Weekly Wrap

Week 7 – Term 4

Welcome to week 7.

With the VCAA Year 12 exams coming to an end, the week also saw the whole College commence the 2020 academic school year.

Students began the week with the establishment of our expectations of them, including the new mobile phone policy. They took to these superbly. We have been extremely impressed with the manner in which our students have embraced the new rules on mobile phones. They seem to have endorsed the correlation between a spike in youth mental health issues and an increase in the use of smart phones by young people.

During recess and lunchtime this week, I was more likely to observe students reading or playing chess. Others were happily playing down ball or simply exchanging in conversation. I didn’t see any evidence where a student was disadvantaged in their class room learning because they did not have a smart phone.

During the week our Year 7 and 8 Futsal teams travelled to Knox to compete in the regional Futsal tournament. Both teams worked very hard and represented the College well. The Year 7 team actually won the entire competition.

Year 8 students participated in a cyber-awareness activity delivered by Optus across the week. The presentations included information on how to stay safe online and how to understand the impact of “fake news.” We believe this information to be of high importance to our students and encourage the setting of firm and fair boundaries at home around device use.