Boarding News:
Dear Year 12 parents/carers,
At Assembly this morning, the boys who were involved in the Marist Children’s Camp were presented and congratulated. Declan Carroll spoke about the honour of helping with these children. It was very pleasing to see so many of the current Year 12 on stage and recognised for their outstanding and generous effort last December.
There are many other examples of boys from this year group who go out of their way to contribute to the College. I commended those who are acolytes, the debaters and swimmers who give up Friday nights and those boys who have offered to help tutor younger boys in Maths before school. This is all voluntary and could easily be disregarded but it is one of the things that makes Joeys strong. I congratulated Joshua Johns for his effort in coming 2nd in the local Oratory competition last week, Steve Brandon who won the Under 19 90 metre sprint, the flags and the 15metre sprint at the Sydney surf lifesaving carnival last Saturday. Patrick Feeney was also part of the relay team that came third at the same carnival.
We had a special visitor on Tuesday evening at Year 12 dinner. Matthew Shiells has been very involved at Riverview as a supporter at many of their events. The school has embraced his presence for 30 years which began as he moved near the College. He has become well known to Joeys during that time and he has been keen to come over to join us for dinner. Matty was well looked after by a group of Year 12s who sat with him at dinner and gave him a tour of the College which he thoroughly enjoyed. Their response to him was very impressive. We also had two senior leaders from Riverview at last week’s Assembly. They asked to come to say a special thank you after Joeys agreed to host their Year 11 formal last year. On the day of that event Riverview was struck by tragedy when a young old boy took his life near the Hall where the Formal was scheduled to be held. With very little notice, with the help of many of the boys who were at the Marist Children’s Camp the Br Emilian Hall was set up and the evening went off very well.
On Friday evening 30 Year 12s will be attending a dance at Santa Sabina. This is being held as a fundraiser for the Queensland floods and we are happy to help out with this. There are very few dances organised during Year 12 but there a quite a few opportunities for boys to attend afternoon teas at various schools. The first of these is next week at PLC Pymble.
On Monday we have the College Athletics Carnival which will run at the Park from 11am -5pm. Those boys who are returning to school on Monday must wear their athletics gear (with the College tracksuit if needed). They must ensure that they have the correct colour t shirt. Second hand colour shirts are available at the clothing pool on Friday afternoon. All boys are expected to race in a 100 metres and 400 metres event at least.
Please find a list of compulsory events for the Year 12s. These are worth highlighting somewhere at home as this will help in planning what is a year when we expect great commitment from these young men. I have given the boys a hard copy of the College calendar today. This can also be found on the College website www.joeys.org which I can recommend to you as it is constantly updated.
Pat Rodgers
Academic News:
This week I entered all of our Year 12 students and Year 11 Accelerated Maths students into their HSC courses at the Board of Studies. This is done On-line and our students are familiar with the processes of checking their personal details and courses of study on their Confirmation of Entry Forms. It is very important that these details are kept up to date as the Board will use this information to collect data for the students’ Higher School Certificates and they will forward this information to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Centre to enable students to make course selections for university. If you have a change of address at any time, please inform me immediately so that I can update this data at the Board of Studies.
Year 12 are very busy at the moment as can easily be seen on the Term 1 Assessment Schedule that was posted on this blog last week. I ask that parents encourage boys to be spending a minimum of two to three hours working on assignments, homework and exam preparation each Sunday when they return home.
I have made it my business to enter a few classes this week to see how the boys are working. I was very impressed by the rapid-fire answers given in Mr Frost’s Legal Studies class on the limitations and obligations of angencies of the judicial system. Let’s hope these answers haven’t come from first hand experience! I have also inspected several students work books this week. Students must realise that unsatisfactory work can lead to an N Grade warning as part of the process in the non-completion of a course. This is a very serious matter that may jeopardise a student’s entire HSC. Should I decide to issue such a formal warning, I would first contact parents to come in for a meeting with me and their son.
It has been wonderful to see that nearly 20 Year 12 students have offered to assist younger boys with their maths on Friday mornings under a new program promoted by Mr Thompson, Head of Mathematics. Very pleasing also was the initiative shown by Year 12 Latin students to offer the same to junior students of Latin.
Many boys have been meeting this week with Mrs Charters, our Careers Advisor. There will always be a section in this blog on weekly careers news and I encourage students and parents to read this carefully.
Best wishes until next week,
Mark Fenech, Year 12 Academic Coordinator.
Careers News: