Term 2 I The Way Newsletter I Friday 21 June 2024

We have had an incredibly full term with plenty of activity across the College on a wide range of fronts. The College Musical, now a distant memory, brought immense joy and excitement. Since then, we have transitioned back to the rhythm of normal life, which included numerous carnivals and top-level sporting competitions such as the Wanderers Cup, the Bill Turner Cup, and the CIS Football Finals, all featuring teams from Thomas Hassall. We have also celebrated success in various other sporting endeavours, setting a high standard that future teams will aspire to emulate.

Our Year 7 Camp was a tremendous success, with high attendance and a positive atmosphere that fostered a strong sense of teamwork and community. Recently, around 118 Year 9 students embarked on their first Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Adventure. Despite the stormy, wet, and threatening weather, the students worked together to overcome adversity, achieving remarkable personal and group accomplishments.

In addition to the co-curricular activities, learning has been thriving in every corner of the College. The term has been marked by the usual hustle and bustle of hard work and challenges at various levels. There has been the inevitable homework, reading texts, and grappling with new ideas or concepts. Yet, these activities offer us the great opportunity to discover new wonders and raise new questions about God and His world. Recent examinations brought a sense of tension, and assessments continued to present their challenges, often causing late nights and all the typical anxieties.

School life encompasses all the above and more… It is about establishing and building friendships, having robust discussions, learning to negotiate relationships, to listen to others and develop skills in conflict resolution and hopefully experience giving and receiving forgiveness. As we grow and mature in these new areas, we also learn to appreciate others in our community.

These demands challenge each of us to our limits. It can be scary and exhausting, but it is reassuring to know that there is an endpoint—a time to rest, recover, and take stock. Please find the time to do this as we approach our great celebration, ‘Unite Week.’

I extend my heartfelt thanks to all the parents who have supported their children throughout the past term. I also thank the staff for their unwavering dedication, energy, and time spent mentoring, instructing, correcting, encouraging, modelling, reflecting, loving, and supporting the learning and character building of our students. 

A special thanks to our new Principal for her calm and purposeful leadership.

I will be on long service leave over Term 3 and look forward to returning to finish the year with a sense of joy and gratitude. God Bless, and please remain in prayer for our community as I will be praying for you all.

On Tour with the Students last April.

What a wonderful opportunity it was this morning to celebrate the ladies in our community, Mums, Grandmas and other significant ladies in our life.  

Even though the day started out rather chilly it was great to see so many of you coming along to share in this occasion with the students and staff. A special thanks to Mrs Riitano's Kitchen staff who worked so hard to prepare for us a scrumptious breakfast. We hope you had a lovely morning!

This term, Year 8 has been exploring Healthy Relationships and Social Media as part of their Fit For Life program in Pastoral Care.

In this particular lesson, Year 8 discussed conflicts in relationships: 

• How do conflicts arise, even in good relationships? 
• What does conflict look like? Is it always easy to tell… or is it possible that we don’t even know there are issues in our relationships?
• What strategies can help us resolve conflicts in our relationships?

It’s always very interesting to see how students respond to case studies and theoretical scenarios… sometimes unaware of how personally they can relate to them!

Pictured above is Mr Wee’s 8 Carmichael 2 Class, who won a special prize for their dramatic depiction of conflict resolution. 

It is our earnest prayer that openness, awareness, consideration and ultimately, the grace of God, will guide our students to form and maintain healthy relationships with the important people in their lives.

Mr Jeff Tran
Senior School Teacher - Science, Mathematics and Year 8 Advisor

Here, at the College, we have so very many students who are undertaking the English Advanced course – from the Common Module: Reading to Write, at the beginning of Year 11, to the final module studying persuasive writing, just before the HSC Examination at the end of Year 12.

Our future 2025 HSC cohort, currently half-way through their Year 11 course, have just submitted their Multimodal Presentations, which feature their first evaluative essays. These complex responses to HSC-style questions allow students the opportunity to offer their informed personal perspective on a pair of literary texts. These texts include examples of the divided protagonist trope, which recurs throughout history, starting with the novella, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Spoiler alert: these two gentlemen are, in fact, two aspects of the same fellow!

For most of this term, I have had the genuine pleasure of looking after one of the Year 11 English Advanced classes temporally. I have watched them unpacking ideas about social justice embedded in narratives of class struggle, gender equality and indigenous recognition. I have watched them using analytical skills to express their understanding through concise sentences and developing arguments. They have shown that, where they put effort in, they are capable of displaying an understanding of language and ideas to a level that they could not have imagined in Year 10… just a year ago.

What we have seen, with this and previous senior cohorts, is that students with a range of abilities and past experiences of English can have enhanced success with the ideas, skills and texts studied in the Advanced course. This is just so long as the course is delivered in a way that is accessible and that incorporates an adjustment of approaches to suit students across the range of abilities and interests.

What few have had the opportunity to appreciate is that the alternative English Standard course, for Stage 6, requires students to master substantially the same skills and the same literary appreciation of texts. At the same time, English Standard does not afford students the crucial cultural capital – the development of an educated voice – that allows them to communicate with others on an equal footing across the country and across the English-speaking world, if that is where their future is taking them.

For now, the next great learning endeavour for Year 11 English Advanced is a Critical Study of Literature, focusing on just one significant text. In this case, it is the tragedy play by William Shakespeare, Othello. In Term 3, we are even hosting an incursion by the Australian Shakespeare Company to give our Advanced students an interactive experience of the play and how it is performed live.

They have just started this third stage of their Year 11 English learning journey, over the past week. I look forward to seeing what they have to say, and what they can do, in response to such a timeless classic as it speaks to the divided politics of our present era.

Mr David Gawthorne
Faculty Coordinator - English

Our Year 7 and 8 Students had a great day attending the Wanderers Cup on Wednesday 12 June. It was a day where our students could come together and build cohesiveness as a team in preparation for the upcoming MISA season in Term 3. Both teams performed incredibly well and as such, have been invited to attend the next tournament. 

Mrs Irene Focas 
Senior School Sports Co-ordinator