Principal's Report

Dear Parents, Students & Staff

The year rushes on and term four has arrived bringing with it some warmer weather, and our Year 12 students busily preparing for their upcoming exams. Theatre Studies, Dance and Language students have already begun their performance and oral exams and the written exams begin with English on the 1st November. During the September holiday break our Year 12 subject teachers ran exam revision and preparation sessions over three days. Our fantastic Year 12 Coordinator, Ms La Leggia, continues to support and guide the students through their final weeks of the VCE. We would like to thank her for her ongoing work supporting our senior students and look forward to celebrating their achievements with their families at our Valedictory Dinner on Wednesday 25th October.

It is important to acknowledge a number of major programs and events that occurred during the end of Term 3. We continue our very important cultural exchange programs with a visit from two staff (Iris Orth and Till Butzinger) and ten students from our sister school in Germany, Integrierte Gesamtschule Ernst Bloch. They were a positive, friendly group who enjoyed their visit to Fairhills and their experiences of Australia. This visit would not have been possible without the enormous effort to arrange the exchange, support the visitors and find host families, carried out by Ms Karolina Clouston (German Teacher). We are very grateful for her hard work, and also for the support given by our host families.

We also appreciate the work of Ms Winstone (Head of Languages), who gave up her holidays to take four of our students to Japan. The KSKK organisation runs a fantastic program which allows these students to experience Japanese culture, visit interesting sites, go to a Japanese school and stay with a host family. The four students were a credit to our school, made new friends and had an amazing time.

On top of the work Ms Sarah Power put into the wonderful musical production last term, she continues to develop the skills of our Theatre Studies and Dance students. They were able to present their skills and show off what they have learnt by performing various dance routines and theatre monologues in a Show Case Evening on Thursday 14th September. It was a very enjoyable night for those of us in the audience, and a credit to the performance skills of the Year 9, 10, 11 and 12 students.

We were pleased to support Livingstone Primary School by providing coaches from our Basketball Academy students to help guide the Grade 3 and 4 students through the Hoop Time Primary School Competition. Mr Andrew Potter (Head of Basketball Academy) recognised a wonderful learning opportunity for his senior students and they gained valuable lessons about coaching younger students.

One of the major events each year on the Fairhills calendar, Diversity Week, occurred again towards the end of term 3. Under the direction of Paul Graham (Student Wellbeing Coordinator) and Mirza Skelic (Student Voice Leader) a large team of students and staff worked together to run a whole series of activities for our school community. In order to recognise and support the wide variety of talents our students have they ran a talent show at lunchtime, the Physical Education staff helped run activities for the students to help improve our understanding of people with disabilities. We had an expo for students in order to link them into community support organisations, the Languages staff and our international student group helped organised an amazing international food lunch and the Arts staff helped run activities around tolerance and acceptance of all members of our community. A big thankyou to all those involved; the week was extremely positive and a wonderful example of the Fairhills students and staff working together.

Paul Donaldson

Associate Principal