Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

School Council

At the AGM held on the 18th of March, the following parents have been elected to the Council Executive:

Council President – Ian Fox

Vice President – Jason Allen

Treasurer – Adam Wade

I thank them for the extra commitment they are prepared to make to the College in taking on the responsibilities involved in these important roles.

Parent/Teacher/Student Interviews

We look forward to our Parent – Teacher interviews onsite this Wednesday from 11 am – 7.30 pm. We hope that parents and students will find these valuable in terms meeting your child/ren’s teachers in person and in the feedback received. We also made it possible for parents to elect to attend remotely if easier to manage around other commitments. If you aren’t able to attend the interviews in person or remotely via Google Meet and wish to discuss your child’s progress with a particular teacher or teachers, please contact them via email to organise a time to discuss on the phone or over a Google Meet. If you have any feedback regarding the interviews set up and process please don’t hesitate to email my Assistant Principal overseeing the organisation of the interviews, Andrew Moffat.

Facility Development

While onsite Wednesday, you will be able to see the main construction area near the Discovery Centre and Enquiry Zone, and get an appreciation of just how big our new two storey building is going to be. Over the next fortnight they expect to finish off the underground services and pour the slab. This has been re-scheduled to occur later so in the school holidays.

We finally had the handover of the new bike shed and locker bay last Friday. Given the timing being so close to the end of term, we are asking all students to clear their lockers for the holidays, and lockers will be redistributed on the first day of Term 2. For Years 8-11, we are going to trial having student’s lockers in their house groups rather than year levels.

School Tours

We have been running two tours each week to meet the demand of prospective parents and students. Given there was little opportunity last year due to COVID it has been important to offer extra opportunities to see the school in action. We are capping tours to no more than 25-30 people on each tour and it usually takes 90 minutes with a big group to get around the whole school, speaking at each main building and following up with plenty of questions asked along the way. I take most of the school tours, with an AP stepping in when I am not available.

Update on Staffing

Alice Dunn (formally Leppin), one of our leading teachers will be taking maternity/family leave from Term 2. Alice is the Director of Programs and Pedagogy for Years 7-9 and also leads the Student Voice Committee, SEAL and the new Victorian High Ability program for identified students by the Department. Alice has done an outstanding job as a teacher and more recently as a young leader. Alice started here as a graduate back in 2012. Having advertised the job externally I have not found a suitable applicant to take on this important leadership role. Therefore the role is to be divided up among a number of staff here for the rest of the year and for her teaching role in Year 7 we welcome Joanne Hannan to the College. Our new SEAL and Victorian High Ability Program Coordinator is Paige Buenemann; and Julia Hockey and Bryony Lowe will be overseeing the Year 7-9 programs and pedagogy, in addition to their other responsibilities. We all wish Alice the very best in this new and exciting stage in her life with partner Nathan.

Indigo Yorke has had a short term contract teaching PE and Health until Lauren Hibell returns from family leave at the start of Term 2. Indigo was a student teacher with us last year and has enjoyed starting her teaching career at Mordialloc.

Information Evenings

Last week we had a number of information evenings. On Monday 22 March, we held the Central Australia Camp and Queensland Camp information sessions for parents and students in Years 9-11. We hope to run a number of camps this year and, given the high attendance numbers, the interest is certainly there, to make up for students missing out last year. Thanks to Mick Haber and Andrew Moffat for running this evening with the support of the Year 11 and 10 coordinators.

On Wednesday 24 March we held an information evening for SEAL parents and students in Years 7-9 on Aiming High and Future Aspirations. The session covered planning ahead – subject selection and pathways/aspirations; study scores, ATARs, bell curves and scaling; and also the opportunity to hear from some of our high achieving SEAL students from previous years, David Le (ATAR 99.95), Jasmine Ristevski (ATAR 99.8) and Sabrina Berg (ATAR 99.3). Thanks to Jo Greenhalgh, Andrew Moffat and Alice Dunn for organising the session.

On Thursday 25 March we held our first Parent Voice meeting via Google Meet. To offer parents a voice in the school, outside of school council involvement, and to also provide them with an opportunity to meet members of the Principal Class team and to ask questions. Simon Cummins will be organising a parent voice session each term online. I attended and spoke at our first one held last week along with Simon and Marina Walsh AP. We had about a dozen parents join us on this occasion which was a good number to launch this new opportunity for parent engagement.

Principal Preparation Program

This program is run by BASTOW for Assistant Principals aspiring to the Principal role or Leading Teachers aspiring to the Assistant Principal role. I was asked to be a mentor for an Assistant Principal this term, Daniel Rogers, AP at Lyndhurst SC. Daniel worked here for 5 weeks shadowing me and also completing a project of his choice. This was mainly focused on Senior School, learning about what we have put into place for lifting the culture of achievement and achieving our excellent results. Daniel also spent some time looking at our VCAL program to offer advice as they have more of their 11 and 12 students studying VCAL than VCE. In addition, Daniel attended all meetings I am part of and identified some technical aspects of the role he wanted to increase his knowledge in. He presented to the leadership team on his key learnings from his placement here and will do the same now back at his school and to BASTOW.

World’s Greatest Shave

We will be conducting this important fundraising event early next term. Thanks to teachers Lily Freitag-Kenyon and Laura Gorman who are running the SRC this year and planning this event. I would like to highlight one student who has supported this event from Year 7 and he is now in Year 12, Matthew Wade. Matt is on track to raise over $5000 in his six years at the school!

Athletics Carnival

A reminder that our last day of term is our House Athletics Carnival held at the Sandringham Athletics track. We encourage students to come along dressed in their house colours and costumes adding to the terrific atmosphere we always experience on this day. Thanks to our Sports Coordinator, Cory Watters, for his organisation of this event, which is always very popular with the entire student cohort.

2020 Year 12 Student Jasmine Ristevski Study Tips

Jasmine Ristevski achieved an ATAR of 99.8 and a perfect study score of 50 in Psychology, and came second overall, with our DUX David Le scoring a perfect ATAR of 99.95. Jasmine is studying Engineering (Honours) and Science at Monash University. Jasmine recently presented at our VCE information night and I asked her to share some of her strategies to be published here. Please see attachment.

Tutoring for our Year 12 students

Each year we utilise the services of some of our former top Year 12 students to provide tutoring support to our current Year 12 students after school onsite. Thanks to Director of Senior School, Ms Greenhalgh, for organising the following students from last year who are returning to offer tutoring in the following subjects. We highly recommend that our students take up these valuable opportunities for some extra support during the year. These sessions started last week.

Noreigh Zuniga – Monday: English, Chemistry, Psychology, Biology; Callum Roberts – Monday: Accounting, Physics, Math Methods; David Le – Tuesday: Math Methods, Specialist Maths, Physics, Chemistry; Ava Collison – Wednesday: English, Further Maths, French; Anya Biaroza - Wednesday: History, Business, Biology; Dylan Brown – Thursday: Accounting, Business Management; Jasmine Ristevski – Thursday: English, Psychology, Biology, PE.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday break.

Michelle Roberts

Principal

Information Evenings 2021