Principal’s Report This week I attended the Secondary Principal’s Council Conference celebrating the theme “honouring the past, designing the future.” A highlight was hearing Yong Zhao speak of the need to change our mindsets in regards to the outcomes we desire for our students. Yong’s argument was that we must help our children create choice and we must produce students that keep their uniqueness. This uniqueness will help them job create not job seek. For more information please see Yong’s website http://zhaolearning.com/ and articles such as http://zhaolearning.com/2015/04/06/a-world-at-risk-an-imperative-for-a-paradigm-shift-to-cultivate-21st-century-learners1/. As Western Sydney principals were the hosts of this year’s conference our students played a high profile role. Jumaana Abdu (11) chaired the first ever student panel discussing issues and allowing students to voice their opinions. Suryansh Sharma (11) opened the conference as the first “master of ceremonies”. Joel Huang, Johanna Kennedy and Alice Yan (also of year 11) were student ambassadors welcoming and registering guests to the conference. Julia Tran (9), Eunice Cheng (8) and Ben Tran (7) played beautiful music at the Minister’s reception which was held at NSW Parliament House. Thank you to Mrs Hann who accompanied the students and looked after them at Parliament House. Earlier this year a number of students started a discussion on the structure of our Prefect Body. With the help of the SRC it has been decided to change the number of student executive positions in the school. This furthers our goal of increasing the number of student leadership opportunities in our school. We vote today for our new Prefect Body of 2015-2016. From this group of students the elected Prefects will now select a male and female for each position - School Captain, Vice-Captain, Senior Prefect and Sports Captain. We will develop more formal role statements for each of these positions to ensure all executives contribute to the future success of the school and are able to serve our school community.
Our current prefects have worked tirelessly over the last year to raise school spirit and serve our community. Their contribution to many charities and events has been impressive. We welcome Ms Briggs back to school this week and thank her for the fabulous work she does in supporting our Prefect Body. We wish our students well this weekend as they compete in the Titration Competition at Macquarie University and thank Ms Fernandez for giving up her time to supervise them. Many of you will have read the Sydney Morning Herald article on Monday which quoted a 2013 ex-student who has sold her work and essays. All forms of cheating and malpractice are to be abhorred and must be prevented. Innocent students are gravely hurt when malpractice occurs. Our school values of integrity, respect and endeavour are to be encouraged at all time. We need the help of all parents and students to ensure all work is original. The consequences of cheating and malpractice are very serious – zero marks will be awarded, a HSC subject could be withheld by BOSTES and we will report all breaches of malpractice to BOSTES. The majority of our students and former students are wonderful young people of integrity and solid ethics, however obviously a small number have made the unethical decision of encouraging plagiarism by selling their work. If you or your child know of cheating or hear of the sale of essays etc please report to the school. If we work together we can ensure that the reputation of our school and our students remains intact. The Big Morning Tea – but at lunchtime On Thursday 11 June SRC created a special event. It was a Big Morning Tea… but at lunchtime. Students made jelly, fairy bread and wonderful cupcakes to sell. Also many games were played on the oval and the rain held off. It was fantastic to see the egg and spoon race with juniors and seniors all wobbling along balancing an egg on a spoon and manoeuvring through hula hoops Eva Sinha, year 11, spent days creating amazing professional cupcakes which sold in literally seconds.
Thanks go to the SRC for a new initiative and thanks to all students who came along to the oval and had fun.
In recent year meetings merit certificates have been given to students who have been nominated by their class teachers for being respectful and inclusive of others in class. To the right is a photo of year 8 students receiving their awards. Thank you to the many parents who are using the Parent Portal to explain student absences. This is a time-saving feature of our Parent Portal which contributes to the accuracy of our school attendance records. When you explain an absence in the Portal it does not immediately flow on to your student's attendance overview, but must be processed by our Attendance Officer. Please allow time for our staff to process your requests before phoning the office to check.
Coming Events Week 9B Monday 15th Year 12 Chemistry – Sydney University Shakespeare on Trial Year 8 Information (Subject Selection) Night 6.30pm in Hall Tuesday 16th Mothers Club FOOD DAY Shakespeare on Trial Wednesday 17th Year 9 Meeting P1 Year 8 UTS Debating Day Year 7 High Resolves- Personal Identity Thursday 18th Youth Sustainability Congress Western Sydney Debating Final Friday 19th Year 11 Agriculture Excursion Year 10 PDHPE Prelim Year 12 PDC Regional Final – Lecture Theatre Week 10A SRC Week Monday 22nd Photo Day 1 Year 7, 11 and 12 vaccinations Year 8 and 11 Parent Teacher Night 4pm -7pm Tuesday 23rd Photo Day 2 Wednesday 24th SRC Dance Thursday 25th Year 12 Study Skills Year 8 and 9 Science Lecture and Light Show Friday 26th Prefect Assembly Period 6 and 7
Have a wonderful week Megan Connors
Principal |
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