From the Principals Desk

Collaboration

Congratulations to the entire college community - staff - families and students for what has really been a very smooth start to the year. As a staff we were committed to ensuring the learning environment and program for our students has been focussed, orderly and engaging. This has been evident from our Preps who entered school their first year of schooling  to our Year 12’s who started the year with a very detailed program aiming to reinforce and fine tune the skills and capabilities that they will need to draw upon through their very important final year. 

At all levels congratulations!

GROWTH - AIP One Pager

Again, this year the Annual Implementation Plan has been summarised in poster form to best highlight the key work across our school for this year. Excitingly this is the first AIP of our new Strategic Plan and really allows us to work at a sophisticated level to further develop the engaging and student-centered learning programs at our school.

KINDNESS

A sunspot moment happened at Tallis during the Preps first ever PE class. During their 2-lap warm up one of the 'littleys' was struggling to finish. On seeing the other students in the class who had already finished ran across the oval to support their new classmate complete the challenge. This positivity and encouragement displayed by our youngest students really was touching and shows two things - first how proud to be a parent knowing this is how your child reacts and secondly as educators - these moments are part of our inspiration to work in education.

PERSISTENCE - School Council 

A huge thank you to our School Council group for the 2022 school year. We really are so fortunate to have such a positive, supportive and aspirational team advocating on behalf of the wider Northern Bay College school community. The 2022 school year, as we have shared, was very successful for many reasons and the School Council should all take great pride in the contribution you have made to these successes. Nominations have now closed for 2023 NBC School Council representatives. As such we look forward to introducing our new council in the coming weeks.

COLLABORATION - STUDENT VOICE

We hope to slightly change the format of the Newsletter over the coming months by having many of the updates and articles written by the students. If we use this model - clearly evidenced in the 3-6 Community and P-2 Community pages - readers will hopefully get a good understanding of what the children like about, and gain from their learning. This is very similar to the way we feel the 3 way conversations happened this week. The great majority of our children want to share what they do at school. 

Please check into each of the page headings over the next few weeks to see the amazing activities and opportunities we offer at Northern Bay. They are genuinely unparalleled in Geelong. You can also nominate your language and with 80% accuracy even families with English as an Additional Language can gain great insight.

COLLABORATION - Student Led Conferences

Thanks to all families P-12 who supported their young person by sharing the conversations about their learning which took place this week.

It is a major event for students to talk about their learning with the most significant adults in their lives and we are proud of them for doing so well in the large majority of cases.

We have also been sure to thank staff for their work in making the days a success.  These days can be very tiring but at the same are most rewarding. It also feels very worthwhile when there is great positive support from our families. 

 This was the first time in quite a while that the conferences were held in the earlier time slot and for our P-8 Campuses the format was quite different to previous years. With this in mind we ask families to please take some time to respond to a short survey that can be accessed via this LINK. Thanks again!

GROWTH and PERSISTENCE

It is finally evident that the redevelopment of the Goldsworthy Campus is real!  There has been ground clearance and a lot of rain making wonderful puddles last year but on 1 March the first of the concrete slabs for the Performance Centre has been laid. 

Preparations are already in place for the foundations of the second slab.

These of course are the start of the new development and a reminder here of what we originally designed for this space

Collaboration:  

Annual privacy reminder for our school community

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to read our school’s collection notice, found on our website 

https://www.nbc.vic.edu.au/uploads/SchoolsPrivacyPolicy-DET.pdf 

We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use [Microsoft 365/Google Workspace for Education] safely at the school and what parents can do to further protect their child’s information. If after reviewing the guidance, you have any questions or concerns regarding your child using [Microsoft 365/Google Workspace for Education], please contact the school. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. 

https://www.nbc.vic.edu.au/uploads/PrivacyPolicy-ForParents-English.pdf .  

This information is also available in ten community languages:

 Amharic                                                     Arabic                                          Dari

Gujarati                                                      Mandarin                                     Somali

Sudanese                                                  Turkish              Urdu                 Vietnamese

KINDNESS / PERSISTENCE- Thank you

On Daniel's webpage, he explains how he had an idea and kept on finding solutions to fulfil his dream. It is terrific back story to this student from Chilwell Primary School and Amanda Baulch and myself were able to spend some really lovely time on Monday morning with this quite inspiring young person. Daniel has a huge passion for Performing Arts and has for the past couple of years - sponsored students at our College to become fully funded members of the Geelong Centre Stage group. Daniel loves the arts so much that he simply wants as many young people as possible to have the same opportunities he has to pursue their dreams in the Arts. Daniel achieves all of this by designing, manufacturing and selling arts inspired items - Water Bottles, Key rings, Badges all based on performances he enjoys.  

Below are the links to a great story and also to help his cause by buying a couple of his fun favourites.

Website: https://casting-dreams.square.site/

Insta account: https://instagram.com/casting_dreams_

PERSISTENCE - Flying High.

Two major events occurred this week. Firstly, after a couple of false starts, Guneet guided her first Drone into the air and made a successful landing (possibly to her own surprise! but she clearly enjoyed the learning, Thank you Guneet) 

Secondly, our students were straining their eyes during recess and lunch to catch a glimpse of the Air Show planes which spent much of Friday flying above our campuses. It was difficult for our students to see them but very easy to hear.  We hope you enjoyed your visit if you had the opportunity.

Collaboration - Community Harmony

As a truly proud multicultural school we are looking forward to hosting a special twilight event in each of our four P-8 Campuses mid March. In line with Harmony Week our Campus Fun Community event will showcase Multicultural performances and a First Nations welcome. The grounds will have fun inflatables and activities. Hopefully nice weather on each of the days will see families enjoy picnics. 

Our Canteens will open especially for the night. 3.30pm to 5.20pm. We would like as many people as possible to make it a really successful time of family / staff / student friendship and fun. The only safety proviso we need is that your needs to be with a responsible adult so if you can't make it, a neighbour or friend  will be with your child. 

At Goldsworthy Campus there will be a special in school event on Harmony Day 21 March.

Please see the Multicultural page of this newsletter for your campus dates

In final comments we farewelled a much loved and respected Hendy colleague before school began this year. Bec Deppeler passed much too soon and the Hendy community showed wonderful camaraderie and compassion in supporting one another and the students whilst also reaching out to support Bec’s family. The Department of Education Counselling staff have also to be commended for their support.  

Regards,

Mr Scott Diamond

College Principal

Cover page photo by Ivan Kemp