From the Principal

This week, and for the next few weeks, we will be cheering on our Pymble Olympians, their supporters, and our current student athletes who are striving to become Olympians in the future.

This includes our Head Coach – Diving, Mr Kurtis Matthews, who will be competing on Tuesday 6 August after working so hard for 15 years to reach this goal; our Head of Sport 7-12, Mrs Katie Edwards, who has been appointed a Paralympic coach and whose daughter, Kristie (2017), will take part in the women’s 4 x 100m relay team; our Deputy Principal – Academics, Mrs Christine Kenny, who will be on the edge of her seat back home when her nephew, Rohan Browning, races in the men’s 100m event on Saturday 3 August; and Pymble Basketball Academy Partner, Lauren Jackson, who with her Opals teammates, played their first game in Paris this week.

Among our alumni, we have Dr Mackenzie Little (2014) competing in javelin on Wednesday 7 August and Sunday 11 August, and Edwina Tops-Alexander (1991) in showjumping today and tomorrow.

Pymble is incredibly proud to be the only independent school in Australia designated as an Olympic Pathway School (OPS) by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC). In the spirit of the Games and in partnership with the AOC, we have planned a Green and Gold Olympics Day for students and staff tomorrow during lunchtime and throughout Mind Body Spirit time. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to celebrate the Olympics and try out new sports. Excitingly, the AOC will also be attending to film our event. 

We ask all students to respect the spirit of the day and our partnership with the AOC by coming to school wearing day clothes (not pyjamas or onesies please) showing green, gold or yellow.

Respecting all pathways and passions

While being an Olympic Pathway School represents a wonderful opportunity for many of our girls, we understand that sport is not the be-all and end-all for everyone. Pymble is committed to encouraging and celebrating excellence in all domains, whether that’s sport, academics, Performing Arts, Visual Arts, social justice, and of course, how we behave as individuals and as a community. One way we do this is though our fabulous showcases, such as tomorrow night’s TASFest, which I am very much looking forward to attending. It’s wonderful to see so many parents at these events celebrating not only their daughter’s achievements, but other students’ achievements, too.

On that note, a very special shout-out to our enthusiastic parent supporters at last week’s Junior School Athletics Carnival who cheered on every student by name as they took their turn at the long-jump pit. We are blessed to have so many parents modelling care and respect for all our students. Truly a #PymbleProud day.

You may recall, last week I wrote about the introduction of our Values as Behaviours statements and asked the girls to write examples of when they had seen our values in action. So far over 300 responses have come in, showing heartwarming examples from students and staff. The below reflection from Carrie Wilson in Year 10 is indicative of the responses that have been shared.

Student reflections by College value

We counted every response to provide a picture of the values recognised by our girls. The low representation of respect took me by surprise and caused me to dig a little deeper.

Care – 41%

Courage – 34%

Integrity – 14%

Respect – 5%

Responsibility – 6%

This led to research showing that the use of the word ‘respect’ has been in decline for some time (see the table below). Respect is a multi-faceted value. There is respect in the form of admiration, personal respect for another, and respect that might drive behaviour to avoid harming others – and that’s just skimming the surface. This exercise indicated a need for us, as a school, to better understand why this value is not connecting so strongly with our students. Next year, we will embark on a school-wide focus on respect with a different theme each term; thank you in advance for your support as we work together to amplify the importance of respect within our community.

Respecting our First Nations students and culture

On the topic of respect, thank you to all the students and staff who participated in our annual NAIDOC Week Assembly and other related activities around campus. NAIDOC Week acknowledges and celebrates the rich history, cultures and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and promotes respect and understanding of their cultures, lores and traditions.

One of the highlights was hearing from our former First Nations Scholar, Bronte Charles (2018), who spoke with the girls about her Pymble journey and the pathway to where she is now: a graduate of Macquarie University working as a digital journalist and producer at SBS/NITV. Bronte reflected on the opportunity she was given, acknowledging her path may have been quite different had she not had the chance to attend Pymble. She encouraged her ‘sisters’ in our First Nations program to be proud of their culture and to not let challenges, hurdles or feeling different to others to dent their confidence or alter their course. Bronte also referenced the staggering statistic that, in Australia, First Nations people are more likely to go to jail than they are to graduate from high school.

With great respect, we thank Bronte and all our First Nations students for generously sharing their stories this week, along with our amazing First Nations dancers who, as always, blew us away with their power and passion for sharing their culture through dance.

Windows into Learning

It gives me great pleasure to kick off the first Windows into Learning section of our Newsletter for Term 3. As always, we thank our wonderful teachers for sharing and producing these opportunities to celebrate academic teaching and learning at Pymble. Over to Mrs Clark and Mr Stafford.

“Push and Pull” in Kindergarten Science

In their “Push and Pull” Science unit, Kindergarten girls were challenged to design and create a mode of transport enabling our Kindness mascot, Heidi Hedgehog, to visit their classrooms with greater speed and frequency. The girls immediately leapt into action, using creative combinations of repurposed items such as wheels, seatbelts, handlebars, doors, slides, stairs, umbrellas, multi-levels, swimming pools, bookshelves – even lipstick holders! Over the next few weeks, Kindy girls worked together to improve and expand on their ideas through trial and error, overcoming setbacks with determination and new solutions. In addition to successfully producing their prototypes, our girls developed their foundational learning and life skills of negotiation, compromise, problem solving, resilience and creativity.

Mrs Tamara Clark
Kindergarten Compass Teacher

Save the dates: Performing Arts HSC Showcases!

We are approaching an exciting time in the creative world of Performing Arts with our HSC Dance, Drama and Music showcases coming up in Term 3. These three nights are highlights of our Performing Arts calendar, giving our Year 12 students an opportunity to showcase their amazing HSC performances and talents with fellow students, staff and Pymble families. The standard is incredibly high and each showcase is highly entertaining, so I encourage you to get along to these nights and celebrate the outstanding talent among our soon to be graduates.

HSC Dance Showcase – 24 August in the GMCPA from 6.00pm

HSC Drama Showcase – 3 September in the GMCPA from 5.30pm

HSC Music Showcase – 6 September in the Music Gallery from 5.00pm

Mr Marcus Stafford
Head of Learning Area – Performing Arts