From the Principal Class Team
Dear Parents and Guardians
It is a pleasure to welcome you back to the school year, and so wonderful to have everyone back onsite together again. We have had an excellent start to 2021 – students in all year levels are settled and focused on their studies, and they seem happy to be back with friends and teachers.
A very special welcome to our new Year 7 students and families, and to those students in all other year levels who are joining St Albans Secondary College this year. The Year 7’s have given us feedback about how supported and comfortable they are feeling, and how much they are enjoying their new subjects and teachers. We will be conducting a short survey with students in all year levels next week to see how their year has started, and what improvements and additional support we can put in place to ensure that each student feels Connected, Protected, and Respected. The survey will be followed by year level forums to further explore student feedback.
We also welcome 9 new teaching and education support staff to the school. Nicholas Gioskos, Tessa Gould, Lillian Lee and Victor Vu are all joining the Maths and Science Departments; Tom Dawson is commencing as an English and Humanities teacher; Lesley Walker joins our Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy (MYLNS) program to provide teacher development in Literacy; Zoe Lee is the Junior Sub School Administration Assistant. Tien Tran joins the Science Department as a Laboratory Technician, and Adam Morris joins the Individual Needs Department as a Teacher Assistant.
Also joining us this year are our Literacy and Maths Tutors. Lynne Borle, Jenny Tarr, Marie Brytcz, Jessica Jones, Stephanie Carswell and Kathryn Hocking will tutor in Literacy; Barbara Slusarczyk, Mario Orsini, Ian Crocker, and Thuan Doan are working to support students in Maths. See below for further information on this Victorian Government initiative to assist students in these key areas of their learning.
Welcome, too, to the following staff who have returned from leave: Tiyana Jones, Emily Wilson, Daniela Viscio, Bron Salton, Lynette French and Cinzia Cunningham.
On behalf of the St Albans Secondary College community, we wish each of you an enjoyable and rewarding time at our school.
2021 – what is our IMPACT?
We began this year, as staff and students, discussing, thinking about and, most importantly, planning for the impact we want to have as teachers and colleagues, as learners, friends, family members, and as a whole school community.
We know, and the research supports this, that if we have a shared set of beliefs about, and commitment to, doing what matters and makes a difference as learners and staff, then the potential for impact on learning growth and achievement is enormous.
Impact is so often about doing small things consistently and well over time.
2021 – Key directions
In line with our Strategic Plan 2020-2023, the major focus areas for our school improvement work this year will be:
Literacy: introducing and implementing a whole School Literacy Plan to strengthen each child’s reading, writing and speaking skills in all subject areas.
Differentiation: further developing our skills as teachers to design teaching, learning and assessment to meet each student at their point of need in their learning.
Effort and goal setting: encouraging our students to understand the benefits of effort, and to be able to drive their own learning by setting challenging goals for themselves.
In the next couple of weeks, as parents, you will be able to see your child's Term 1 Effort goal on the insights tab on their Compass homepage.
Connect, Protect, Respect: further developing and embedding the behaviours and programs which contribute to our school community being one in which each person feels that they are connected to others and to the supports they need to thrive; protected physically, emotionally and psychologically; and respected for who they are and for what they bring to our school.