Newsletter Term 4, Week 4 2022

Dear SJC Families and Friends

This week's newsletter starts with a reproduction of the 2022-2023 College Captain's inaugural speech.  Thank you Willow and Mitch!  We look forward to sharing in your journey as senior leaders of our College.

Mr Scott Thomson
Principal

Good afternoon families, staff, and students

To begin, Willow and I would like to address and thank everyone involved in the SRC process and would like to congratulate our fellow SRC members across all year groups, especially our senior leadership team: Kai Brinsmead, Ava Thompson, Cooper Tanks, Bo Peisley, Caitlin McCormack, Alannah Cullen, Mai Nuttall, Christopher Preston, Lauren Davies, Seana Connolly, Alysha Whitehouse, and Georgia Smith, we are extremely excited to have you by our sides in this inspiring journey.

Willow and I are also honoured to have the opportunity to work closely with you all through 2023 and be your College Captains in the 30th year anniversary of St. Joseph’s College. We would also like to thank the outgoing leadership team for all the beneficial accomplishments they’ve attained: Hugh Holt, Lucy Boyle, Bridget Simmons, Thomas Neuen, Jayden Wilson, Sophie Cave, Charlie Kerr, Bethany Knightley, Jaime Malone, Issac Hill-Hayes, and Indiana Sing.

Thank you all for being the role models we consistently look up to, motivating both us and others to do the best of our ability. These leaders and their dedication to the college community over the past 12 months has been immensely appreciated. 

Willow and I hope to continue this year’s theme of, “serve one another in love” in our endeavours next year. This involves being disciples to our fellow school body, uniting our school community to rise and overcome life obstacles through compassion, and kindness. The students of this school are capable of achieving their utmost potential, we too wish to assist in their success, talent, and development in both this upcoming year, and beyond.

A letter to the Corinthians chapter 3, verse 14 states, “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity”, Willow and I would like to take this idea and expand upon it, promoting the involvement of everyone in the school community through this unconditional support for one another.

We also stand by the fact that it is immensely important to bring each other up, especially those who are facing life’s challenges. It is our priority to give meaning to this word of unity and implement it into our daily lives. The entire school has the opportunity to act on these words and work together in faith to assist our community in being the best it can be. 

Mitch and I believe that leadership should be seen as the opportunity to inspire others to become leaders themselves, whether or not they are part of the SRC in 2023, and encourage students to be the best versions of themselves. It is our mission to increase College pride and participation in all aspects of our school community next year, and we aim to increase engagement in all SJC events, as these are the days when our College community comes together and connects with each other.

For the first time at St Joseph's College, we have five domain leaders who are part of our Senior Leadership Team, who will strive to fulfil all aspects of their roles in the following year. Alongside the leaders of the Mission, School Spirit, Wellbeing, Stewardship and Indigenous student representatives, Mitch and I aspire to support and assist them in their endeavours.

Mitch and I look forward to being your College Captains in 2023 and, in our leadership, we aim to, as Peter said in his first epistle, chapter 3 verse 8, “be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”

Again, we would like to thank the College community for giving us this opportunity, and we hope to live up to the standards set by those who have preceded us, especially Lucy and Hugh. We look forward to sharing this experience with the entirety of the College and look forward to the challenges that we will face in this role.

Mitch and I look forward to collaborating with the student body, staff, SRC and especially the Senior Student Leadership team, in setting goals and aspirations for the coming year. Thank you to all families, staff, and students who are present today.

Willow Trimboli and Mitchell McCracken
College Captains 2022-2023

Parent Webinar - Teen Vaping: An update for parents

Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia (DARTA) aims to provide education and training expertise as well as high quality research assistance on a wide range of alcohol and other drug issues. Paul Dillon is the Director and founder of DARTA and he is passionate about ensuring that the community has access to accurate and up-to-date alcohol and other drug information.

Please see the information below regarding a parent evening that DARTA is organising.

Teen vaping: An update for parents
Webinar for Parents
Monday, 14 November 2022
7:00-8:30pm (AEDT)

Vaping (the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes or 'vapes') continues to be an issue that attracts a great deal of attention as well as debate across the country. Vaping is a new phenomenon, with the first e-cigarette being invented in 2003. As a result, many parents have little or no experience with the issue as the devices simply weren’t around when they were in their teens.

This session will examine what we currently know about the use of e-cigarettes and vaping amongst Australian school-based young people. This is an area that is constantly changing and parents attempting to make sense of the information provided by both the ‘pro-vaping’ and ‘anti-vaping’ lobbies may find it extremely difficult to navigate. As we move towards the end of the school year parents are likely to need as much assistance as possible.

Cost: $25 plus GST

This event will be live-streamed but, for those unable to attend live, a recording of the event will also be made available for a period following the event's conclusion.

To register for the event please go to the following link: https://events.humanitix.com/teen-vaping-an-update-for-parents?_ga=2.18745392.80608819.1666043659-467732293.1627864130

NDIS Virtual Information Sessions

Pathways to Post School Life: A session for young people in Years 10-12 and people who support them

NDIS are hosting eight virtual Information sessions on Pathways to Post School Life in Term Four starting from 18 October 2022. Please see the flyer attached for your reference.

These sessions are focused on building skills and paving a pathway to post school life. A range of NDIS-funded supports and available assistance to help young people build skills to prepare for their transition, will be discussed.

To meet the varying needs of students, teachers and families, NDIS are offering a range of different times for the session. Each session will go for 1-hour and a resource information pack will be sent after the session.

Who should attend: Students with a disability in Years 10-12, their parents, carers, education professionals and others who support young people.

How to register: NSW and ACT Pathways to Post School Life Tickets, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite

Leaving St Joseph's College

During the second semester of a school year, families tend to make decisions about moving to a new area because of employment changes, etc.  With so much upheaval this year, it seemed timely to enquire of all families if, for any reason, their child (or children) will not be returning to the College in 2023, to please let us know.

If you could please send in with your child a letter to the College office – or alternatively write a brief email to sjcbanora@lism.catholic.edu.au – confirming the date your child will be leaving and the new school or institution he/she will be attending.

(Please note that all students who leave St Joseph’s College are required to complete a Clearance Form which includes the return of all College library books, textbooks and locker lock.  The student can collect a form from the office closer to their departure date.)

Mr Eamon Brown
Assistant Principal - Mission

On Show 2022

Thank you kindly!

Years 7 and 8 Family Writing Night - This coming Thursday, 3 November

As a follow-up to our successful writing zoom webinar, families of Years 7 & 8  students are invited to attend a literacy learning evening on Thursday, 3 November.

Families will participate in a range of hands-on writing activities, which reflect the type of learning students experience in the classroom.  The evening will be presented in an encouraging, no-pressure environment with opportunities for sharing in groups.  This learning is aimed to give you skills to support your child to develop and improve their writing skills.

For catering purposes we ask that you "Click here for catering purposes" on the attached flyer for the Years 7 and 8 Family Writing Night.

Mrs Antonia Pratt
Literacy Coach

Talking with Students as a way of measuring whether we are on track with Learning and Teaching

In my last Newsletter post on this subject, I wrote about surface-, deep- and transfer-level learning.  In this Newsletter, I detail how we are able to determine whether we are on track with our goal of developing students that are capable of driving their own learning (we call this being assessment-capable).

You may know that much of the work we have been doing with learning and teaching recently has been in collaboration with Lyn Sharratt.  A major component of Sharratt’s work is applying the five components of the Assessment and Instruction Waterfall Chart as a model for effective learning and teaching. (figure below) 

For the past twelve months, the focus in classrooms has been on the first two levels of the Waterfall Chart - communicating and using clear Learning Intentions and Success Criteria.

Recently, we have been aiming to establish regular routines where leaders and teachers go into classrooms to ask students five learning questions. (Sharratt, Lyn. CLOSING THE GAP TO RAISE THE BAR: The Power of 5 CRITICAL QUESTIONS. Accessed 31/8/22)

These Learning Walks and Talks (LWTs) are crucial in providing leaders and teachers with the information we need to gauge whether we are on track with our goals. The most recent evidence is indicating we are tracking towards our goal of students being more assessment-capable.  An area of strength for us is that students can usually indicate what they are learning and why they are learning it.  An area that we need to work on is getting students to use the unit, lesson and/or performance task success criteria as an indicator of their progress with their learning.  For example, “I know that I am going well with my learning because I am able to look at the success criteria and tick off what I know and can do …”  We expect to make some progress in this area over the coming months.

If you would like to hear an example of a short 3-minute LWT conversation then click this link for a recording that needed a little prompting for the reasons why students are learning what they are learning but had a pretty good idea of how to use success criteria and feedback to drive their learning.  At home, you too can ask these same questions to get an idea of how your child is progressing with their learning.

As always, I would love to talk more with you about learning and teaching at the College so feel free to contact me.

Study Skills Tips for November: Make Great Study Notes

Mr Carlo Trimboli
Leader of Pedagogy

(carlo.trimboli@lism.catholic.edu.au)

Within PDHPE we try to educate our students at SJC on a broad range of topics.  We try to make it engaging and relevant to where they are at in our modern world.

Last term, our Year 7 students were learning about how a healthy diet and regular exercise can contribute to their health and longevity.  Their final project had them designing an evening meal that considered their learnings from the term.  This included the nutrients in foods, serving sizes, Australian Dietary Guidelines and what the health consequences the foods they consume can have on them over a long period of time.

Below are some images of the meal designs that our students came up with.  Now that they are empowered with all this knowledge perhaps it is time for them to don the apron and take on the evening meal preparations!

Ms Sara Reynolds
Assistant Leader of PDHPE