School of Entrepreneurs

The St Luke’s learning community will have passed a major milestone by the time you read this publication of NET. The first Higher School Certificate examination was conducted on Thursday 27 October in the Studies of Religion 1 (SOR1) course, and this will be followed by Design and Technology (D&T) on Friday 4 November. It really is a momentous occasion! But since we don’t even have a Year 12 class, let me take a step back and provide an explanation.

A HSC course describes a program of study that contributes to the final certification of schooling in New South Wales. Even though it is the culmination, many of the courses available for HSC study can be completed prior to a student actually being in “Year 12”. Our students sitting the exams over these two weeks have been enrolled in and studying D&T since the beginning of Year 10, and SOR1 since late in Year 10. This is called “early commencement”. There’s a great benefit for a student: once the exam for a course is completed in Year 11, the number of exams remaining to fulfil the requirements of a HSC is reduced in Year 12. As a result, the student will have more time to focus on their remaining subjects. Almost every one of our current Year 11 students is sitting one or both of these courses.

We wish those students sitting HSC exams here at St Luke’s, and throughout NSW, the very best wishes.

Having said this, my senior students would be reading this and correcting me. “We are Year 12 students now sir” would be their retort. Indeed, our students can now call themselves Year 12 students which, in turn, means the countdown has commenced. In just 13 months they will be the first graduates of St Luke’s, the first senior ex-students, and the first to hand over the student leadership of the College to the next class. The countdown to their last day of school has begun, and as we know, time flies by. It will be an exciting and at times stressful journey… for both students and their families. We will be holding an information evening for Year 12 students and their parents on Wednesday 2 November at which we will launch this journey together.

At the conclusion of Term 3, Mr Miller’s final announcement was that of the new House names: MacKillop; King; Curie; Einstein; da Vinci; and Teresa. In between their exam preparations, Year 12 students have also been nominated for the two leaders’ positions of each house. They have written responses, been interviewed and presented a speech in these first two weeks of Term 4. We will announce the leaders in the very near future. I have had the privilege to be part of this process for all of our nominees. It has been a humbling experience to listen to the visions, ideas and passions of each student as they have explained why they would like to be appointed to the House Leader role. Regardless of which of these students is appointed, I can assure you that the College will be in good hands.

I extend my thanks to the many Year 10 students who attended the Year 12 speeches last week. I trust these students were impressed with the vision of their future House Leaders, and that they also walked away with some ideas to use when they will, in 12 months, be nominated for these same roles. I also thank the 20 Year students who attended “Foodbank” on Monday 20 October, and I encourage you to read about their experiences later in this publication.

In light of my first paragraph, it is also important to acknowledge that many Year 10 students have already begun or are about to begin a HSC examination course for 2023. This is quite a tricky idea to process for students: I’m still in Year 10 without too much pressure - but I’m studying a HSC course and working towards exams. I have a suggestion for those parents whose child is in this position: keep asking, keep talking and keep listening. Furthermore, if you have any questions about these courses please call and speak to your child’s teacher or our Stage 5 Pastoral Coordinator. 

Not to be left out, our Year 9 students are also producing some fantastic work. In particular, please read the article regarding “Future Anything”. 

Finally, we are already a third of the way through Term 4 (well, just about), and the remainder will race by. It is not, however, a time to wind down to the end. We expect our SoE students to remain switched on and attentive, engaged and productive to the end. Term 4 is the set up for a successful next year, and as such the expectations of work completion and submission remains the same as Day 1 of 2022. Attendance on time every day also remains an imperative and an expectation.

St Luke, pray for us.

Mr Anthony Blomfield - Acting Head of School of Entrepreneurs 

From Year 10…

FoodBank

On Monday 24 October, 13 St Luke's Year 10 students volunteered with our partner Food Bank NSW to prepare Christmas hampers for those in need. Students put their faith (and hands) into action and packed 430 hampers, each filled with 15 kilos of food. In partnership, we are helping Food Bank NSW meet their goal of preparing 30,000 Christmas hampers and continue the fight against hunger. 

Thank you to the following students who attended and worked during the day: Christoffe Ablaza; Maxine Agpoon; Althea Dela Cruz; Matthew Diesto; Kodi Dijanosic; Angelina GeaGea; Angus Hall; Simonedeep Kaur; Aahan Patil; Joshua Pinga; Louis Sun; Rishika Tiwari; and Bhumi Verma.  Thank you also to staff Mrs Stephanie Campanale and Ms Melinda Rego for organising this opportunity.

From Year 9…

Life Design to Future Anything

Each year in Year 9 Life Design student teams are challenged to identify a problem to solve and produce a product or artefact that could be developed. This culminates at the conclusion of Term 2 where students present their work at a “Pitch Fest”. Following this event, a number of teams were encouraged to apply for the national competition run by Future Anything which asks students to design innovative, sustainable and scalable solutions to an identified problem.

Two Year 9 teams have been selected to participate in the Future Anything National semi finals. To put this into perspective, there were over 50 schools who participated in this program with over 200 groups that applied for the nationals semi finals and St Luke's had two teams selected in the top 40 in the country. An amazing feat considering this was the first time St Luke's participated in the Future Anything Activate program.  

Here are a few images from the products that have been selected by our two semi final teams. We look forward to reporting their results in the next NET.

VitaPop - by Ahana Biradar and Shama Shanemougham

SWAI Games - by Rafael Bueno, Adil Soni and Luke Quiroz

This is our mission statement which is attached with our entry for Future Anything states "Our goal is to bring entertainment to the world, through games. We want to cure boredom because we found that 135 of 365 days are spent bored."

Year 9 VET Entertainment class

Over the school holidays, the Fantasia Showstoppers company staged a production of Shrek Jr! at Richmond School of Arts.

Our year 9 VET entertainment students had an exciting opportunity to undertake some real life work experience as they contributed in various ways to the production. This included, front of house ushering, microphone tech’ing, working as a stage hand and even operating the follow spot. This was a great chance for students to have hands on experience with the concepts learnt in our VET course, and some even loved it so much they signed up to be in the next show! Here are some photos of the work undertaken. This work experience forms part of the VET Entertainment certification.

Youth Engagement Strategy- YES Program

TAFE NSW operates a program specifically for Year 10 students who are considering what other options may cater to their needs. The Youth Engagement Strategy or YES program is specifically aimed at students who are undecided about the choice of remaining at school for their HSC or moving out into employment and/or tertiary study. The program provides students an opportunity to experience the TAFE options available to them. The course programs are a special blend of training and hands-on activities delivered by expert teachers. They provide Year 10 students with an opportunity to gain industry experience and employability skills. On completion, students will receive a Certificate of Participation and a TAFE Statement in Youth Engagement. Each program runs for approximately eight weeks in terms 2, 3 and 4, and offers courses in areas such as Fitness, Plumbing, Bricklaying, Sign writing,  Electrical and Allied Health. 

We have been fortunate enough to send a number of our students to be a part of this program. They have participated in the Fitness, Allied Health and Electrical courses. The students have all stated that the courses have been hands-on and have really helped them gain an insight into these areas. The following students have been/ or are currently participating in the program:

Mikayla Horwood- Campbell- Allied Health

Cooper Percy- Allied Health

Mehar Singh- Health and Fitness

Jonathan Fernandes- Health and Fitness

Zac Payne- Electrical

Amohn TavaeFoe- Bricklaying

Luis Lemiri- Bricklaying