From the Deputy Principal

It was wonderful to welcome all students and Pre-Prep to Year 1 families onto Campus this week. It was clear to see the joy from both staff and students as we returned to our beautiful school and took comfort once again in the routines, friendly faces and environment, which makes us happy. There was shared excitement with new spaces revealed, and the refurbished Science Labs proved a particular favourite.

We are looking forward to the Pre-Prep playground upgrade, which will take place next month. My thanks to the Parents and Friends Group who funded this project, and I have no doubt it will bring many years of adventurous play. 

Foundation Day

Foundation Day was celebrated on Wednesday with a recorded message from Dr. Cousins, who shared the heritage of the College. Mrs. Deidre Brandon, Old Collegian’s Guardian, read the names of nine students (five girls four boys) who started at the College on 9 February 1931 and, as tradition, rang the College bell. Dr. Tanya Jardine, President of the Old Collegians, spoke about the change in location of several key landmarks within the College throughout the years. The day was completed with a birthday cake for all students and staff. Our thanks to Foundation Manager Ms. Meg Graham for her organisation of this event. 

Year 12 Investiture Ceremony

This week also saw the beginning of our Zoom Information Sessions for Primary Specialists, Primary Core teachers and Years 11 and 12. Thank you to the staff who organised the content and the delivery in this format. We held an abridged version of the Year 12 Investiture to mark this very special occasion, making sure our students didn’t have to wait one more moment to be inducted as leaders of the College. The revised date for the combined 2021 Scholar’s and more formal Investiture Assembly is Thursday 21 April.  

Our 2022 College Captains and Primary Captains had prepared a short speech for the Welcome Assembly, which wasn’t able to proceed in its original format. Please find these below. 

College Captains 

Mia Felsman and Alice Gardener 

On Monday, we were delighted to welcome everyone back to the College. The excitement of the students was tangible, and we are so proud and grateful to those Seniors who came to school early to meet and greet all students with a friendly face. It was also an opportunity to welcome a large number of new students to the College, and it was wonderful to see how enthusiastic and at home they felt from day one. A fresh year always gifts a new chance to re-establish habits, goals and attitudes, and the sense of motivation and excitement for 2022 was definitely in the air. The excellent renovations that have taken place over the break demonstrate that the College is laying the foundations for each of us to make 2022 our year. 

After much discussion and deliberation, we are so excited to introduce our theme for 2022, Connection. We believe this theme correlates strongly with our vision for our community, especially given how we started the year. After almost two years of intermittent lockdowns leaving many in our college and wider community feeling isolated, connection could not be more important. And we all know, community and belonging are what makes our College so special. This theme of connection is an opportunity to celebrate pride in our existing strengths and build upon them. The Year 12 Seniors have worked together as a cohort to create the title 'Leaders of Connection' to encapsulate this theme. This, we felt, was a way to retain our LoC acronym but make it more fitting to our very exciting future as a co-educational school. 

Now you may ask, why Leaders of Connection? While our Year 12 cohort serves as leaders and inspiration to the community, we want to highlight that leadership is more than a title. We aim to celebrate the idea of everyday leadership. Every student has the capacity to be a leader every day through their actions to help both the College and the wider community. 

With the help of some of our amazing staff, we created a video to showcase our theme. Please refer to our video in the 'From the Principal' article.

So, with the lyrics of our theme song replaying in your head, we ask you - Clayfield College, can we get a connection? This is the year we will encourage; we will celebrate and lead through our connections. We simply cannot wait to share our ideas and plans with you over the coming weeks. 

Primary Captains 

Myra Dhingra and Savaana Kapur 

2022… a crazy start and it’s only February! It may have started a bit later than expected, but that didn’t stop us from having fun.

Our names are Myra and Savaana, and we have the honour to be your Primary Captains for 2022. We hope you have had an amazing holiday and took advantage of the extra week we got! Maybe you read another book, built some Lego, or played some music?  

We would like to give a very special welcome to all the new families and students joining us in our Primary Clayfield community! We are so excited to have so many new students at Clayfield College this year. If you are worried about anything or need to ask a question, we will always be here to have a chat and be a friendly face. 

Who knew we would start the year with online learning? We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the teachers, parents and caregivers who helped us with online learning last week. We loved the Learning Packs, which helped guide us through the week. Congratulations to all the students for doing a fantastic job during remote learning.  

For 2022, we have chosen our theme to be “Alone we can do little, together, we can do so much!” We have chosen this theme because it is important that we work as a TEAM and give everyone a turn to have a go. 

The goals that we would like you to achieve this year are to strive to be the best version of yourself and listen to each other. 

We look forward to a fun and adventurous year ahead.   

Stay safe!