PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
Principals Newsletter Report 17/6/22
Welcome to our last Newsletter for the term, featuring some great reports of student achievement across the full breadth of the curriculum. There have been so many positive achievements that we celebrated as a community this term and I look forward to continuing to acknowledge these moments during the coming week.
Term 2 has again presented some challenges to consistent attendance for both students and staff as we have navigated influenza, colds, gastro and the continuing COVID 19 pandemic. These challenges I predict will continue as well move forward into term 3 and hopefully as the weather warms up attendance and health obstacles alleviate.
I encourage all our students, staff, and families in our community to really focus on their own personal health and self-care during the term break. Simple things like eating good healthy food, sleeping well, exercise and connection with peers, family and our community are important to manage the complexities of returning full-time face to face in schools whilst having the required ‘wellness” resilience to manage the next 10-week block term. Whatever you feel you need to do, do it and I will look forward to seeing all our community back energised and ready to launch into term 3.
Farewell and Thank-you
At the end of term 2 and early term 3, our community will farewell two wonderful staff members of our college. Sarah Pitman will retire from the department of education to take up a role as a learning design consultant at Work Safe and Cathryn Davey will retire from her laboratory technician duties. Sarah has worked in the college since graduating as a teacher from university in 2004 and Cathryn took up the role as Lab Technician in 2017 and has been a wonderful support to our Science and STEM departments. On behalf of the WHC community, we wish both staff well in their new journeys. They will both be always welcome in our college community.
Ms. Annette Podbury will also be taking some well-earned LSL throughout term 3. We wish her well.
Semester Reports
Semester 1 reports will be released to parents and carers on Friday 24th June. I encourage you to download this report from compass and discuss the reports with your child.
Leaders and Achievers Lunch
The college is busy planning to have its annual leaders and achievers’ lunch for students who have achieved success with their learning and our student leaders on Friday 29 July. We are hopeful that COVID restrictions will enable us to invite parents and carers of successful students on-site to join with us for lunch like we did in 2019. Invitations for this lunch will be distributed in week 1, term 3.
End of Term 2
The last day of term 2 will be Friday 24 June and students will be dismissed at 2.30pm.
Term 3
Term 3 will commence with a curriculum planning day on Monday 11 July with students not required to attend with students returning to semester 2 timetabled classes on Tuesday 12 July.
Congratulations
Congratulations to Zac McInnes, Year 11, for representing the Victorian Country U16 Football Team on the weekend. Zac played predominantly up forward and, in the ruck, booting 5 goals in an impressive performance. Congratulations Zac.
We also congratulate all our students who represented Geelong United in the Kumon Australian Club Championships in Melbourne last weekend. 128 of the best teams in Australia were invited to participate and all our students involved I believe played admirably across the weekend.
NAIDOC Week 2022
This year NAIDOC week will be acknowledged across our country between the 3-10 July. National NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia to celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to learn about First Nations cultures and histories and participate in celebrations of the oldest, continuous living cultures on earth. A team of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been working closely with Ms Pike and Ms. Fowler to acknowledge this week in our school community across the last week of term and the first week back in term 3. Our school will reflect on this week in several ways within our curriculum but also as a whole school.
Ryhia Dank, a young Gudanji/Wakaja artist from the Northern Territory is the winner of the prestigious National NAIDOC poster competition for 2022 with her entry, Stronger.
She created her art piece after reading this year’s National NAIDOC Week theme – Get Up! Stand Up!
We will look forward to sharing our students’ stories during our NAIDOC Week celebrations at WHC.
Have a wonderful break and take care,
Fiona Taylor
Principal
Child Safety at WHC
Western Heights College is a child safe organisation committed to
protecting students from all forms of abuse.
Our College has stringent protocols in place and endeavours at all times to be fully compliant with the Child Safe Standards set out under Ministerial Order 870.
Our College has the following documents and policies in place to achieve compliance with the Standards. All of these documents are available for downloading on our website or contact the school for a copy.
1. Commitment to Child Safety
2. Child Safety Policy
3. Child Safety Code of Conduct
4. Child Protection Policy and Procedures
Annual privacy policy reminder for 2022
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.(found on the colleges webpage)
Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents and carers on the webpage. This information is also available in nine community languages:
* Amharic
* Arabic
* Dari
* Gujarati
* Mandarin
* Somali
* Sudanese
* Turkish
* Urdu
* Vietnamese.