Forming relationships, broadening friendships and hitting the ground running

It was wonderful to welcome the students back last week. Although parents may have had to endure a few grizzles about having to get out of bed before 11am, I can assure you, by the time the students joined their House session, there was bountiful energy, excitement and joy. And even nervous Year 7s couldn’t help but relax and smile during the assembly when they watched a video of an AI generated duckling doing yoga!

Indeed, with 150 new students and about 40 new teachers, much of our focus during February will be around transition: establishing routines, aligning expectations and setting the tone for our community for the year ahead.

Harry Dendle, our Deputy Head – Student Wellbeing has hit the ground running leading our ‘no mobile phones in Middle School’ initiative. Our first few days have been fantastically successful and we thank students and parents for embracing this. Such is his commitment to developing relational practices with all students, Harry has once again committed to being able to name all 800 Middle School students.

David Martin, our Acting Deputy Head – Student Learning has also been extremely busy working on the Artificial Intelligence Guidelines, a re-write of the Plagiarism Policy and a focus on each student producing high quality work commensurate with their age and stage. David is also working hard to ensure that all students are happily working with their classmates and if necessary, fine tuning their electives. David is enjoying all things Middle School and is heading to Year 7 Toona camp next week.

Subject teachers will also be working towards ensuring that students feel safe and ready to learn in the classroom. Forming relationships by learning names and finding time for informal chats, arranging activities that encourage interactions and friendships between the students and running formative tasks to inform teachers of the level of challenge needed for each student are essential for the foundation of a successful school year.

Many events will see our students broadening their friendships. Our new House Community Time, APS Saturday sport and Thursday’s House Swimming will all be great opportunities to develop community spirit, as will the upcoming Leaders Assembly and Academic Awards Assembly. These activities will be complemented with a variety of year level community builders. Sarah Cassidy and Jackie Cowcher, our Year 7 Co-ordinator and Year 8 Co-ordinator respectively, will be running a technology workshops and Sally Nelson, Integrated and Immersive Learning Co-ordinator, is leading an introduction to Year 9 C-Change with a mystery balloon activity.

Of course, it is not just new students and teachers who benefit from these transition activities. Carey is an innovative school and as such continually evolves. Over the holidays, many physical developments took place, the most obvious begin the fantastic all-weather cover over Macafee Courts (pictured) which will be fantastic on hot and on wet days and which will transform the teaching in PE classes. In addition, science classrooms were renovated and breakout furniture arrived, both of which will improve the learning experience. Our new four 75-minute timetable is off and running, the Observable Learning Continuum approved, and the work on New Metrics is continuing. There are most definitely times when it seems that we are all beginners, transitioning to another exciting school year!

Meredith Plaisted
Acting Head of Middle School