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High Notes, Vol 24 No 21, July 21 2023

From the Principal

Welcome back to Term 3

Welcome back to all staff, students, parents and volunteers. I hope those of you who could had a restful break. This is a big term for Year 12 students with the Trial HSC and the wrapping up of their formal lessons at term’s end. I want to flag with you some important changes in policy that are being implemented this term. Bell times have changed with an 0857 warning bell for a 0900 start and 1510 finish each day. This will also affect sports training start times at 1310. By agreement with Executive, students will be banned from knocking on Teacher Staffroom doors during second half of lunch, in order to give staff a break from constant interactions with students. We will trial this policy in Term 3 to see if it has the effect we intend. Commencing this term, all non-SASS, non-Teaching staff will be required to complete up to 4 hours of online mandatory training as a pre-condition of their employment. We will roll out this requirement during term three in stages to accommodate the c. 200 coaches that are currently employed for at least one season of sports or co-curricular activities at High. In order to be fair to our employees, we are tightening regulations for MICs to submit pay claims on time. We are including HPGE initiatives into our programming to reflect current practice and continuing to roll out our Sentence Conscious Pedagogy strategies. We have our Later Enrolments process starting next week with applications for Years 8, 9 and 11 being assessed by our team of Assessors. We are in for a busy time ahead.

High Talent

Congratulations to Andy Zhang (10F) who is representing Australia as a member of the U16 Australian Volleyball Team.

Winter Sports Assembly 2

My speech to this week’s Winter Sports Assembly 2 is reprinted below:

"Special guest Ritam Mitra (SHS-2009), parents, staff, students, welcome to our second Winter Sports Assembly for 2023. We assemble again to introduce our second tranche of winter sports teams and acknowledge the work of our staff, coaches and committees.

"I want to honour again this year our very successful volleyball program, headed up for over two decades by MIC Mick Kay. I must thank the whole coaching group for the wonderful work they do on behalf of the competitive teams they mentor. Thank you to our teaching staff Patrick Parker, Everett Coan, Kerryn Ibbott and Catherine Loh for their support of volleyball. The team of Old Boy coaches are experienced, well-trained and dedicated, keeping our teams highly competitive year-on-year.  Pinyan Gao (SHS-2014), Billy Nguyen (SHS-2021), Joshua Reid (SHS-2019), Samuel Yu (SHS-2019), Jonathan Roberto, David Zhou (SHS-2015), Justin Chen (SHS-2022) and Alec Ng (SHS-2021). Thank you all for your great work for our boys. We look forward to another big season from our teams.

"Our fencing program has grown strongly in all three weapon disciplines over the last few years under the passionate guidance of MIC Dat Huynh. Thank you to our Teaching staff Mimi Wong and Lynnea Stewart. Thank you to our foil coaches Kevin Chen (Head Foil Coach), Alvin Liu, Lachlan Blair, Daniel Low; our Epee Coaches Ted Elliott (Head Epee Coach), Nicholas Chen and Mark Morris; and our Sabre Coaches, Leo Kershaw Kostic (Head Sabre Coach) and Yu-Ming Lee. Thank you also to our Assistant Armourer Louise Flint. To the Fencing Committee and volunteers, thanks for parking volunteering, providing morning teas at home fixtures and general support for the program. Thank you Binh and Dan Johnsun, Cindy Ho, Emma Pham, Jaime Nyam, Helena He, Rosaline Perry, and the rest of the parent supporters.

"Daniel Comben has again led the sport of rifle shooting with terrific dedication and continued success. As MIC he devotes a tremendous amount of time to the sport. I believe this year our team made history as the first back-to-back first grade Premiership winners. We didn’t get a clean sweep but won the Rawson Cup and the Buchanan Shield, after a heroic last effort by Jacob Ng shooting 7 and 1 into the setting sun to steal our victory. Three lads were selected into the combined GPS Teams - Daniel Huang, Saxon Dean and Tristan Dean. Congratulations to you all on a fine season. Rifle shooting is supported by a large team of dedicated Old Boy coaches who really make the difference in terms of depth of participant skill. Thank you to our long term armourer and benefactor, Sam Kremer, for all his tireless support of our program. Thank you to our coaches Isaac Cheer, Jason Feng, Terry Fong, Darren Huang, James Jiang, Terence Lim, Justin Lum, Kieryn Mascarenhas, Dinan Pingamage, Jackie Wu, Alex Tan, Wentao Ruan, Leo Weng, Nathan Wong, Andy Xia and Eddie Zhang. Thank you also to our Rifle Shooting Committee members Kurt Dean, Jocelyn Yem, Olya Sukhovskaya and Paridhi Tyagi, along with our parent volunteers Connie Leung, Heidi and Sean Yuen and Tracy Zhang. You all really help to make the program the success that it is.

"Our debating program is well-known in Sydney as a strength of our school with a long history of competition success. Thank you to Madeleine Rigby for her continued service in the role of MIC. Well done again to Alex De Araujo as Head Coach for always providing quality coaches for our teams. Thank you also to Firsts’ coach Guy Suttner for mentoring our Year 12 team to the Semi Finals of the PDC. I acknowledge Jeanette Cook for work in running the FED Competition for our students. Our thanks are offered to our PDC team managers - Elly Harcourt, Beth Hinton and Jessica Christodoulou.  We appreciate Vivian Paul for his help with late night supervision on Fridays. Thank you also to Hazel Stephens for organising Legal Debating and Model UN.

"As our teams are being introduced and when they accept their symbolic item of uniform on the stage, they are joining that tradition of striving against formidable opposition to try to win for the team, themselves and the school. Tradition and culture mean a lot. It is the way you play the game that matters. That is why schools get involved – to educate young people about goal setting, teamwork, respect for rules and officials and fair play. We want you to play hard but within the rules, respecting our GPS code of conduct. I note that recently some clubs and codes are cracking down on swearing by players during games. We all need to accept decisions made by officials. Generally speaking, they are trying to interpret and apply the rules of the games in which they officiate to the best of their ability. Let us all help improve collective performance by focussing on positive affirmations – about ourselves, our teammates and our school.  I wish all the boys honoured with selection here today the best of luck for the GPS season ahead.  We play sport because it is fun and through participation we make friends.  Let’s make sure we have fun by remaining positive and respecting the rules, officials and our coaches. I congratulate all our students on their selection into GPS Winter Sports teams. Best of luck to you all."

Sentence Conscious Pedagogy:
Building the Framework: Outlining

Model the process of creating an outline. Having students create an outline before they write enables students to visualise the beginning, middle and end of the paragraph or composition; helps students distinguish between essential and non-essential material; guides students to arrange their ideas in logical order; prevents repetition of ideas or examples; and improves students’ ability to stick with a topic. Outlining can help with many text types - cause-and-effect, problem-solution, narrative, descriptive, compare-contrast or opinion.  Let students know the topic of the outline and the intended audience. Tell them what type of writing will be required - expository, narrative, descriptive or opinion. Use material from texts, AV sources, or articles for them to respond to.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal