From the Acting Principal - September 2023
This week I informed our staff that the Bishop Administrator, Cameron Venables, announced the election of Bishop Jeremy Greaves as the tenth Archbishop of Brisbane. Bishop Jeremy is currently the Bishop for the Northern Region and he has served for the last six years as the Chair of the Anglican Schools Commission. On behalf of our school community, I send our best wishes and prayers to Bishop Jeremy as he transitions into his new role.
As I am sitting to write this month’s newsletter article, I have just finished reading other news pieces and current research being completed on the youth crime problem that is currently enveloping our communities. One of the key recurring points that is consistent across all that I read is the lack of connection, belonging, and sense of purpose that disengaged youth are experiencing. This caused me to also reflect on our very special community and how our girls are travelling. I thought about the year so far and in particular, all that has taken place this term. Our girls have been provided with a valuable gift from their parents to be a St Hilda’s girl. Belonging to this community provides our students with a life-long connection as an Old Girl, a great sense of belonging and purpose and access to strong learning opportunities and a wide array of curricular activities.
Our sense of community and belonging has never been stronger than what we have seen demonstrated amongst our girls and our families in 2023. On the recent camps, we received feedback from camp staff detailing how impressed they were with how well our girls participated and were humble, supportive and polite. We have also held our most successful Fete on record, and we are thankful to our community for attending and participating in the amazing events that were on offer. The Cent Auction again proved to be a great success, and we thank all of our sponsors for their assistance and the parent support groups for their organisation and manning of the stalls on the day. I would like to acknowledge the Parents and Friend's Association for their valuable support in raising funds for the installation of a CCTV system. This system will be installed during the upcoming September holidays.
During this term, the sense of belonging was further strengthened through the OGA’s Ladies Long Lunch held at Orzo. It was wonderful to see many of our current day and boarding mothers, and Old Girls come together to connect and share stories and memories of what it means to be a part of our community.
Term 3 has also seen our girls busy studying and preparing for exams, and training and competing in QG winter sports; netball, tennis, volleyball and rowing. The rowing season involved six competition rounds and finished very quickly. Well done to our rowers who proudly represented the School through their hard work, commitment and passion to ensure we won the prized Aggregate Cup.
Many of our musical girls competed with great success in the Gold Coast Eisteddfod and the Open Bs Debating team fought hard in the final round of the Gold Coast Debating Competition and achieved second place. Well done girls, we are very proud of you.
A highlight of the Term 3 calendar is Book Character Day which is part of Book Week. Girls of all ages joined in the fun of dressing as their favourite book character to celebrate their enjoyment and the importance of reading. We welcomed many grandparents into the school to be part of Grandparent's Day and the Book Week celebrations and we thank our grandparents for embracing the joy of dressing as their favourite book character.
As the term has progressed, we have continued our journey to connect with our brother school, TSS, through dance classes, debating and public speaking competitions, boarding events and National Science Week workshops.
Another wonderful occasion that occurred this term was being informed that the St Hilda’s School Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) has been approved and will allow our RAP committee to move forward with further initiatives. The work that Mrs Pearson is completing with a group of Years 3 and 4 girls to research and share information about the Yarning Circle and Bushtucker food through the use of technology has been impressive and for the first time, this work was showcased at the recent National Summit of Education conference by the St Hilda’s Junior School girls.
As we come to the end of Term 3, I wish all our students and in particular our Middle and Senior girls continued success with their test block and assessments and we wish our sporting teams who are competing in the final round of QG winter fixtures this weekend, the very best success.
Mrs Amanda Shuttlewood
Acting Principal
