The Chronicle Issue 6

Principal Report

Dear Parents Guardians, Friends and Students

As we start each term there are always a number of new students who join our College community. As with anyone who is new it takes time to get to know one another and truly understand how our place works and what we all hold as important. We strive constantly to be a place where all are welcomed and the unique gifts and qualities of each person are celebrated. We understand that it will take time for them to know in their hearts and minds our College values of respect, honesty, excellence and tolerance and what these mean as an Edmund Rice young person. That it will take time for them to know our College prayer, written by previous students and staff. It will take them time to get to know each of us and us them.

However, as each student enters this place we do have expectations that they will already have values that are given to each of them by their parents, grandparents, guardians and elders. I know that each of you expect that they will come and show respect to the staff and other students. I know that you expect that they will come to each of their lessons and try their hardest. I know that every student that enters here is capable of doing all of these things.

High schools and particularly, boarding schools, can only operate when the students are willing to work with the staff and that they can be trusted to do what is asked of them. There are so many of our students who work tirelessly to try and do better each day. They strive to do the right thing and not be distracted by those around who may not be doing what they should. Each student needs to work on doing the right thing. They are responsible for their behaviour.

Our aim is to build on the positive aspects of our College community and reinforce these values at all times. I will be challenging those students who are consistently unable to adhere to these values and follow the instructions given to them by the staff.

I would ask that you all reinforce this with your young people. We can only do this together. As our motto says: Stronger Together.

God Bless,

Marie Barton
Principal

Prayer

Almighty God
We give you our school.
We give you all the teachers and staff who work here,
We give you all the children who learn here.
We pray our school will continue to be a place of great discovery, adventure and creativity.
May it be a place where we love to learn and where we learn to love,
A place where every one is respected and all are deeply valued.
We ask all this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Deputy Principal Report

AFL Competition

Recently, students from our year 8-10 classes participated in an AFL cup competition against other schools. Miss Anna said that our students were fantastic competitors on the day and demonstrated outstanding sporting skills and demonstrated fairness, honesty, and teamwork both on and off the sporting field. Positive feedback was given to our supervising staff regarding student performance and behaviour, and this deserves valuable recognition in our community.

VET Courses

Our upper school students have resumed their VET courses and started back at the Northam and Moora TAFE campuses. Feedback from TAFE trainers and lecturers has been positive and as students near the end of the academic year we urge them to continue to strive for excellence in their VET studies, making the most of the opportunities presented to them.

Graduation

Year 12 students are rapidly hurtling toward graduation and staff are encouraging them to make the most of the opportunities provided in their classes and to complete their schooling strong.

Staff are providing students with ongoing support both in and out of the classroom and we encourage parents to discuss post-schooling opportunities and continue to support them in their final months of schooling by encouraging them to stay in classes and school and to complete all learning assessments to the best of their capabilities so that we have all students attaining their West Australian Certificate of Education, which will provide many job opportunities for them in the future.

Bishops Reading Literacy Assessment

Students in year nine recently completed the annual, Bishops Reading Literacy Assessment in classes this week. It was great to see that many students engaged well with the online assessment and tried their best when completing the assessment.

OLNA

OLNA round two testing will commence later this month for our year 10-12 students, and we are encouraging students to make the most in completing the last OLNA round for the year as most students only need one more level to achieve their WACE requirements.

Tracey Crisp
Deputy Principal

Farewell to Staff

Last term we said farewell to Director of Business, Geoff Hendriks, who has now retired. Geoff arrived at the College in 2012 to take up the position of Co-Principal before moving into the position of Director of Business.

We celebrated Geoff’s retirement with a sumptuous buffet lunch, with staff members and invited guests, including many past staff members of the College.

We wish Geoff all the best in his retirement, where we know he will be busy travelling and enjoying his leisure time. He will be sorely missed

Above: The College staff and invited guests farewelled Director of Business, Geoff Hendriks, as he retired.

Introducing New Staff

On the retirement of our Director of Business, Geoff Hendriks, the position of Director of Business has now been restructured into two seperate roles – Manager, Finance and Personnel and Manager, Risk and Operations. We would like to welcome Marie-Francoise Carroll and Darryl Welsby to the College team.

Manager, Finance & Personnel – Marie-Francoise Carroll

I joined Edmund Rice College this July as the Manager Finance and Personnel and I am very excited to bring my expertise and experience to the school.

I migrated from France in 1991 and worked in Business Services for various government departments in Perth until joining the Department of Education in 2008. I worked as the Registrar for the Beverley District High School for 12 years, then more recently for Northam Senior High School. My passions are my family, my motorbike, running and quilting.

Manager, Risk & Operations – Darryl Welsby

After spending over 20 years in the Royal Australian Air Force, my family moved to Perth to stop the constant travel. Since leaving the Air Force I have worked in Higher Education supporting teaching and research, and recently at the Department of Health.

I enjoy working with my bees, aquaponics, walking and training my dog, and any excuse not to be inside.

I have been at the College for five weeks and found it to be an interesting place with lots of challenges and opportunities.

Introducing New Teaching Staff

Beanne Aguila

I was born and raised in the Philippines and started my journey at 13 in New Zealand. I find comfort eating Filipino food and enjoy exploring the outdoors when possible. I have a friendly dog named Bear that flew in his first plane coming to Western Australia with me. I belong to a family of 6 and together we enjoy watching movies in the cinema. I hope to bring a bit of me to Edmund Rice College as I discover more of everyone throughout my time here.

At left: This is my Pepeha it’s a way for us to greet who we are and where we came from back in New Zealand.

AFL Carnival

On Wednesday 27^th July, the year 7-10 students participated in the year 10 AFL Eagles Boys Cup. The students versed three different schools including Mundaring, CBC & Tranby College. They started the day well, winning their first game against Mundaring before having a more challenging second game, being tied at half time and winning by 2 goals in the end. The students last game was against CBC, who were filling in from a higher division so the students could have a third team to play. Our students had an amazing game against them, but CBC ended up beating us by 3 goals . At the end of the day our school ended up winning the whole carnival and taking home our first ACC shield for AFL due to CBC not being in our division. Overall, the students had a fantastic day out, their sportsmanship was incredible. They all had a good day meeting new students from other schools and working as a team to bring home our first win of the year for AFL.

Above: The students showed incredible sportsmanship at the carnival and came away with the winning cup.

Above: Although the girls didn’t win the cup, they finished with the highest shooting percentage of all schools.

Congratulations go to our girls AFL Fremantle Dockers Cup team. Even though they didn’t take home the cup, they finished on the highest shooting percentage of all schools and finished 3rd out of 5 schools. Despite dealing with hail and Lola refracturing her collarbone in the last game the girls team all enjoyed the carnival.

Anna Williams
Teaching Staff

On The Farm

Welcome back to Edmund Rice Farm Term 3.

It has been a dry start to the year compared to last year but as the weather has changed everything has started to pick up.

We tailed the crossbred lambs in the last week of last term and got 240 lambs out of 217 ewes which is 110% lambing. This is an awesome result. Merino lambs were also done in the last week and we got 202 lambs out of 215 Ewes. This sits at 93% lambing, a great result considering there is 90 maiden ewes in the mob. With lambing complete, and students back for the term, animal welfare sits at the front of farm work.

Above: It has been a busy start to Term 3 for the farm with lambing, mulesing and cropping well underway.

Week one and two was spent mulesing and crutching. Thanks to Keri and Boston for their efforts assisting with crutching on the weekend and Madison, Alexis and Bryce for their efforts on Tuesday with mulesing. These are necessary jobs that keep our sheep healthy and in peak condition and the students showed that they have the patience and motivation to learn these skills.

In early June 180 Hectares of the farm was spread with 100 Kgs to the hectare of Superphos before the cropping program started to assist with pasture growth and to maintain Phosphorus levels.

Our cropping program began in mid to late June. 28 Hectares of Margarita Serradella and 4 Hectares of Border Balansa Clover were planted in Gravel Pit, which is the paddock on your right near as you wind your way down the driveway.

In late June we planted 25 Hectares of oats in Eighties paddock, 2.5 Hectares behind the super shed and 3.3 Hectares in Mares paddock behind the workshop. The tractor was busy. We even went night time driving.

Our cattle have been calving for the last couple of months, and being a paddock to plate environment, three

cattle and 30 sheep were taken to Gingin Abattoirs by Steve in early July. Our livestock will be used to feed the hungry hoards through the Kitchen by Geo and all the wonderful staff who keep everybody fed during the year.

Greg Shemeld
Farm Manager

Boarding Report

We have had a very wet start to this Term, especially this week, with strong winds and lots of rain. While we need the rain to top up the dams and water tanks ready for summer, it has also meant footy training has been cancelled for some teams and when we are playing footy it is very wet and slippery. Some of the teams are still going strong, with the Under 16’s Toodyay boys and Year 9&10 girls Bronco’s teams looking like being in the finals. I am very proud of the Boarders who are still going to training and playing even though the weather has been so awful.

It is now the end of Week 3 and I am still contacting parents about their child who hasn’t arrived at school yet. There are obviously very good reasons to be late coming in, illness, funerals, cancelled flights, however, I have several students who had no reason to miss their flight, or they were in another town or community on the day they were meant to fly. ABSTUDY has been very good with us this year, allowing some students more than one opportunity to get back to school. For us at school it is not so easy to rearrange airport pickups, chase up letters of support for a new flight, plan and run and pay for activities and arrange bus drivers and staffing. Parents please contact myself or Admin as soon as you know your child won’t be able to return on time, so that we can contact ABSTUDY and you are less likely to be penalised.

As we approach the end of this term, a reminder to parents who want to fly down to be a part of their child’s Year 12 Graduation or see their child receive an award at the awards and presentations, please contact the school to arrange flights and accommodation asap.

Myself and the Boarding staff work very hard to make all the Boarders feel welcome, cared for and safe while they are here. We don’t like to say no and take most requests on board and try to be flexible to accommodate students needs (and wants). We have over 100 Boarding students, across 3 Boarding houses, and I have 8 amazing staff members (4 on at one time) who do their very best every shift they are here. Sadly, I have had some negative conversations with parents lately, in regard to their child’s behaviour and the consequences they have been given. One of the wonderful things about ERC Bindoon is that we give all students a chance, we offer an option for students to go to school and get an education and live on site so that they can access all the same things as other young people in Australia. The Boarding staff always give students a chance, they give options, and they always listen. We do have to stick to a number of rules and routines. Consequences are given by staff to help the student learn from their mistakes and become better individuals, and hopefully to not make the same mistake again. Having said that the Boarding staff are also told they do not have to listen to an abusive parent or carer, if parents shout or swear at staff, they have been told to be polite but to hang up. If this happens, the staff will inform myself and parents are very welcome to call me or admin to discuss the matter further.

I look forward to the next 7 weeks of school and hope to have a positive, happy time with the Boarders and wish the Year 12 group lots of luck while they finish assessments, do exams, and prepare for the next step in their lives.

Sam Jenner
Head of Boarding