Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“The love of learning is akin to wisdom.”

                                Confucius

The election issues just won’t go away. The agreement signed between the Labor Party and the Greens raises a new raft of school funding issues. The Greens stated policy on the funding of independent school s is that such funding should cease by the end of 2010. While we know that cannot happen, this partnership will put new pressure on the Labor Party to end its current policy which is very similar to the Coalition’s policy with indexation being the only differences. I must remind parents that if indexation is removed our school fees will increase dramatically and the barrage of misinformation around private school funding will continue. Please remember that every child that goes to a non-government school saves the government money. In fact around 4 billion dollars are saved because more than one third of all children attend non-government schools; and in the urban areas this proportion is closer to one in two.

We hear much talk of values and of how values are what schools need to develop. It has even been suggested that some schools don’t teach or share values. This is actually impossible. Every time we interact with someone we share values, so educators who are constantly discussing issues with children must be sharing and thereby contributing to the development of their values. The co-founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, Rushworth Kidder, has identified a core of internationally shared moral values. They are found amongst all peoples and religions. These values are: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion. Much of this is encapsulated in the Golden Rule or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Research done by the Institute indicates that there is no demographic “slicing and dicing” of the data that will give any different result. Males have the same values as females, religious people have the same values as non-religious as do people with different languages. If one is asked for their top 10 values, the list starts to vary. However, the top 5 seem to be pretty consistent.

What about decision making? Well the toughest decisions are not the right versus wrong decisions; it’s the right versus right ones that pose the greatest challenges. All the big questions we are dealing with in the world at the moment tend to be right versus right dilemmas.  Finding the “highest right” is our challenge.

The moral dilemmas facing us at the moment are a consequence of insufficient thought being put into the new technological developments that seem to hit us with such speed and force that we have not developed the strategies to deal with them. Kidder suggests that what we need is “moral futurism, or predicting the ethical issues that are going to arise”.  If more thought had been put into the possible uses of cell-phone cameras, text messages and the like, perhaps we could have come up with strategies to prevent or limit the incidence of what is now called “sexting” where teenagers use mobile phones to send one another nude photos of themselves or send text messages that are inappropriate, bullying or slanderous. It is not the technology that is at fault, it is how people use it. We need to educate people on how to use all the amazing things that are now available, and it needs to be done in a framework of moral and ethical behaviour.

Will we survive the twenty-first century with the ethics of the twentieth century?  I think we will! I think that as we ramp up the discussion around the values that we all share, we will find that fundamentally when we apply these values we will be able to rise above the temptations that new technology provides and use it to the greater advantage of society.

As parents and educators it is our duty to present these ethical dilemmas to our children and help them to use wisdom to make the right decisions.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

September 03 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Message from the Business Manager

Thought of the week

“The accomplishment of  a holy purpose demands absolute consecration of thought and endeavour.”                   

Mary Kimball Morgan

As the new Sports Aquatic and Fitness Centre grows and takes shape we give thanks for all the support towards its construction.

Here are some interesting facts regarding the building:

• The footings contain 50 cubic metres of concrete and were constructed by HT Staff.
• 120 truckloads of soil were removed to construct the pool.
• The pool shells contain 32 tonnes of steel and 215 cubic meters of concrete.
• The 850,000 litres of water in the large pool will be circulated through the filters every 2 hours.
• The air conditioning unit to maintain air temperatures in the centre is the size of a small bedroom.
• For every 10mm of rain the roofs of the new centre and gymnasium will gather 15,000 litres of rain water to refill the pool.
• The gas fired water heaters will also run a co-generation plant that will generate all the electricity to run the pool (one of only 3 in Victoria).
• The 2^nd level fitness area will look down on the aquatic area as well as the current gymnasium.
• Three HT parents have been active participants in the construction.
• One of our HT teachers in on the colour design team.
• The new Centre will be ready in time for the start of the 2011 year.
• We still need to raise $200 per student to fully equip the centre.

Robert Kitchingman

Huntingtower Business Manager

August 20 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“There is … but one Principle or Mind governing all existence.”

                                                                Mary Baker Eddy

Well, once again we are faced with elections, not one, but two!

I know you will all make up you own mind which way to vote and in no way would I try and influence your decision. You will have seen the education union stepping up its campaign against independent schools with the usual half-truths instead of basing any pronouncements on fact. Once again the union is suggesting that the Federal Government provides one third of its funding to government schools which educate two thirds of the students and two thirds of its funding to non-government schools which educate one third of the students. This is not dishonest; it just leaves out the fact that it is the State Government that has responsibility for funding State schools while the Federal Government has responsibility for funding non-government schools. The undisputable fact is that the average funding for each student at a government school is $11,874 per annum and at an independent school it is $5,810. The amount of funding each non-government school can get is dependent on the supposed wealth or socio-economic status of the community it serves. For example Huntingtower currently gets about 30% of the amount provided for a government school student. The State government provides us with very little funding – a few hundred dollars per student, whereas they are providing the bulk of funding to government schools. Huntingtower gets approximately $3500 per student in government funding. School fees provide us with the rest. Bear in mind that with our school fees we must also cover things like maintenance and construction while at government schools, this is a separate grant and not linked to the figure mentioned above.

The claim that private schools are the wealthiest schools and should not be funded is simplistic and false. According to government statistics, of the 100 wealthiest school communities in Australia, 61 are government schools, 21 are independent schools and 18 are Catholic schools.

Simon Crean as the new education Minister has indicated that he will not guarantee the indexation of funding to non-government schools. If this were to become policy after 2013 (the new date set for the current legislation to expire), school fees in independent and catholic schools would rise at approximately 10% per annum because CPI increases would have to be added to the natural fee increases necessary to meet the growing cost of education.

Tony Abbot has indicated that he will cancel the computers in schools program. I am not sure how he will do that because it is essentially finished. I suppose he means that the government will not continue to pay for the replacement of computers to maintain a 1:1 ratio in Years 9 to 12.

If the Greens get the balance of power in the senate, we can expect some pressure to be placed on the Government vs non-government school debate because they want to see much of the “independentness” of non-government schools eroded. They are openly opposed to the ongoing funding of independent schools in the current way. They want the SES model scrapped by the end of 2010.

Remember that every student that attends a non-government school saves the government money.

I must conclude this piece by saying that Huntingtower has received more funding in the past two years from the current government than we have ever received before. For this I am very grateful.

Our new Multi-sport and Aquatic Centre is progressing well. The concrete has now been poured in the teaching pool and we expect the larger pool to be concreted over the next week. It is all very exciting. The rooms are being partitioned on the mezzanine level and the ground work for the change-rooms has been done. In a week or two I hope to announce an open Saturday morning so that we can show our progress to anyone who would like to come and see what has happened.

I hope that you have all been able to get tickets to our spectacular musical production of Bye, Bye Birdie. I wish the cast and crew every success with the show and am quite sure that you will have a thoroughly entertaining evening.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

August 06 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”
Thomas Paine

I have been thinking recently about the role of “guilt” in our lives. I have felt for some time that “guilt” was a very negative motivator and that living with a sense of being guilty about something could be quite damaging to our feelings of self worth. However, when someone has done “the wrong thing” they always have a sense of guilt about what they have done and when one can attach the guilt to a certain behaviour or action, then when the action or behaviour disappears, the guilt goes too. Being open, honest and “upfront” is essential in the healing process. If the truth has been manipulated and modified then we are not freeing ourselves up to move forward. Mary Baker Eddy says “… the sin is punished so long as the sin lasts”, but it is we who do the punishing to ourselves.  Once we have seen through the behaviour, the action has stopped and all cards are on the table, any sense of guilt must disappear because we have risen above it. Having a general sense of guilt about something over which we have no control, or which happened in the distant past and cannot be changed is pointless and very harmful. I believe that is why Jesus Christ said things like “he who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone …” and “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not and ye shall not be judged:”

So what about consequence? Is there never a consequence for “wrong-doing”? There is always a consequence even if it does not come to the attention of others. However, justice must be seen to be done and that is why when something comes to ones attention it must be dealt with. We must always take responsibility for our own actions.

Huntingtower has some very definite expectations of its students and parents. As you know all senior school students sign a commitment not to smoke, drink alcohol or take illegal drugs at any time including weekends and holidays. This commitment lasts until they have graduated from school. Our parents also sign this commitment in the sense that they agree (on the enrolment form) to support this expectation. As a consequence, we ask all our parents to ensure that if they are hosting a party, the following three things occur:

1. The party is fully and actively supervised
2. No alcohol (etc) is available and if any child brings alcohol it is removed from them until they leave the party and
3. No open parties are held.

I have often said that if parents do not support the high expectations in this regard, they cannot be effective. However, it is not the expectation that is at fault it is the unwillingness to make the stand that we know will give our children the best foundation for a successful future.

Our children are all wonderful, beautiful creations; they do not need alcohol or any other drug to make them happier, more sociable, more acceptable or better people. The statistics on deaths due to drink driving should be enough to encourage us to train our children to be the “designated driver”.

The Annual school Fete will be held on November 6 this year and we would really appreciate it if every parent can think of an item or items that they could contribute to the silent auction or perhaps for a prize at another stall. You will all be contacted and asked to assist in some way, either in preparation, cleanup or serving for an hour or two on a stall. We are so grateful to you for your willingness to assist and take part. Please put the date in you calendar and invite all your friends and family to come along.

If anyone is considering purchasing a Mazda, Holden, Audi or Mitsubishi, please contact me as we have an arrangement with Penfold Motors in Burwood and Huntingtower will receive a contribution for any car purchased from them. One condition is that a letter from me must be taken to their representative first. So please see me if you are after one of these cars.

SholtoBowen

Principal

July 23 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the holidays

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
Henry David Thoreau

Another wonderful semester has passed and we are all experiencing the sense of achievement of a “job well done”. When we know that we have done all that we can, we can confidently look back on the past with satisfaction, to the future with confidence and at the present with joy. When we create a vision of the world we desire, we bring all possibilities to the present. With no sense of guilt for the past or fear of the future we find ourselves empowered to do so much more in the creation of an exciting present which is after all, the only time in which we live. We can co-create a world that will provide a basis for the unlimited expression of all that we really are; unlimited, eternal, spiritual ideas of Life Truth and Love.

When we truly begin to see ourselves as “unlimited” we really do start doing amazing things. One of our past students is Diane Westaway (’77), the founder of “Wild Women on Top”. Her organisation is dedicated to helping women break the boundaries of societal and personal limits. She is an Australian National Gymnastics and National Aerobics Champion. (Have a look at her website at www.wildwomenontop.com) Diane is a truly inspirational past student.

I have just finished ready many hundreds of Mid-Year reports and am so impressed with the quality of our students. This is so much more than simply their academic work but includes their attitudes, social service, awareness and thoughtfulness. We truly do have divine children at Huntingtower.

We have heard so much recently about cybersafety, online chat sites and phone SMS messaging. The technological developments we are experiencing are placing pressures on us that we have not been through before. This is because the rate of change is so rapid that we do not have a behavioural framework around which to build these new communication developments.

So what can be done to keep your children safe online? Restricting your child from using any social networking site is impractical and perhaps a little excessive. Computers are available almost everywhere now, so an alternative approach would be to educate your child about the potential risks these sites pose, and about how to stay safe when using them. The PTA will soon be hosting an evening which gives you some very useful information in this regard.

Some simple yet effective ways to let your child safely socialise online include the following:

Carefully select which social networking site your child wants to join. Most social networking sites will allow anybody to create a profile, but most have age restrictions that do not allow anyone under the age of 14 to join. If your teen’s sole purpose is to keep in touch with friends, chances are all his or her friends will be on the same networking site.

Monitor your child’s network usage. It is not unreasonable to insist on knowing your child’s password for logging onto any social networking site. This will help you keep track of who they are talking to and the kind of information they are posting on their profiles. If you feel this is too invasive, create your own profile and request your child as a friend. That way you can still monitor the profile without being overbearing or nosy. It is also reasonable to set limits on how much time your child spends on the sites each day.

Keep your child’s personal information private. There is no need for your child to post address, phone number, or any other personal information on the profile. Posting personal information makes it easier for online predators to learn your child’s identity and to find them offline. If your child is going to post personal information, make sure that they post only those facts that they are comfortable with everyone knowing. Also remember: Once information is posted online, it can’t be taken back. Even deleted information may still exist in older versions of the site on others’ computers.

Set the privacy settings to restrict access to your child’s page. Your child’s friends will still be able to access and view the whole profile, but outside users and anyone who is not on the friend list will not.

Reject friend requests from anyone your child does not know. Even if the requestor claims to be a friend of a friend, be wary of anyone your child has never met.

Be wary of strangers who want to meet in person. The simplest solution to this issue is to refuse to let your child meet in person anyone she met online, unless you are present.

Report any suspicious behavior. If you or your child feels threatened by or uncomfortable about something online, report it to the social networking site and if necessary, to the police.

Source: http://life.familyeducation.com

Bless you all and have a wonderful holiday.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

June 30 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most…We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Marianne Williamson, American author and lecturer

The quote above is often incorrectly ascribed to Nelson Mandela as he used it as part of his inaugural address when he became the first post apartheid President of South Africa. This quote helps remind us that we can and must rise above any sense of limitation, any concern about “peer pressure” and any desire to wait for others to do something first. As we realise that we have God within us and that we are within God, we must lose any sense of smallness, any feeling that we are not capable and any feeling that we are not as good as someone else. We express or reflect the omnipotence of God, the omniscience of God and the infinity of God. What can we not do when we realise this fact?

Using this as a foundation we can rightly expect every one of our students to achieve greatness in whatever direction they wish to go; whatever career they wish to follow. As they share love and compassion with everyone they meet, they will spread this idea of unlimited and infinite possibility with others and thereby change the world. As we let our light shine we will find everyone doing the same.

It gives me great pleasure to tell you that two of our graduates from last year’s VCE have been awarded Premier’s Awards. To achieve this award they not only had a perfect score but were also in the top 5 students in the state. Congratulations to Michaela Dean who received her award for Business Management (teacher: Mr Chris Newman) and Christie O’Loughlin who received hers for Food Technology (teacher: Mrs Jayne Dickson). My congratulations to the teachers concerned for these fine results.

Two of our students have been selected to representative EISM teams. They attended trials and were selected from the 22 schools in our competition. They will be part of the EISM touring teams who will compete in Queensland later this year. Congratulations to Belinda Drummond who has made the Netball Team and Jordan Andreola who was selected for Basketball.

Our Junior School Cross Country team competed in the district competition and came in Second overall. A wonderful achievement! Congratulations to Alysha Trainor who came First in the District and Second in the Zone which means she is now off to the State finals. We wish her all the best and every success.

We had students taking part in the Indonesian Sayembara Competition and I am very pleased to announce that 4 of our students came in the top three in the state.

Here are the results:

Primary

Harrison Penna, Year 3 – 3^rd Place

Laeticia Garrett, Year 4 – 3^rd place

The year 3 and 4 students can introduce themselves in Indonesian and can recite an Indonesian poem.

Secondary

Isabella Wise Gonzales, Year 7 – 2^nd place

Zenecca Leelarathna, Year 7 – 3^rd Place

The year 7 students can speak about themselves and about the school in Indonesian and can answer general questions and questions taken from their speech in Indonesian.

Congratulations to these students and to Mrs Ardiyanti.

Pool progress seems to be slow from the outside but some things are happening. The mezzanine floor concrete has been fully thrown and both sets of outside steps leading to the mezzanine are in place. The balustrades around the balcony have been installed. The metal reinforcing and interior plumbing of both pools is almost finished and the pool manufacturers are hopeful that they will commence pouring the concrete very soon. You will have seen that the roof plumbing and façade are now in place awaiting windows and final painting. Of course, the air-conditioning plant, filtration plant, wiring and internal plumbing is still some way off. I will give you an update in a few weeks time. Thank you to all those who have supported our financial appeal; we still need a couple of million so every dollar helps. Remember that all donations to the building fund are fully tax deductible so please send in your contribution before the end of June to take advantage of the end of tax year.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

June 11 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“There is a seed in each of us that is a mighty oak. Many of us don’t plant it.”

“The person who says it cannot be done

Should not interrupt the person doing it”

                                Old Chinese proverb

It is hard to believe that we are almost at the midpoint of the year. The Senior School students start their exams next week and the Year 12 mid-year exams commence the following week. Many students are hard at work preparing and I know the parents will be supporting them on this journey.

Many parents will be following the media reports about the new Australian Curriculum with interest. The amount of information that we can share at this stage is fairly small. However, we are developing our courses for English, Mathematics, Science and History so that we are ready for implementation in 2012. Next year we will probably trial the new English course from Prep to Year 10 and sample some of the other new aspects in the other subjects. We are gradually getting more information about the other subjects, many of which will be electives. As I have mentioned before, our main concern is the prescriptive nature of the curriculum which may mean that we have to alter some of our offerings. For example, as you know we have two languages other than English available in Year 7 (Indonesian and French) and then we offer a choice of one or both of these from Year 8 onwards. Under our model, if a student chooses both languages in Year 8 and beyond, they may not do History in Year 8 and perhaps Geography in Year 9. Under the new model History seems to be compulsory from Years 7 to 10 which means that we may not be able to offer the option of a student doing both languages beyond Year 7. We feel this would be very sad and are seeing if we can find a way around it. History is also compulsory in Year 10 where at present it is an elective. The actual content, other than being very lengthy, can be dealt with and some aspects are quite good. We will keep you up to date as we get more information.

I was thrilled to see the performances of the Unit 3/4 drama students this week. They looked very polished and had the audience highly entertained. Congratulations to Mr Borbely and all the students.

We had an amazing response to the 2011 Simunye trip which was announced last week. The information night was attended by about 40 families. This is of course, far too great a number to take and we may have to call for applications to see who is most suited to the trip.

Last week Mrs Sue Swan and I travelled half way across Australia to visit an isolated Aboriginal settlement with a view to setting up a partnership or exchange relationship.

We flew to Alice Springs and then drove North and East for about 7 hours. We arrived at a tiny community with a population of 250. It is at the end of a long sand road. We found a wonderful community who would love to interact with us and it seems that they may send some students to us as early as October this year. We are possibly going to send some upper primary and/or lower Middle school students to visit them next year. The town is called Canteen Creek and if you look on Google Earth you will see that it really is in the middle of nowhere. You will see some pictures and a report on this activity in the next “Huntingtower News”.

I would like to remind everyone that you can now view all notices of excursions and activities on the school web site. This should mean that you are never out of the loop and you will be able to come to many different school activities.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

May 28 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

Martin Luther King, Jr

In Psalms we read “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.

All through the Bible we hear that man should “fear” the “Lord God”. This has concerned me because I do not subscribe to the idea that we should “fear” Love. If God is Love then there is nothing to fear. The translator of the original biblical texts had a number of options when he chose “fear” and one of the other options was “awesome respect”. I can have awesome respect for Love. When one realizes the power of Love to heal, to lift people up and to free them from all kinds of limitation one can certainly respect it. The term “the Lord” is translated from Yahweh or Jehovah. Yahweh is the unpronounceable name for an unknowable God, which means “the Present One”, Existence (Life) Itself, the mystery embedded in this present moment in time. So the Psalm above could read “The awesome respect for the ever-presence of Life, Truth and Love right now, is the beginning of wisdom”.

Our journey through life is all about the gaining of wisdom, of understanding and ultimately of the knowledge of who we really are. As we learn more about loving, supporting and respecting everyone with whom we come into contact, we gain wisdom. The wisdom to know when to act, the understanding that everyone is doing the best they can with what they know and the knowledge that as we learn more we will do better.

Educating (teaching) for understanding has been a focus for us for a number of years now and I hope through this we are also gaining wisdom. Confucius said “the love of learning is akin to wisdom”.

Enthusiasm, passion, interest and curiosity equate to a love of learning and this has long been a catch-cry at Huntingtower because if we are not comfortable about showing our love of learning, of life and of participating we may soon allow the opinions of others to decide for us who we are going to be and even who we think we are. We then become followers of popular opinion instead of the formers of opinion; the leaders of society. (Nosce te ipsum)

The high standards we hold at Huntingtower are not a burden to our students but a release; a release from the need to fit into a societal norm that does not serve to lift them up. Any addictive substance, whether it be smoking, drugs or alcohol are prohibited from our students, not because we would hold something back from them that is wonderful and uplifting, but because we know that without these things they are free to be who they really are and not who or what some popular magazine or TV show suggests they should be. I celebrate the fact that our students embrace our expectations and rise to the best that is in each one of them.

This week our Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students have undertaken the NAPLAN tests. So much has been said in the press about these tests and I do not wish to re-hash any of it here. I believe that these tests have the potential to do much good. They are a source of very useful information for the parents on how their child is progressing through school with a national comparison. They provide schools with the information they need to develop appropriate programs to support each child and they give schools an indication of the progress students are making over a number of years.

Where this information becomes harmful, is where unhelpful comparisons are made between schools that have no basis for comparison. If these results become the reason for the success of a school, no school will accept a struggling student again, because they will reflect badly on their NAPLAN results and therefore on the school. Our role in schools is to support EVERY student who comes through our gates to be the best person that THEY CAN BE, not the best compared to a national test, but the best they can be. When we lose sight of the individual, we run the risk of becoming more interested in the organisation than the children who are its reason for being.

Our website now has a new link which includes all forms and notices for upcoming student events and excursions. To view this page please go to http://www.huntingtower.vic.edu.au/, click on “Your School”, “Parents”, and then “Forms & Notices”. We hope that this will be of great assistance to all parents.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

May 14 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“Good thoughts are an impervious armour.”      Mary Baker Eddy

On Wednesday this week I watched our Senior Athletics team compete in Division One of the EISM Sporting Association. I was so proud of the students. They ran their hearts out, giving their all. In terms of school size, we should be in the middle of Division Three and yet we came 5^th out of 8 in Division One which places us 5^th out of the 22 schools in the competition.  Congratulations to everyone involved because they once again demonstrated our principle of having “No Limits”. Our determination to strive for excellence in all things and to know that in fact we are not limited, sets the basis for a life of opportunity, satisfaction and achievement.

Our ANZAC Service on Tuesday focussed on the sacrifices made by so many to create the peace that we all desire. We emphasised that to bring about peace we need to BE peace; we need to realise that peace is a present reality and that we need to embody it in our every thought and action. When we focus on what is wrong we inadvertently attract more of what is wrong into our lives; we give it the only reality it has.  Every thought and every word will determine the life that we will attract around us. Mary Baker Eddy says “… keep your hearts and minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full.”

Our past students are putting on a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Bollywood” this weekend. Tickets are available at the door of the PAC on Friday and Saturday nights at 7.30pm and on Sunday afternoon at 2.30pm. It is wonderful to see how active and talented our past students are. This is a great way for them to stay connected.

The new Aquatic Sports and Fitness Centre is progressing well and I must express my appreciation for your patience with the many disruptions in the main carpark which may have been caused by the loss of parking places or trucks entering and leaving. The holes for the pools have now been dug and the stone base installed. The boxing of the small pool has commenced and the first concrete pour should take place next week.

Thank you for your generous contributions to the project. Remember that all contributions are tax deductible and that we still need to raise many hundreds of thousands of dollars; although we do accept Roubles, Rand, Pounds and Shekels. If you are intending to contribute, please don’t put it off as we need all contributions, big and small.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

April 30 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |

Principal’s Message

Thought for the week

“Giving does not impoverish us in the service of our maker, neither does withholding enrich us.”         Mary Baker Eddy

Welcome back to Term Two.

For the first four weeks of this term, the Head of Junior School, Miss Greiveson will be away on Long Service Leave. During this time Mrs Margaret Jones will be in charge in the Junior School. We wish Miss Greiveson a happy and restful period of leave.

 During the past holiday it seemed that there was little rest for many members of the Huntingtower community. A group of students and teachers travelled to Malaysia for a memorable experience in the Jungles, villages and schools. Everyone experienced the Malay culture and practiced the language where possible. Grateful thanks to Mrs Lim and her team who accompanied the group and organised the trip.

Our Year 11 students and a few Year 12’s travelled to South Africa for another of the now famous “Simunye Project” activities. Once again the students, past students, parents and teachers who attended have made a real difference in the lives of so many needy people. The activities of this group go so far beyond “sending money or goods”; these young people have shown a genuine sense of love to those in need by actually going there, interacting with the children and adults and building lasting relationships. Some of the projects undertaken included building tables and chairs, erecting shade cloth, building a kitchen, running a holiday education program and cuddling orphans. Once again these young people have had a life changing experience by changing the lives of others. Grateful thanks go to Mr and Mrs Dry, who are the driving force behind this wonderful activity, to the other staff members who attended and to the numerous support people. To those who supported by generously contributing to the cause, we express grateful thanks.

During the holidays, a number of Duke of Edinburgh expeditions took place. Mr Brown and some very generous teachers have done much hiking and camping. The leadership that is developed through this activity provides our students with a foundation that will last throughout their lives.

We are very grateful to Mr Brown and the teachers who supported these expeditions.

The “MySchool” website and the NAPLAN testing seems to have been front page news for some time and I would like to assure our parents that our students will all take part in the NAPLAN  testing program. I recommend that parents put the school average results into the right context. There is no way of knowing what the nature of each child in a school is and whether or not a school has added value to the children’s learning through a testing program like this. A better view for our parents is to look at your child’s results and see where we can assist in adding even more value. Students may be identified as needing extra support and we can then act to lift standards.

We are investigating starting a “language club” at Huntingtower. This would be open to parents, teachers and students from Year 9 upwards. It will involve an on-line language learning program and enables participants to learn any of 35 different languages including Chinese, Japanese and all the European languages. I would like to gauge if there is any interest from parents and so if you would be interested in being involved on one afternoon a week (or more) on a casual or ongoing basis, please let the office know and leave your contact details. As much of the work is unsupervised we must restrict the activity to students over 14 years of age. If you are considering a trip to China or any other part of the world, you may find this useful. There will initially be no charge for this and depending on interest levels we will keep any costs to an absolute minimum.

If you are interested please drop in to the office and let them know or you can email the office giving your email the title of “Language Club”.

Congratulations to all involved in the Senior School Athletics Carnival. It was a great day and I appreciated the amazing effort made by every student.

Sholto Bowen

Principal

April 16 2010 | All and Principals Message | No Comments » |