College Principal
In the last few weeks, our Year 11 students have been through a rigorous selection process in their quest to become College Leaders for 2022/2023. This year, we have added a new role to the Prefect body and we introduce a Well Being Prefect to the team. We had over 85 students apply for leadership roles and 25 students applied for the role of College Captain alone. I am very clear with our students as to what we look for when a College Captain is selected and this includes a clear love for their school, a commitment to uphold the values we hold dear as a Catholic Dominican community, experience in leadership, a record of commitment to service and social justice, and someone who is articulate, confident and kind with a strong sense of integrity and humility. We also look for students who can develop and initiate worthwhile projects who can take their fellow students on the journey to continue to keep our community connected. This year’s cohort made the task incredibly difficult. Our current Year 11 students are outstanding young people, many have a strong track record of academic diligence, a broad involvement in the co-curricular life of the College, a commitment to Service and social justice advocacy and more than that, they are young women who are very good humans. If all twenty-five could have been College Captains, I would have been happy, but alas we can only have two.
I am pleased to announce our Santa Sabina College Student Leadership Team for 2022/2023:
| College Captains: | Ruby Bron and Maree Sialepsis |
| Faith & Mission Prefect | Lisa Haddad |
| Social Justice Prefect | Olivia Nakhle |
| Wellbeing Prefect | Sophie Way |
| Environment & Sustainability | Rosanna Cartwright |
| Arts Prefect | Antonia Touma |
| Sports Prefect | Lily Carr |
| Gunagulla House Captains | Elena Di Mento and Sienna Signorelli |
| Kurrawa House Captains | Cara Sharry and Annika Moore |
| Mundawora House Captains | Emma Wheadon and Julia Gomez |
| Teangi House Captains | Ella Curran and Ava Farrell |
| Weelya House Captains | Tilly Hannan and Stephanie Scalia |
| Yetinga House Captains | Erica Comito and Emma Carroll |
I offer a huge congratulations to these students on behalf of our school community. I have no doubt that they will work well together and be excellent ambassadors for our school. As a College community we undertake to support them to lead well, knowing that they will encounter challenges along the way but also knowing that they will be guided and supported to be resilient and persevere. I would like to acknowledge every student who applied for one role or another. To those young women who graciously accepted that this wasn’t their time to be in a formal leadership role, life will certainly give you other opportunities to step up and lead. Not all of us can be on the school leadership team, but it doesn’t mean we can’t go on to be fabulous leaders in our workplaces and in our lives.
Big thanks to the College staff who have planned, coordinated and supervised our Year 4 students when they went to camp at Tallong last week as well as to those on Year 8 Camp this week. We are providing Year 8 with a new and different experience this year and they are camping at Cockatoo Island while exploring Sydney. This experience allows them to develop skills in a variety of areas, one of these is in geocaching which is where they use tech skills and tools like GPS to find hidden treasures, a little like the Race Around the World. They are also immersing themselves in an Indigenous education experience, a wilderness lunch and hiking to Middle Head, just to give a brief outline. Camps like these are a very important part of our school curriculum and children are expected to participate. Stepping out of their comfort zone is important for young people, actually important for all of us, because this is how we keep growing and learning. I was disappointed to hear that some students chose not to attend the Year 8 City Experience without good reasons. When we talk about empowering young people, building resilience and strength we do that in a variety of ways. One way is to ask our students to do things that make them uncomfortable so that they can learn to work through that discomfort and make it to the other side knowing that next time it will be easier. I ask parents to support the College in expecting our students to commit to their sporting or other teams even when they don’t want to and to go school camps, even if they don’t want to. Learning to overcome challenges is how we grow. All of us want our students to thrive in the world beyond school and one way to do this is to support them to take safe risks and try new things.
I look forward to seeing dads and carers at our Father’s Day Masses next week and encourage dads to sign up to play some golf on Friday 9 September. This is a great way for dads to connect across our College community.
Go gently.
Paulina Skerman
College Principal