Principal's Update

Dear families,

Welcome to term two. I hope you all had the opportunity to enjoy time with family and friends over the Easter break.

It has certainly been a busy start to term two. We welcomed back our staff and students from their Top End Tour last Friday morning, Year 8 students have headed to camp this week, football and netball competitions have started and we have held our Year 11 Leadership Day and Year 9 Aspiration Summit. 

The Aspiration Summit included presentations from a number of past Trinity College students along with other members of the wider Colac community. Our past students included Dylan Hodge, who now works as a player manager with TLA Worldwide, one of the largest sports management companies with their clients including reigning Brownlow Medal winner Patrick Cripps and Geelong legend Joel Selwood.

The students also heard from past student Sam Grinton from Bluewater Fitness who spoke about her fundraising for brain cancer following the death of her father and her journey into marathon running. 2010 graduate, Tash Fridey, who now works in student recruitment at Deakin University also spoke to the students. Tash has already had over twelve different jobs in three separate careers from acting to tourism and now student recruitment. She also lived in the UK for two years and was able to pass on lots of advice to our students the most important lessons being to be brave, develop transferrable skills and be prepared to be flexible and follow your passions.

The day also included a dance workshop and fitness session along with another guest speaker, Fiona Brew from Colac Area Health and a panel including local paramedic Anna McGennisken, Dan Casey from Swayn & McCabe CLAAS Harvest Sales, Mick Baker from Bakerland Property Development and President of South Colac Football Netball Club, and Ashleigh Biemans, the Business Development Officer at WDEA Works.

The panel answered questions posed by our MCs James Thwaites and Lippy from Mix FM and also made themselves available to answer questions from the students about their career choices.

Leading in to the day the Year 9's had a session with Casey Tutungi, a former Lorne, Geelong VFL and South Barwon footballer who suffered spinal damage in an on-field clash in 2013 and is confined to a wheelchair.

Casey shared inspirational messages around overcoming challenges and digging deep in the wake of unexpected events.

The overall aim of the Aspiration Summit is to expose our Year 9 students to a wide range of future career pathways and to stress the importance of being resilient, working hard and aiming high.

Trinity College has so many past students who have been successful in a vast array of different areas and it is fantastic to reconnect with them so they can share their stories with our current students. It is also great to be able to reach out to members of our parent community and the wider Colac community in order to provide advice and inspiration to our students.

During the holidays our Development and Communications Leader, Steve O’Dowd, tended his resignation from Trinity College. Steve has worked here for just over five years and in that time has drastically improved the way the school markets itself both internally and externally. Steve has also been a valued member of the school leadership team. Steve will definitely be missed here at Trinity and we wish him well for the future. We are currently advertising for Steve’s replacement.

Finally, I would like to thank the staff who gave up their holidays to go on the Top End Tour and provide the Year 10 students who attended with lifelong memories and fantastic experiences.

There were lots of very tired looking students and staff getting off the bus last Friday following twenty-four hours with very little sleep, but the tiredness was accompanied by lots of smiles and stories as well.

Kind Regards

Paul Clohesy