Banksia Indigenous students deliver a magnificent acknowledgement of Bunurong country plaque

In December, Banksia campus Indigenous students took hold of an acknowledgement of Bunurong Country plaque that they produced in collaboration with Wathaurong Arts.

The plaque is the culmination of work by current and alumni Indigenous students from Banksia campus in conjunction with Wathaurong Arts, which is an Aboriginal owned and run co-operative business out of Geelong.

Banksia ATIG students open and inspect the new acknowledgement of Bunurong country plaques from Wathaurong Arts, that they commissioned and helped design

The plaque will be permanently fixed in prominent office reception area and an identical plaque was also produced for Acacia campus.

Indigenous students and allies in Banksia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’-meeting-group, known as ATIG, opened and inspected the new plaques before passing them on to the college principal John Baston and the campus principal Richard Hastings.

Proud ATIG-students at Banksia are now looking forward to a presentation ceremony once the plaques are in place.

Nikita, Rex and Mackenzie hold the newly arrived acknowledgement of Bunurong country plaque from Wathaurong Arts, that they commissioned and helped design

On February 10, we had over 300 students from both Banksia and Acacia participate in Year 7 House Activities at our Banksia campus. This was an especially exciting event as it was the first time it was held in over 3 years due to the pandemic. It was a beautiful hot and sunny day where students were keen to represent their new houses.

The day started with students getting inducted into their houses by receiving their house badge from the Junior and Senior school house captains. Year 7s continued to listen to a presentation that taught them what their house represents and its history.

The afternoon consisted with a variety of activities where students battled it out against one another to gain points for their houses such as karaoke, capture the flag, dodgeball and a series of board games, most popular being the limbo!

The Banksia and Acacia house coordinators were very proud of all the hard work the captains put into the day to make it memorable and demonstrated their enthusiasm for leadership. We look forward to many more successful house events throughout the 2023 year.

On the 10th February, Acacia campus year 7’s travelled to Banksia campus for House Activities Day. Once we arrived we walked to the theatre and sat in our house colours. Apollo - Yellow, Artemis - Green, Athena - Red and Poseidon - Blue. The Banksia principal welcomed us warmly and told us about the activities we would be doing today. There would be two rotations throughout the day with one break in between. One rotation was ‘Capture the Flag’ and ‘Dodgeball’, while the other was Karaoke.

It was a fantastic day, everybody tried their best and had heaps of fun.

YEAR 7 IMMUNISATION PROGRAM

The Year 7 HPV and Boostrix immunisations will be held at Banksia Campus on 27th March and at Acacia Campus on 29th March. This will be conducted at each campus by nurses from the City of Greater Dandenong.

If you haven't returned the consent form, please complete and return this week to your respective campus. If you do not wish for your child to be immunised at the school, you will still need to complete and return the form.

YEAR 7 INDUCTION WEEK

On the first week of high school, the year 7’s had an induction week! We started the day with a whole school assembly in which the year 7 students made a dramatic entrance in and were warmly welcomed into the Keysborough College Community. Throughout the week, we were introduced to some of the subjects we would be studying throughout the year. We got to know our classmates and some of the teachers by doing a range of activities with them. Such as taking a tour of the school, learning about the RED values, figuring out how to unlock our lockers and how to read our timetable on Compass. The year 7’s have a fantastic first week of high school!

Valentine’s Day Fundraiser (Banksia)

On Tuesday 14th February, Student Voice at Banksia hosted Valentine’s Day. Selling over 500 roses, 40 teddy bears, 100 Cupcakes and 100 polaroids from their two photo booths, students raised $950 for State School’s Relief Inc. Students also provided lunch time entertainment and games.

The day ran quite effortlessly, thanks to the hard work and commitment of our Student Voice leaders in the two weeks leading up to the event. This hard work paid off as everyone enjoyed the day and they raised a record amount for charity. Well done to all involved.

Fiona Chamley

(Student Voice – Banksia)

LIBRARY NEWS

Welcome to the Keysborough College libraries!

At Keysborough College, a library can be found in each of the four junior and senior villages across the college- Acacia Junior, Acacia Senior, Banksia Junior, and Banksia Senior. Our libraries are vibrant places where students and staff can relax, study, chat, find a book to read, complete a jigsaw puzzle, play a game or two, and even compete in various literary competitions and fun challenges throughout the year.

Our library team are all experienced, knowledgeable and enthusiastic library lovers, always ready and willing to help our staff and students with their research enquiries – or recommend a new, or new-for-you, exciting book to read, have a chat, or even just provide a listening ear.

In addition to books, magazines, newspapers and IT items, the libraries hold a range of digital resources – we subscribe to three online newspapers which staff and students can access at school. In addition, library staff manage the school’s Clickview subscription, and a large and ever expanding range of e-books and audio books, which, due to the magic of the interwebs, students can access from wherever they are.

If a student requests a particular item, library staff will endeavor to purchase that item for them, and we can also facilitate inter library loans from the other libraries in the Keysborough College network for the convenience of students and staff.

Please enjoy these photos of our library staff. Joshua Dwyer can be found in the Acacia Junior library; Angela Talbot in Acacia Senior; Deana Sansom and Doris Bryan in Banksia Junior; and Allison Kirby and Emma-Louise Pascoe in Banksia Senior.

Happy reading!

Term 1 Interschool Sport

Throughout this term we had several teams competed in the Senior and Intermediate Interschool Sports Competition. Our players put in their all on the day of their competition, they showed great school spirit and sportsmanship towards their opponents.

I would like to take this opportunity to thanks all the students for the efforts they have put in on the competition day and all the training sessions they have attended. A special thanks to the teachers for scarifying their lunch time and after school hours to run training sessions for their team.

Our Year 8 will have their competition on March 1st and Our Year 7’s will compete on April 4th.

Here are the results of our Teams.

Hello! My name’s Magdalini, and I’m in year 7 for 2023. I remember in the last week of year 6, I was so nervous about leaving primary school. The biggest worry I had was leaving all of my friends. I was scared about a lot of other things as well, though, like harder work, longer classes, new people, and a bigger school. I can admit, I felt sort of uncomfortable since I was one of only three people from my primary school coming here. It was a big change, but even so, I figured that I was going to be okay in a matter of seconds after being here. I had already met some people on orientation day last year, so it wasn’t hard to make new friends. The teachers helped a lot in every way possible. It was pretty difficult at first to find all the classrooms, but even just asking someone if you were going in the right direction was really helpful.

Induction week was only a few weeks ago, but it went by really quickly because of all the things we did. First of all, we were arranged into our classes and got to know our classmates. Then, we had an assembly in the theatre and met the teachers and staff members. We had a quick introduction to everything, and we were given a booklet with everything we needed for the week.

Most of the activities we did during induction week were really fun! Expect the tests!!! We also got to know our teachers for the year, went on a tour around the school, and briefly went through all of our subjects. A lot of the time, we just did activities like getting to know each other, what we’d be learning for the year, and stuff like that. I remember, one of my favourite things we got to do during induction week was the music tryouts! The teachers were really encouraging, gave their honest opinions to everyone and would always make us laugh.

All of the staff members were also very helpful when someone didn’t know what or how to do something. For example, when we did our locks and lockers, session, almost all of us didn’t get it on the first try, or second, or even third. It took us a while to get the hang of it, but they were always there for us if we couldn’t unlock our lockers so we wouldn’t be late for class. When it came to setting up our iPads, they were also really helpful. If there was an error, we could easily fix it with Sophie’s help. (Sophie is the IT technician).

A lot of the things we did during the week referred to our RED values and the 5 Ps. Everyone made it really clear on what each thing meant and how we could show them. I really liked how in each session, the teachers made everything we’d learn connect with the values, and how they always made it interactive for us. We never had too much work, nor too little, and if we had any problems, I’m almost certain that all of my class felt comfortable speaking to a teacher.

Now, it’s already week 5 of term 1, and it’s been great! I still get a bit lost at times, but I know I’m comfortable asking someone if I ever need help. I guess I still miss primary school a bit, but it’s clear that school here will be more enjoyable than I thought.

Magdalini Fytopoulos, B7E

Welcome back message from the Year 12 Acacia Campus Captains

Welcome back students and teachers for another year of learning and growing! We officially started this year by welcoming the Year 7s and new staff to our school community. The Year 7s started this year with an induction week and had alumni talking about their school experiences during the Year 7 and Alumni Panel. We hope they’ve had a positive start to high school, and wish them the best of luck in settling in and making new friends. Recently, our College celebrated the 2022 Year 12s in the Celebration Success Assembly at Banksia Campus. Here the high performing students were acknowledged and alumni were invited to speak about their own experiences at Keysborough College. Their speeches touched on the path to their success as students, emphasising the importance of seeking help from teachers and developing a good routine.

The Acacia Year 12s have been fortunate enough to have Kyling Dorsett (Our Mental Health Practitioner) and Theresa Sprekos (our School Nurse) work with the Year 12 students on mental health and wellbeing. We have had two sessions where we talked about ways to cope with stress and a ‘drained cup’, which, like the alumni’s speeches, was a helpful way of preparing us for the year. It is not going to be an easy road ahead for us and so we appreciate the College’s Wellbeing Team being here to help us get through it by providing these supportive sessions in Pathways classes.

Study buddies for the Year 12s has also officially started and it is encouraging to see a huge number of our peers studying for their upcoming SACs and assessments, and finishing up class work and assignments. We also appreciate our teachers, many of whom give up their time to come and support us, offering extra help in our studies, along with the help of alumni tutors.

So far for us, Year 12 has been exhausting however, there are many exciting things coming later this year for us and for the whole school, including Harmony Day, Formal, the College Musical, Athletics Day, and most importantly for us year 12s: Celebration Day and Graduation! The year will zoom by fast but we all look forward to the exciting things coming up this year and wish best of luck to all the year levels in their studies!

Youth Leaders Conference

On the 27th of February, 2023, the KSC student leadership teams from both Acacia and Banksia campuses were fortunate enough to be assisted to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre for the 2023 Melbourne Secondary Youth Leadership Conference by the lovely Ms Haluwadana and Ms Chamley from Banksia .

The session was opened by Bonnie and Amanda. Everyone was woken up by the energy that these bright women lit up the room. Up next was the CEO of Youth Leadership Australia, Wil Massara. From Wil, I learnt that “my age does not determine my ability to achieve extraordinary things”. Wil wants the attendees of the conference to know that no matter how young we are or how old we will be, it is never too early or too late to reach for the stars. Our guest speaker was the CEO of Flourish Girl, Fiona Sanford. Flourish Girl is Australia’s leading youth led rites of passage programs that work with teenage girls & gender diverse students between 13-17 years old to build their self-awareness. Fiona had us do a “Flourish Girl Check in”, where we had to get into a pair or a group of three to ask each other about the roots - getting grounded in the present, thorns - something a little prickly, and lastly flowers - ending on a positive note”. This conference has taught us leaders many things. It taught us to be who we are and to embrace it: “own your story.” Moreover, it taught us that leaders are also learners, so it is ok that they make mistakes.

Thank you to all the KSC teachers and staff who made this excursion happen. We appreciate your hard work and we thank you for giving us such a great and inspiring opportunity towards our leadership journey.

Venching Heng

Acacia International Students Captain

Anglicare Victoria: ParentZone- Free online parenting support

Parenting is the most important and challenging job in today’s rapidly changing world – but children and young people don’t come with a handbook. ParentZone offers all carers and parents a chance to develop and strengthen their parenting skills and create positive change in their family. We provide free parenting groups, workshops, resources, and training for parents and the professionals who work with them.

Cling here for further information about ParentZone.

7 & 14 March 2023| Online| Parents building solutions| 7.00PM- 8.30PM

Open to Parents & Carers of Teenagers. Come & share experiences, ideas and learn new strategies. Join the interactive sessions online.

Feeling stuck or struggling with your teenager.
How to get your teenager to listen, without having to yell.
Building a better relationship with your teens.
Discuss and share strategies that work.

Click here for further information about upcoming parent workshops.