From the Upper School

A message from Mr Riley, Head of Upper School

This week, we have loved celebrating our wonderful boarding community. Being a boarder once myself, I know only too well the ups and downs of living at school 24 hours a day. Indeed, I enjoyed sharing a few pictures and stories of me from school but those won’t be appearing in the newsletter!

It was fabulous to see Tilly and Jaidey lead our Year 9 assembly and for all of our Year 9s Boarders (minus those currently on The Great Return back from Vision Valley) share pictures from home and what they love about Boarding. Celeste spoke beautifully to Year 10 about her home and her peers loved seeing the photos of life on the land. We too have had a bit of fun with our Upper School Office decorations and are very much hoping we can beat the Middle School!

Elsewhere, our first Year 10 Exchange students jetted off to England and our partner schools Wrekin College and St Joesph’s College, Ipswich. We look forward to sharing news from Tully, Tully, Alanah and Lara in due course and wish them well on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Next week, Year 10 will enjoy a BBQ lunch and a talk on consent and healthy, respectful relationships from industry leaders Your Choicez. David and Katie Kobler have been a consistent feature of Upper School programs in recent years and do a wonderful job of empowering our girls to understand their rights in preparing them for the realities of dating and safe partying. Whilst a heavy topic, it is imperative that we consistently revisit this conversation sensitively and we look forward to sharing information with you to continue it at home.

Finally, a reminder for families to please complete the MMG Survey recently circulated. We like to delve deeply into the results of these surveys to improve stakeholder experiences and thank you in advance for your considered feedback.

Year 10 Futures Interviews start next week

Students will begin meeting with the Futures@Pymble team to discuss their Cliftons Strength Profiles and understand how they can turn their strengths into talents. This information will be handy to help them with subject selection and for looking for future opportunities for service learning, leadership and overall growth.

How to book a session

All of Year 10 have been emailed information on how to book their session for this term. Interview opportunities will also continue into Term 3. Prior to the session, students are required to complete a pre-meeting survey to provide information on their current understanding of their profile and other areas of interest they may want to pursue. We encourage families to help students to fill in this survey as it addresses the following questions:

What activities are you naturally drawn to?
What activities do you seem to pick up quickly?
In what activities did you seem to automatically know the steps to be taken/what to do?
During what activities have you had moments of subconscious excellence when you thought ‘How did I do that?’ or “I’m good at that!”
What activities give you energy, either while doing them or immediately after finishing them, and you think, “When can I do that again?” or “I really enjoyed that”.

Our team look forward to meeting with the students to understand their exciting ideas for the future.