated Anthony Ouch’s success for a third year in a row as the school chess champion.

Year 7 Camp

Our Year 7 students are finally heading off on their transition camp after bushfires in March caused it to be delayed. At least we are confident, that bushfires will not pose any concern this time around. The current group of year 7 students have made an exceptional transition into the school and the camp will be more about giving these students an opportunity to strengthen those relationships between each other and their teachers. I thank the many teachers who give up valuable family time over the three days and two nights because of their commitment to the educational value of our camps. The research tells us that the quality of teacher-student relationships has an important effect in terms of improving student learning outcomes and from my own experience, camps are a very effective way of building these relationships.

Thanks is also due to our Pastoral Care Leader, Miss Fiona McKenna, who does a large amount of work in organising this camp. I hope your child has a great time and enters the experience with a positive mindset.

Mixed Netball Finals

The week began with the match to determine third place between Marian and Assisi Houses. Assisi House struggled to organise their team and were willing to accept a 5 goal penalty to play because they did not have the correct gender combination on the court. Nevertheless, they came out strongly and led through most of the first half. Marian rallied and came back strongly in the second half to win the match 18 goals to 16.

In the Grand Final, Avila House continued their dominance of the competition despite some excellent skilful play by Kolbe House. Adelle St Mart was very impressive in Goal Attack for Kolbe. However, the height and accuracy of Akau Majok as Goal Shooter for Avila proved once again to be the significant difference. Avila 15 defeated Kolbe 9 and now win the right to play the staff team next Monday, 2 September 2019.

Particular thanks to our students and staff who generously umpired matches during the competition, including Sarah Van Hammond, Adelle St Mart, Charlette Cowan, Emily Andrew and Teileah Pullen.

Final results were:

Upcoming Competitions

Augustine House will run for the second year in a row their Beep Test Competition next week. This will be the last house run competition before the winning team is announced and it would look that Augustine House may be unbeatable at this stage.

The Environment Group is cooperating with VCAL in organising an upcoming competition to determine the Environment Trophy for Term 3. It is great to see the cooperation of Environment Captain, Samara Yazbek and Sports Captain, Lara Breen in promoting and producing a quiz that will help educate our students about some important issues in an enjoyable interactive way.

The winning house will enjoy the first Tuesday of Term 4 by going off campus for a celebration day. The house placed second will enjoy a pizza lunch on campus. The current house standings are as follows:

Teenagers and Alcohol

We recently hosted an 18th birthday party in our home. It was our second time doing so, which meant our family and friends were somewhat surprised that we were not a little “gun shy”. What were we thinking? Did we learn nothing from the first time? Don’t we value our house and possessions?

I must admit that while we were a little nervous about doing so, the party was a great success and both party-goers and the house not only survived but thrived. We may have been lucky because of the good decisions our teenage daughter made in choosing her friends. However, I think we have learnt a couple of things about hosting a party with teenagers and alcohol.

1. Know your facts about the harm alcohol does to the teenage brain.

2. Do not provide alcohol to teenagers.

I know this is the hard one and you will be told that you should just face reality because no one will come to your child’s party if you do not provide alcohol…and they will sneak a drink anyway…and every teenager is drinking anyway.
So let’s face some facts. Firstly, if they are true friends, they will come to your child’s 18th birthday party. If they don’t come then they are not true friends.
Secondly, of course teenagers will try and get away with things. But it’s up to us, as the mature adults, to try and minimise the harm drinking does and not provide them with alcohol. If they have to be sneaky about it, then that is going to make it harder for them to drink and hopefully reduce the risk of binge drinking and harm. "Parents giving alcohol to their children does not lower the risk of binge drinking" (The Age, January, 2018). "Yet parents are the main source of alcohol for secondary school students despite the repeated health warnings about the harmful effects of alcohol on the teenage brain" (The Age, April, 2019).
Thirdly, the evidence is clear. Not every teenager drinks, despite what your child tells you. In fact, underage drinking is decreasing. "In 2015 the number of teenagers abstaining from alcohol was in a majority at 55%" (The Age, January, 2018). A recent study from the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking found that the number of young Australians choosing not to drink has increased by more than 50% since 2013. Some studies suggest the reason for this is changes in parenting with carers less likely to supply alcohol to their children, more concerned about drinking among teenagers and more aware of the potential harm of drinking.

3. Communicate with parents of the young people coming to your home.

By engaging in conversations with other parents you may find more support than you realise and not feel as isolated in your decision making. All parents want what is best for our children, we just do not always agree on what that is. However, by explaining your approach to drinking at your child’s party, you may find support. As the parent of a teenager having a party, you are legally considered the host of the party. You are responsible for providing information to parents of other teenagers attending your party, particularly if alcohol is involved. Other parents may object to their children attending if alcohol will be consumed or available. They may want to be reassured that the party will be properly supervised. As the host you have a duty of care to all of your guests. This means that you will need to do all that you reasonably can to provide a safe environment, protect your guests (young people as well as adults), and help them avoid trouble. With this in mind, ensure that you are firm, clear and consistent in applying your party rules to all guests while they are on your premises and speaking to other parents about this will help.

Whatever, decision you make about school age parties and alcohol, I would maintain that with some careful thought and preparation, it can work out well and be a terrific celebration for all involved…and safe.

Parent Engagement

Over the past 2 weeks, I have been reflecting on the importance and nature of parent engagement and its positive impact on student learning. In this final reflection I will highlight the importance of parental role perception.Some researchers believe that parental role perception is the single most crucial factor in decisions by parents to become engaged in their child’s learning. It is about how parents perceive their role in their children’s education. Schools have an important role here to ensure that we make it clear that parents are invited to be engaged in your child’s education.

Your perception of your role in your child’s education is affected by the following factors:

beliefs about appropriate and desirable child outcomes. For example, do you as a parent believe that your child should be the main person to decide what subjects to study? As a parent, do you have a bias against a VCAL course because you do not think it is going to help your child. Or perhaps you think it is beneath your child to study this course?
beliefs about who is responsible for these outcomes. For example, do you see the school as the only important factor in producing good educational outcomes for your child. A glance at the graph below gives a great visual of the factors that determine student achievement. Australia is considered part of Asia in this graphic. It becomes clear that student mindset is hugely important in terms of success (31%), but of great importance are school factors (18%) and the work of our teachers (16%). What needs to be considered by parents is that the home environment, for which parents have primary responsibility, does account for 15% of the student’s outcome. This is significant and should encourage and empower parents to share the responsibility with student and school for positive educational outcomes.

understanding of what important group members, such as family, teachers, and other parents expect from you as parents. Parents do care about what others think about their parenting and we look around us to get a sense of what we should be doing.
parental behaviours related to those beliefs and expectations. It is not just what we believe as parents, but whether we have the time and energy to act on those beliefs. Sometimes we want to get involved, but things get in the way. Parent-teacher interviews are just around the corner. We know they are important, but will we make the time to come out on a cold, wet evening to discuss our child’s progress when home is so warm and comfortable after a busy day at work.

Your perception of your role as parents is important not just because it affects your decisions about how and whether to become active in your child’s schooling, but because it is closely linked to your child’s academic achievement. Your hopes, dreams and expectations for your children’s education do have a strong influence on their academic outcomes. I encourage you to believe you can be effective and have an ability to help your children. Then you will more likely become involved with your child’s education. And this does improve your child’s learning.

Source: Emerson, L., Fear. J., Fox, S., and Sanders, E. (2012). Parental engagement in learning and schooling: Lessons from research. A report by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) for the Family-School and Community Partnerships Bureau: Canberra.

David Hansen

Deputy Principal - Head of Cranbourne Campus

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