Pastoral Academic Care (PAC)
Pastoral Focus: Junior - TEAMWORK Senior - STUDY BUDDIES
Wellbeing Element: Relationships + Empathy
Character Strength: Teamwork
Parent Wellbeing: When you and your family learn how to self-generate positive emotions in yourselves, everyone’s wellbeing will be in a healthy place. Every day for a week, you all take photos of things on your phones which made you happy and that you are grateful for. Share them as a family at dinner time each night and why they make you happy. What can you take a pic of? Acknowledgement: Fredrickson
Year 8
As we head towards the end of the academic year, it provides us with the chance to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that the year has provided us. This year has been the first year since our Year 8s were in Primary school that they’ve not experienced a lockdown!
O’Connor Catholic College is a proud Catholic school and was able to celebrate Catholic Mission Week. This week is a week filled with many different forms of fundraising activities to help support Caritas Australia. Crazy Hat Day and Crazy Sock Day were just two of the wacky and fun activities the college hosted.
NIAS is the Northern Inland Academy of Sport and is an autonomous, community based organisation established to identify and prepare talented sports people in the Northern Inland region to reach their maximum potential, on and off the field. NIAS recently announced their 2022/2023 Netball Sports Program Team, and a huge congratulations goes to Year 8 student Chelsea Curry on being selected as a NIAS Athlete for this program.
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. Literacy plays a huge part in all of our lives and isn’t just about reading and writing. The ability to communicate and interact through a variety of means and with those around us becomes more important in our ever changing society. Our focus with Year 8 on literacy is as a tool for meaningful engagement. In our PAC lessons recently, we have been looking at paragraph writing as a goal setting and reflection tool.
Ms Natalie Mellowship on behalf of the Year 8 PAC Team
Year 10
Over recent weeks it has been super impressive to observe Year 10 students stepping up and taking on opportunities to work with and lead younger students both here at our College and in other school communities.
For the first time our students have volunteered as student catechists, assisting to deliver Religious Education lessons in local public Primary Schools. From all accounts our Year 10’s have done an excellent job and the younger students have really enjoyed having them in their classrooms.
Another example of Year 10 Students demonstrating outstanding leadership has been the recent Year 6 Orientation Day for enrolled students. Around twenty Year 10’s were involved in the day, either running a group of students or assisting in running activities. Again, students were wonderful, adding enthusiasm and organisation to the day's activities.
In the coming weeks further opportunities to develop leadership skills are occurring as a group of Year 10 Students run life saving activities for Years 7-9 students. This will involve Yr 10 Instructors delivering Royal Life Saving Awards at various levels to targeted student groups across Week 9. Year 10 Students have also recently had the opportunity to nominate themselves to volunteer as Lassallian Youth Leaders in 2023. In this capacity they will assist in the running of a range of school events, particularly those focused on mission as well as mentoring and working with younger students in the school.
During 2022 considerable work has been done to develop an understanding around what leadership is and to provide opportunities for students to apply this in actual leadership opportunities. It has been fantastic to observe students take up these opportunities and we look forward to seeing our 2023 Year 11 cohort continue to take up such opportunities and lead within our college.
Mr James Russell on behalf of the Year 10 PAC Team
Year 12
Since finishing up their formal part of schooling, some of our Year 12 students have been participating in the RSA, RCG and First Aid courses being held at the Traffic Education Centre in Armidale on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. The New England Community Centre (in conjunction with the Guyra Adult Learning Centre) received some funding and we were able to tap into this, which was a great saving for our students. The training modules of Responsible Service of Alcohol and the Responsible Conduct of Gambling allows our students to gain employment in the hospitality fields, great jobs to have over the summer months and a good way to earn some income to pursue their future endeavours.
Year 11 were very keen to participate in these but numbers were limited. However, they did get to do the First Aid training which will be very beneficial to them all.
We wish all of our Year 12 students the very best as the release of the HSC and ATAR results fast approaches on Thursday 15th December. We would love to see as many students return at 8am in AG1 for a breakfast with the staff to celebrate the success of each and every one of you, no matter the result.
I have had the pleasure of speaking to quite a few of the students since leaving school and the majority have been keeping busy with part-time employment, or making plans for 2023, and there has been time for some relaxation and a little holiday.
I want to thank all of the students of Year 12, 2022 for making my final couple of years as a Year Leader enjoyable and rewarding, although sometimes a little stressful:)) I am ready to pass on the baton to other wonderful staff members at our College, knowing that all of our students are in the best hands here at O’Connor. The position of Year Leader is a tough gig, but super special when you have the amazing opportunity to nurture and watch these young people grow into the amazing people that they become. I don’t think alot of students realise the special bond that is formed until their senior years, and maybe not until a long time after that. With the support of the PAC teams, our kids have many staff members looking out for them, and it is always through a caring and compassionate lens. I do hope you can keep in touch and come back to visit us in the future. Stay safe, have fun, take every opportunity that presents itself to you, and I will look back fondly of our time together.
On behalf of Vicki Channon and the Year 12 PAC team.