St Benedict's Catholic College
Newsletter Friday 11 December 2020
PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
In my final newsletter for 2020, I would like to extend my thanks to every family for your support of me as a new principal this year. Regardless of the many challenges as a result of COVID, my first year has been so rewarding and I feel privileged to join such a wonderful Catholic community. In particular I would like to acknowledge the parents who have served on the Parents and Friends’ Association Executive. They have provided me with both professional and personal support in my first year at St Benedict’s.
To our students, who are our shining lights and who have displayed such positivity and resilience this year, overcoming the many challenges and roadblocks as a result of COVID 19, I wish each of you a restful and happy holiday break and I look forward to welcoming you back next year along with our Year 7 2021 cohort.
And finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the staff. When the pandemic struck our staff were able to rethink the delivery of learning almost overnight. At St Benedict’s our students transitioned seamlessly into online learning because of the support of both teachers and school support officers. Staff have ensured throughout 2020 that our students remained engaged in learning and connected with their peers. Staff have been an incredible support for our HSC students and their parents. Throughout the year they have continued to reimagine learning, school assemblies, excursions and sport. I also appreciate the many parents who have expressed gratitude for the quality of staff here at St Benedict’s!
I also ask that our community keep Father David Catterall in our prayers as he begins medical treatment next week. Our college community is very blessed to have Father David’s pastoral leadership.
Staff Changes
The following teaching and support staff are leaving St Benedict’s at the end of this year. I thank each of them for their contribution to the Catholic education of all students Their dedication and hard work to supporting the wellbeing and learning of our students has been greatly appreciated by us all. As colleagues they will be greatly missed by our staff. I would like to acknowledge the great legacy they leave, with each having made St Benedict’s a better place. I wish them all the very best for their future.
Mrs Melissa Pereira, Mrs Julie Keedle, Mr Jason Smith, Ms Ligia Learmonth, Ms Shontelle Ferguson, Mrs Andrea Blok, Ms Kay Andonopoulos, Mrs Maria Dao, Mrs Rebecca Frost, Mr Rudi Daniel, Ms Jodi Miller, Ms Tiffany Church, Mrs Marisa Peet, Mr James Earl and Mr Sean McEvoy.
May God always hold them in the palm of his hand
Kerrie Piatek
Principal
VIA Character Strengths
Character Strength - Judgement: “I weigh all aspects objectively in making decisions, including arguments that are in conflict with my convictions.” - VIA Character Strengths
FROM THE P&F
It has been a very different year for the P&F working within COVID restrictions in 2020. Events were cancelled and initiatives held over, however the P&F look forward to working on key projects and activities for St Benedict’s students and families in 2021.
SAVE THE DATE: The first P&F meeting and AGM for 2021 is being held on Tuesday 23 February. Attendance is encouraged for all to participate.
REMINDER: The uniform survey has closed. Results will be collated and a uniform committee formed. If you would like to be part of the committee, please submit your contact details by 16 December to pandf@sbccdow.catholic.edu.au
We look forward to great things in 2021. Have a safe and healthy festive season.
SBCC P&F
FROM THE ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL
Duke of Ed
This week saw a COVID modified Duke of Ed program run for our Year 10 students. It was an exciting time for the students as it has been difficult to get the program up and running this year due to restrictions that have been put into place. Congratulations to all students and we hope it was a rewarding experience for you. A big thank you to Mrs Brown, Mr Gavin, Mrs Wojcik, and Mr Tsomis for their efforts over the 2 days.
Year 6 Orientation
Last week saw the conclusion of our modified Orientation Program for Year 6. It was great to have the last group attend the College and become familiar with our physical site as well as the charism and traditions of our school community. We are looking forward to all of the new students joining our community next year.
All my own work
This week has also seen Year 10 undertake All my own work. This program is compulsory for students entering into Stage 6 education and provides an important opportunity to learn about rules of assessment and for students completing their own work.
Final liturgies, Academic Assemblies and Reports
This week and early next week will see the final Liturgies, Academic Assemblies and Reports issued for each year group. Congratulations to all of our award recipients on their efforts this year. I would encourage all students to carefully look at the feedback provided on their reports as well as the feedback from PTS interviews and start thinking about goals to set with their STRIVE coaches next year.
Letter for the end of year
All families now should have received a letter outlining the events for the end of 2020. If there are any questions, families should contact the front office.
Letter for the start of the year
Families will also be receiving a letter about the start of 2021 – key dates and activities. I ask that families are aware of the key dates that impact on their children and themselves.
Uniform
A reminder that as students return from the 6 week holiday period to begin 2021, they make sure that their uniform is correct from day one.
Happy Christmas
Lastly, a big thank you to all families for their wonderful support throughout a challenging 2020. I hope you have a happy and holy Christmas.
Mr David Costin
Assistant Principal.
Reminders
- Keep Covid safe: If your child is sick, keep them home. See below for Covid updates.
- Please do not use Disabled Parking Spaces without a Disability Sticker.
- Tuesday afternoon is Sports Day therefore, if you are collecting your child early they must have a note to remain at school.
Parents please take note
- Please do not enter details of Covid test for your child through Compass, please notify the office.
DATES TO REMEMBER
- Monday 14 December - Academic Assembly Years 7 and 8
- Monday 14 December - Reports available on Compass for Years 7 and 8
- Monday 14 December - Last day of classes for Years 7 and 8
- Monday 14 December - Years 7, 8 and 9 final Liturgies
- Monday 14 December - Students will be dismissed at 12:30pm
- Tuesday 15 December - Students Activities Day
- Wednesday 16 December - Pupil Free Day
- Wednesday 16 December - Parent/Teacher/Student Interviews
- Thursday 28 January - Year 7 and new students return
- Friday 29 January - Year 12 return
- Monday 1 February - Years 8, 9, 10 and 11 return
EXPRESSION OF INTEREST IN SACRAMENTS 2021 AT ST MARY MACKILLOP PARISH, ORAN PARK
Families wishing to present their children for the Sacraments of 1st Reconciliation, 1st Holy Communion and Confirmation in 2021 at St Mary MacKillop Parish are asked to complete the following form (no later than Friday 18 December):
https://forms.gle/NKA99MT1YabhXLkH6
Like in 2020, these sacraments will be prepared for, held and celebrated differently in 2021 to follow Covid 19 protocols.
The full 2021 sacramental program will be available by the end of next week on the parish website: www.marymackillopparish.org.au
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF MISSION AND VISION
The true light that gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
(John 1:9)
Advent is a special and holy time in our Church calendar. But what does Advent truly mean for us? The word Advent translates to ‘coming’ and marks the start of our preparation and excitement for the celebration of the ‘coming’ of our saviour Jesus Christ. Pope Francis proclaimed that the time of Advent is a time of “consolation and hope,” the beginning of “a new liturgical year, which brings with it the newness of our God, who is the ‘God of every consolation.’ He encourages us all to take the time to “be active in love.” In our Gospel Readings this week Mark reminds us that advent is also an important time for preparation, but in a sense that is more than buying some presents for under our trees and other seasonal jobs we do. It is a preparation of our hearts.
If this Advent we stop and listen, listen with the ear of our hearts as St Benedict encourages us to do, we can hear a voice of hope and possibility, we just have to listen. So as we start to decorate our homes and get caught up in the excitement of writing our Christmas cards and buying the gifts, Pope Francis reminds us to live this Advent “as a time of consoling newness and joyful expectation.” So consider, this Advent are we in it for presents or are we going to be present? How can we be active in our love and present in this festive season?
Wishing all of our College community a very Happy and Holy Christmas filled with love and blessings.
School Environmental Management Plan
Last week we introduced our SEMP - School Environmental Management Plan that was written in consultation with Beth Riolo, Professional Officer (Environment - Advocacy - Outreach) Catholic Education Office Wollongong and representatives from our school community. The plan is a three year guide to work towards better sustainability within the College, looking at our environmental footprint and developing strategies for increased awareness and advocacy relating to how we manage, use and dispose of material at St Benedicts.
This process has been a valuable experience and helped us to realise that we have made a number of significant gains in this area to date including some paper and co-mingled recycling, the Student Environmental Group the BEAR’s who have the mission ‘sowing the seeds of change’, entering a number of external competitions, have the veggie garden and even a worm farm! Some key areas that have been identified to expand through this plan include new formalised recycling opportunities that include paper and cardboard, batteries, printer cartridges and other materials, a planned expansion of our vegetable and herb gardens to include a bush tucker component will be developed among other areas, as well as increased opportunities to celebrate our success in these areas.
Thank you to Miss Joyce, our WEN Coordinator for overseeing and working towards the completion of this plan.
2020 Christmas Appeal
The generosity of our College community has been clearly demonstrated this week with our annual Christmas Appeal. This year, our Year 7 students have led a Christmas hamper initiative to provide food, gifts and other essential items for a number of families within the community. This initiative is run in conjunction with Catholic Care who have aligned our campaign to support families in our local parishes that are finding things a little more difficult during this time. I thank Miss Liska and her Year 7 team for their effort and hard work collecting, preparing and wrapping the hampers. Additionally, the success of our Year 7 initiative has allowed us to provide some food hampers to St Vincent de Paul and help even more families this Christmas.
Concurrently, we have had Year 10 leading a fundraising campaign for the St Vincent de Paul Christmas Appeal. On Tuesday as part of this initiative, we held a ‘Christmas Cheer’ Day where staff and students were encouraged to wear some Christmas accessories to get into the Christmas spirit whilst raising money for such a worthwhile cause. Students in Year 10 have also been selling ice-blocks at lunch time and all money raised will be given to this initiative. I thank Mr Limbrey and Year 10 for their support.
Social Justice Update
As the Season of Advent has begun, and we are in the special time of preparing for Christmas, the BEARs have been busy preparing the garden beds for the holidays, turning the mulch to break down and add nutrients to the soil in preparation for new seeds to be planted next year.
Students in the BEARs also organised a special end-of-year thank you gift for all the College teachers and support staff. They cut sprigs of fresh parsley and thyme from the College garden and wrote a personalised message for the staff thanking them for their ‘thyme’ this year. The BEARs would like to wish the whole Bennies community a safe and holy Christmas. We ‘herb’ you enjoy your Christmas celebrations.
I would also like to thank all the students that were members of the BEARs this year. Their time, effort, dedication and ideas have already made such an important difference in our College
community.
Miss Madelaine Joyce
WEN Coordinator
Work of the Week
This week, we would like to acknowledge the talent and hard work of two students in Year 7 English. Mrs Settineri has nominated Lauren R. and Mia T. from 7 Red for their insightful visual interpretation of the dramatic play overboard. The students incorporated plot analysis, character descriptions, explored language techniques and understanding of thematic concerns to consolidate their knowledge of the play studied in class.
Well done Lauren and Mia, you have each earned 10 points for Norcia House!
Wishing everyone a happy and Holy Christmas Season!
God Bless,
Mrs Tarnya Grana
Acting Director of Mission and Vision
Laptop usage at the College
A reminder of our responsibilities on laptop usage at the College.
- At all times laptops should be carried in the school approved case and zipped up.
- Drinking next to a laptop is not permitted due to spillages. (This can be a costly repair).
If you have any concerns please come and see me or the IT department.
Mr Andruschko
TAS NEWS
Year 12 Timber News
Ashlee Stevens from Year 12, won the Wood Review Magazine, People’s Choice Student Maker of the Year competition with her HSC major work for Timber. We would like to congratulate Ashlee on her achievement and her wonderful Grandfather Clock.
Year 11 VET Hospitality
Over the past 2 weeks, Year 11 students have worked enthusiastically to design, prepare and produce gingerbread houses. As a part of our Unit of Competency "Prepare dishes using basic methods of cookery", students continued to develop their baking skills as they embraced their festive spirit. It was certainly a challenging exercise for the students, working together to build their masterpieces and ensure that their houses remained standing!
Congratulations Year 11 for your perseverance, teamwork and humour that you demonstrated during this activity. You should be very proud of your finished products.
Mrs Reavell
CAPA NEWS
One of our Year 9 Elective Music students, Hannah Dowling passed her Australian Music Examination Board (AMEB) Third Grade for vocals with Honours.
This is a prestigious program where this year, due to covid, performances had to be filmed in one take and submitted to the board. We are very proud of Hannah’s achievements.
Music tuition
Our private music tuition lessons will continue into 2021. Places are available in drums, piano, vocals, guitar and woodwind.
As places fill up fast, if you are interested in receiving more information please email me at koryzmaj01@dow.catholic.edu.au
Jenny Koryzma
CAPA Coordinator
DUKE OF EDINBURGH 2020
Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award Adventurous Journey
It has been a long year and extremely challenging for our Duke of Edinburgh Participants trying to finalise the components of their bronze award in a COVID global pandemic.
Our current cohort of participants have been patiently waiting since 2019 to complete their final component the Adventurous Journey. This requires students to complete either an expedition or exploration which includes 2 whole days of purposeful activity and an overnight camp. A challenge that we thought may never happen under the restrictions put in place.
Thankfully on Thursday, 3 December and Friday, 4 December 2020, we were able to complete a COVID adapted journey from Minnamurra to Gerringong to fulfil the criteria required by the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme. It was not an easy journey and the students had several challenges thrown in their path! However, despite these hurdles they managed to continue on and finish the journey still smiling!
These 20 students have tackled every challenge that has been thrown at them with an inspiring positive energy and focus, which shined through over the two days of the journey. They are to be commended for their achievement. They are true leaders and I have been privileged to be there for them on this journey. Congratulations to them all!
Ms Heather Brown
Duke of Edinburgh Coordinator
THE BEARS
Our Environment Club 'The BEARs' would like to thank all the parents and staff of St Benedict's for their 'thyme' and support this year.
CHRISTMAS HAMPER APPEAL
Christmas is upon us and I would like to congratulate and thank the St Benedict’s community for their overwhelming generosity in contributing to the Catholic Care Christmas Appeal. This year St Benedict’s was asked to make 12 hampers for families within our community in need this Christmas season.
The students and staff went above and beyond a Love of God and Love of Neighbour with enough food items and products to make two hampers per family. These hampers and gifts will be handed out to the families this Christmas, which I am sure they will truly appreciate.
Thank you to the Year 7 students and Strive team who were actively involved in collecting the items every day. Thanks to those students and staff who also assisted in the wrapping of the hampers. To see the joy and love the students displayed whilst making these hampers was uplifting. Hearing a student say ‘being able to help people less fortunate than I, makes me feel good knowing that I am making a difference to someone’s life’. This goes to show what St Benedict’s are all about, going out of their way to help others.
Lastly, thank you to Mrs Grana who helped in the organising of the hampers between the College and the Catholic Care.
Miss Julia Liska
Year 7 Acting Coordinator
WSU PERFORMANCE FOR YEAR 7
Last Friday, the 4th of December, Year 7 were given the chance to experience a performance from Gibber. Gibber is an interactive theatre performance group who aim to educate students on their options are when they leave school. This performance was provided by the Western Sydney University. Before this performance, the majority of the Year 7 students didn’t know what higher education was and what they would do when they left school. Now the Year 7 students know what courses are available, what types of subjects you can study and how university is completely different to high school. Gibber was able to turn difficult decisions like convincing your parents into a humorous and enjoyable show. This performance helped me understand my options of what I can do and study when I leave high school.
-Cameron McC 7 Norica
On Friday the 4th of December the entirety of the Year 7 cohort were able to experience a performance from Gibber. Gibber is an interactive theatre performance group that is designed to inspire and raise awareness of the higher education program at Western Sydney University. This performance was graciously provided by Western Sydney University and the performance was able to give us a look into our future and our options. We saw this performance because we need to keep an open mind for what will happen when we grow up. What will happen when we leave high school and are left in the world of opportunity of university and Tafe. We saw how there are so many options for everyone and every course, there are VET programs for people who like hands on learning and academic programs for people who prefer to study. We saw that no matter who you were there is always an option for you no matter if you love learning, don't know how you want your life to pan out or even if uni isn't your first choice it could be the final destination. They were able to make difficult situations into a fun and interactive show that included humour, music and even kept up with our ever changing pop culture. For a person like me who already has an open mind to a further, higher education and a person who already knows where they want their life to go this helped me further understand my path. It taught me about all of the options in my future and how higher education is suited for everyone and for every path.
-Madison H 7Norcia
SPORTS NEWS
We would like to congratulate Year 10 student, Annalysse Stevens, who has received a ‘Wests Future Stars’ scholarship into SWSAS (South Western Sydney Academy of Sport) for AFL for the fourth consecutive year. She has also been invited into the Giants Academy for Women's AFL, which is incredibly exciting and a fantastic opportunity.
A big congratulations to all our teams this year for the final MISA competition of the year. A big thank you to all the students who participated as well as the coaches who gave their time to mentor these students.
An honourable mention to our Boys Oztag team and Cricket team to who were undefeated all competition. Well done to the Boys Cricket team for winning their Grand Final.
I look forward to seeing these players in the future and seeing more sporting achievements for our college.
Yours in Sport
Mrs Ashleigh Durrant
Sport Coordinator
ABSENCES
We ask Parents/Carers to only report all day absences via COMPASS, part day absences should be reported to the office via phone on 4631 5300 or email to info@sbccdow.catholic.edu.au
If a student is having an absence of 3 days or more, a request should be sent to the Principal via email to info@sbccdow.catholic.edu.au
If a student is having an absence of 10 days or more an Application for Extended Leave should be completed and submitted to the office with a copy of the students itinerary, if the absence is within Australia or a copy of flight tickets if the extended leave is to be outside Australia. A copy of the Application for Extended Leave can be found here .
FIRST AID NOTICE
Given the presence of COVID-19 coupled with the commencement of the influenza (flu) season, our school has an important responsibility to provide a safe environment for students and staff. Your child should not attend school if they are showing any flu like symptoms.
If a student is sent to the office with flu like symptoms we will place them in isolation and call their parents to organise for them to be collected as soon as possible.
Your support in keeping our school healthy and safe is appreciated.
LOST & FOUND
We have a number of unmarked clothing items, jewellery, reading glasses and containers which would like to be returned to their owners. Please ask your child/ren to come to the office if they may have lost one of these items.
We ask parents to check that all their child/rens items are marked clearly with their name in permanent marker.
Any items not collected will be given to the P & F Clothing Pool at the end of Term 3.
P & F CLOTHING POOL
Please contact the P&F via pandf@sbccdow.catholic.edu.au with a list of your requirements and a contact telephone number and Tracey will contact you with availability.
CatholicCare now offers the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) in the Macarthur region, helping seniors to access entry-level support services to live independently and safely at home.
If your grandparents, parent(s) or anyone you know requires aged care assistance at home, please ask them to call 4628 0044 and ask for Melissa or Colleen.