From the Principal

This week was a significant one for all students, and especially our Year 11 cohort, with the announcement of our incoming 2024/2025 Prefects and Captains of portfolios spanning all aspects of College life. Congratulations to our Head Prefects to be, Emily Abadee and Ang-Ya Koo, our Boarding Head Prefects to be, Sophie Lang and Celeste McDermott, our Executive Prefect team, and all the Captains of Sport, Performing Arts, Extended Learning, Houses, Community, School Liaison and SRC who officially take up their posts in Term 4.

When thinking about leadership advice to share at the announcement assembly, a beautiful mosaic that was gifted to me by the girls at OSHC when I first started at the College five years ago sprang to mind. I treasure this artwork equally for the thought and care that went into making it as I do for the reminder that life is a bit like a mosaic. Sometimes the pieces fit together and the picture turns out exactly how you want it to look. At other times, it’s up to you to use all your creative endeavours to create a different vision.

We are now halfway through the year, and I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage all students, including our incoming and outgoing leaders, to think about the pieces of your mosaic and the picture you wish to create by the end of this year. You have opportunities, you have support, and everyone here is willing to help you put those pieces together to make your vision come to life in a way that is special and meaningful to you, and that also creates a better picture for all the students who walk alongside you now and those who will follow in years to come.

It has been an honour to work with our current Year 12 leaders, Bella Walker and Julie Sheng, and the wonderful 2023/2024 Prefect team, and I look forward to a last flurry of pieces falling into place in Term 3 as they celebrate their final term at Pymble and assist with the incoming leaders’ handovers.  

Meet our 2024/2025 Student Leaders

Congratulations to our AI champions

On the topic of creating your own meaningful mosaic, it is a pleasure to handover to our Technologies Prefect, Elena Zhang (Year 12), to share the story behind last week’s inaugural AI for Students Conference at Pymble.

How did the AI For Students Conference come to life?

The idea of a student-run conference came from our Director of Futures and Partnerships (K-12), Mrs Maksimovic. Originally, I envisioned inviting guest speakers to talk about their careers in AI but, after speaking to students and staff, we realised that there aren’t many formal opportunities for high school students to contribute to the discussion. For instance, when I spoke on a panel at the Informa AI in Education conference alongside Isabella Attard and Caitlin Kim (Year 10), we were, ironically, the only students there, despite it being a relatively large conference with many educators in the audience! And so, we changed the focus of our conference to student presentations.

Tell us how students and other schools were involved in the event.

I led a committee of Year 11 Pymble students (Allison Wang, Ayana Sapra, Ariana Bansal and Sophia Chang) to help organise the conference. We brainstormed activities, such as student presentations and panel discussions, that would meet our goal of promoting student learning and engagement in the discussion around AI. Organising the event also involved administrative/logistical tasks such as contacting guest speakers, booking the Library Learning Studio space, arranging catering, advertising through emails and posters, and more. I was also the emcee and ensured the event ran smoothly and adhered to the schedule so that all the students would get the opportunity to present or speak on the panel.

Students from Wenona, PLC Sydney and Knox joined us, and our guest speaker, a teacher-librarian, was from Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane. TED-style presentations from students covered topics including art generation, ethics and biases, and using AI to solve data coding challenges in Data Science.

Our team also hosted a panel of students who prepared responses to pre-set questions as well as impromptu questions from the audience. One example was “do you believe AI enhances or restricts creativity and innovation among students?”

What did you hope to achieve with this event?

The purpose of the event was to show students that their ideas and perspectives about AI are just as important as adults’ and professionals’. Advocating for student voice is known to enhance their engagement in their learning and promote mutual trust and understanding between teachers and students. I also hope students appreciate that it’s important to be curious about AI and how it’s used, rather than fear it.

Where to next?

Hopefully, Pymble will host another AI for Students conference next year, expanding our audience to include more schools. Perhaps we could start an interschool group to organise similar events or meetups on a more regular basis. I’d encourage students reading this column to take the initiative to learn about AI on their own and create opportunities for others to do so!

Elena Zhang (Year 12), Technologies Prefect

Congratulations to Elena and the team for leading the way in this space. Next week, we will continue the AI conversation with our Director of Innovative Learning Technologies, Mr Anthony England, who will share insights into our new portal for students and staff. Officially launched last week (having been in soft launch stage for the past few months), the new portal includes a suite of a suite of bespoke AI tools created exclusively for Pymble to amplify student growth and ensure we remain at the forefront of AI in education. Exciting times, so stay tuned.

Windows into Learning

From conferences to the classroom, the snapshots of inspired learning continue thanks to our wonderful academic staff.  

Year 3 Library

Our Year 3 students have started on a journey to become lifelong inquisitive researchers by exploring non-fiction books. They are learning how to find the books in all our libraries, how to find information within the books and, most importantly, how to choose the right information to answer their questions.

With the abundance of information online, it is important for our girls to learn that books are a rich and trustworthy source of information. And exploring the range of topics in the non-fiction section of the library is fun, especially when one of our lessons is a treasure hunt! This week, after talking about how books are shelved in categories by number and playing a game on their iPad to “shelve” non-fiction books in order, the girls paired up and were given clues containing book titles with their call numbers. Once the girls found their books and understood how the Dewey Decimal system works, they explored the books in the collection, borrowed something of interest and sat and read. It was wonderful to see the excitement as they discovered the wide range of topics in our non-fiction collection and how much interesting information is contained within the pages of a non-fiction book.

Mrs Martha Itzcovitz 
Junior School Teacher Librarian Years 3-6

Year 9 Marine and Aquaculture Technology

Our budding Year 9 Marine Biologists hosted two Year 4 classes in advance of World Oceans Day on June 8. This year’s theme, Waves of Change: Collective Actions for the Oceans, emphasises the importance of working together to find solutions to ocean challenges.

Having just completed a detailed investigation into the world’s oceans, our Year 9 students worked together in small groups and planned an engaging lesson for their Year 4 visitors. The objective was to upskill our younger students in being able and confident to take some form of action to protect our oceans from a range of current threats.

It was wonderful to see Year 9 take responsibility for the guardianship of our oceans and seize the opportunity to upskill and enable our younger students to care for our ocean environments.

Mr Brendon Long
Secondary School Science teacher

Support for our Annual Appeal

Finally, this week saw the launch of our Annual Appeal inviting our community to invest in the People, Places and Programs that ensure Pymble remains a leading school in Australia, if not globally. Our heartfelt thanks go to each person who contributed to our Pymble Foundation in the past 12 months. We are blessed to have such an engaged community of students, staff, families and alumni who value the incredible opportunities Pymble offers during the school years and in life beyond. For those who are able, we warmly invite you to consider making a tax-deductible gift to our Pymble Foundation Scholarship Program or Pymble Foundation Building Fund.

Please click here to learn more. And thank you.