2023 Issue 2

Start of the year

Across the College we continue to see students settling into the new school year and some of the changes that have been introduced for the year ahead. The vast majority of students have successfully transitioned and embraced the new five period day, with our youngest members of our ESC community (Year 7s), winning the ‘being on time’ award! Displaying non-negotiable positive classroom behaviours are a priority in all our classrooms. Students are expected to be ready to learn, with all the resources that they will need for that lesson. Flat laptops, incomplete homework and ‘lost’ resources are excuses that we have all heard before – the challenge is that we all move to a solution focussed growth mindset.

I notice that Mr Donders has spoken about attendance as being very important in daily school life….very vital for continuity of the learning sequence. For further connectedness as a community, we are still a uniform school and there is a clear uniform policy for all our students to follow. Please take the time to read the policy, that is available on the college website.

We have had several information nights for students and our parents and will continue to engage our community. There is lots happening around the College, so please keep your eye out for all that is occurring and help us celebrate the positives as we continue to build a rich culture and climate that supports all students to be their best.

Tertiary offers for our Class of 2022

At the conclusion of 2022 we celebrated the amazing achievements of our Year 12 Class of 2022 as their results were released.

We are now pleased to share with you the success of this cohort in securing tertiary pathways beyond school.  As a school our success can be measured in both the academic achievements of our students and also in the capacity for our students to achieve a desired pathway beyond school, be this a University, a TAFE, an apprenticeship or the world of work.

93% of our students who applied for tertiary pathways for 2023, received their first round offers – destinations included, but were not limited to:

Melbourne University

Monash University

Deakin

RMIT and Federation University

We look forward to inviting back the class of 2022, so that they can share their experiences with this year’s Year 12 cohort.

 School Improvement work in 2023

In 2023 we have a clear vision to further improve the teaching and learning and wellbeing outcomes for students across our college. This work has been carefully planned to support where our school and students are currently at and to enable us to grow and flourish as we work towards achieving our college vision where we strive to enable and equip all young people to reach their full potential – of being life-long learners, curious, respectful, serving their community and developing healthy relationships.

The main focus areas for 2023 include:

Lifting our median VCE study score to 30

Learning growth to be measured via NAPLAN

Engagement with our BEST curriculum – wellbeing

Student leadership and student voice and agency

I will keep you updated on the progress of this work, via datasets that will measure the impact of this work in 2023.

Our new Year 7 students

What an amazing start to their secondary schooling people have had. We must congratulate our Year 7 students on how well they have settled into school life at Emerald Secondary College. We are seeing our Year 7 students arriving each day in full school uniform, attending classes on time, and making sure they are bringing all their key resources with them and being ready to learn. Our new Year 7 students are certainly demonstrating our college expectations! Keep up the great efforts Year 7.

James Barut – College Principal

Student Leadership & Voice

Last issue we were pleased to share our new Model for Student Leadership and Voice with our community, and this was discussed in assemblies and during BEST homegroup time.

We were absolutely thrilled to have received more than 80 applications and expressions of interest for a leadership position and/or interest-based portfolio representative position.  The vast majority of students who applied, did so for more than one position. Staff are considering applications this week, and positions on our Student Parliament and Student Representative Council are being considered by our College Captaincy Team.  We look forward to announcing the successful candidates and are planning an investiture ceremony to acknowledge and celebrate these students.  Congratulations in particular to our Year 7 students who have embraced this initiative and indicated an interest in contributing positively to our College culture.

BEST

As reported in our last issue, BEST stands for Build, Engage, Succeed, Thrive and is part of the College’s commitment to providing a Positive Education Program.   We are only a few weeks in and our students have participated in a range of activities already –

• Getting to know you – games, ice-breakers and activities
• Navigating Compass, getting organised, file management and email
• Exploring Sense of Future
• Library Sessions
• Study Skills
• Careers Education
• Character Strengths

We have been gathering student feedback and welcome parent feedback and input also as our program evolves and meets the needs of our students.

Respectful Relationships

Emerald Secondary College has been successful, through its involvement in the Respectful Relationship initiative, in its application to join the Pilot of the MoRE Project – Modelling of Respect and Equality.

This work is incredibly important to us.  Being a part of both of these initiatives allows us to reflect as a school community about how we are teaching and demonstrating healthy relationships and then in response, to plan action to ensure we model the fundamental principles of equality and respect and tolerate only positive behaviours in relation to gender equality, sexuality and acceptance.

Respectful Relationships is about tackling family violence and toxic relationships through education. 

Rosie Batty, CEO of the Luke Batty Foundation, states that “the school community is an essential part of social reform by modelling a culture of respect through the whole school, not just be teaching respect in the classroom”.

Just like other major social and health issues such as smoking and road toll, evidence shows that family violence and harmful and toxic attitudes around gender and sexuality can be prevented by working across the whole population (in this case, all schools) to address the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge that might support behaviours which isolate, humiliate and endanger others.

A good education is about more than simply getting good marks. It is about becoming a member of society and succeeding in life – knowing how to build respectful relationships is key to achieving this. When young people build positive relationships with their teachers and peers, they feel safer and happier at school, are more resilient and have positive social attitudes. Positive relationships increase a young person’s sense of social connectedness and belonging to school and family, and result in better health and academic outcomes. 

Emerald Secondary College will not tolerate sexist, gender-driven, sexualised commentary or behaviors.  We are challenging cultures of disrespect, aggression, homophobia, objectification and hostility.  We will call out such behaviours – deflections such as ‘it was just a joke’ are not okay.  We want all of our students and staff to feel safe.

Further information about Respectful Relationships is available on the Department of Education and Training website: https://www.vic.gov.au/respectful-relationships 

Emerald Secondary College School Tours

School tours run every Wednesday morning at 10.15am.

To book please click the link below.

Book a School Tour Here

Alternatively, please scan the QR code below:

We also offer School Tours for prospective Select Entry Accelerated Learning (SEAL) parents/students Wednesday at 11.30am. The tours are run by our SEAL Co-Ordinator, Tiana Clayworth. 

If you would like to request an alternate tour date, please contact reception on 5968 5388

Attendance

Daily attendance is important for all children and young people to succeed in education and to ensure they do not fall behind socially or developmentally. School participation maximises life opportunities for children and young people by providing them with education and support networks. School helps people to develop important skills, knowledge and values that set them up for further learning and participation in their community. 

Both schools and parents have an important role to play in supporting students to attend school every day.

Emerald Secondary College believes all students should attend school all day, every day when the College is open for instruction and is committed to working with its school community to encourage and support full school attendance.

Our school also promotes student attendance by:

• Articulating high expectations of attendance to all members of the College community
• Creating safe, supportive learning environments which promote success through active participation and engagement in purposeful learning
• Adopting consistent, rigorous procedures to monitor and record student absence
• Implementing data-driven attendance improvement strategies
• Providing early identification and supportive intervention for students at risk of poor attendance
• Linking with local community groups and agencies to maximise program and individual support
• Accessing specialist support for individual students with identified behavioural, health or social issues
• Providing a staged response to non-attendance
• Supporting students to return to school after absences

Student responsibilities

• Attend school every school day
• Arrive at school and classes on time and be prepared
• Talk to a teacher if there are issues that might impact on their ability to attend school/class

Parent responsibilities

• Ensure student attends school every day when instruction is offered
• Ensure student arrives at school by 8.50am

Annual privacy reminder for our school community

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to read our school’s collection notice, found on our website Emerald Secondary College Website.

We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use [Microsoft 365] safely at the school and what parents can do to further protect their child’s information. If after reviewing the guidance, you have any questions or concerns regarding your child using [Microsoft 365] please contact the school.

For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in ten community languages:

• Amharic
• Arabic
• Dari
• Gujarati
• Mandarin
• Somali
• Sudanese
• Turkish
• Urdu
• Vietnamese

Tanja Korsten, Janine McMahon & Jarrad Donders – Assistant Principals

SWIMMING SPORTS

On Friday 17^th February the whole school headed down to Doveton Pool. To say it was hot is a small understatement. With the splash park up and running and free sausages for all it was a great day.

The winning house for the day was Geysen, just outscoring Greetham.                                           

 New Records

12/15 girls 200m Freestyle – Miah Beardshaw                            14 boys 50m Butterfly – Daniel Beardshaw     

Yvonne Mauger – Sports Co-Ordinator

NAPLAN

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 students are held in March each year. In 2023, the NAPLAN test window is between Wednesday 15 March and Monday 27 March. NAPLAN tests assess student knowledge and skills in writing, reading, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. The results of the tests provide information for students, parents, teachers and principals and can be used to improve student achievement.

All eligible students are expected to participate in the NAPLAN tests. Catch up tests will be available for individual students who are absent on test days up to and including Monday 27 March 2023.
 
Support can be arranged for students with disabilities, if the student regularly uses similar support for classroom assessment tasks.

I am confident that the information you receive as a result of your child’s participation in the NAPLAN tests will be valuable in helping both yourself and you child’s teachers assess your child’s progress in literacy and numeracy.
 
For more information about NAPLAN, please see the attached brochure, visit the VCAA website or the ACARA NAPLAN website.

Tiana Clayworth – Student Growth, Assessment & Reporting and Data Learning Specialist

Yr 10 Enrichment English

The Year 10 Enrichment class has been reading “The Book Thief” and have been thoroughly enjoying the text. They worked collaboratively to engage in comprehension questions and create a visual representation of what they had learnt in the individual sections of the book they were allocated.  Students thoroughly enjoyed the activity and were engaged with creating the posters.

Students then were given the opportunity to present their work to the rest of the class and they asked questions for clarity around how each group created the work. Overall students thought it was a great activity to take part in.

  “The activity was a fun way to do the work. We had options of how to present our work and that really helped to keep us interested and engaged. Chloe and I felt we had the best poster. Others work was very well presented too, and it was interesting to see other people’s interpretation of the task” Georgia and Chloe.

Sema Yildirim – Yr 10 Enrichment English Teacher

Homework Club is on in the Library every Tuesday after school running from 3.15pm – 4.15pm.  Teachers will be there to help and support students with their work if required.

Valentine’s Day

On Valentine’s day, we ran an activity in the library, students had to come in through break time to borrow a book and then they were given a ticket to go in a draw to win a box of chocolates. 

Congratulations to our winner Elizabeth Parer of 8G, who won the box of chocolates.