College Principal

Welcome to Term 3. Finally, after almost three years at the College, I have experienced my first Dom’s Day! And, it was certainly worth the wait. What a joy to have our little ones from Mary Bailey House join our Primary, Gioia and Secondary students as we honoured St Dominic and gave thanks for being able to be together at this beautiful school. We were fortunate to have Father Gavin Foster, Chaplain at St Joseph’s College, Hunter’s Hill, celebrate Mass with us and his Homily was so relevant where he spoke to our students about friendship and how there are three kinds of friendship: the friendship we have with ourselves; our friendship with others and our friendship with God. Friendships keep me awake at night, not my own, but those our students have with one another. While good friendships sustain and protect us, destructive friendships of course have the opposite effect. It is heartbreaking to see long-standing friendships end with a text message or others disintegrate because there is no room for forgiveness or because one person in the group has decided for everyone that someone is no longer welcome. I see young people longing to be friends with others but not given a chance to break into the group because they are quiet or quirky. How do we get our children to open up to others, to widen their circle, to reach out to that person on the periphery to discover the interesting, funny person they are underneath a shy exterior? While I am not saying that we are for everyone and that we should be friends with everyone, we do need to be friendly and kind to ourselves and to others. It is also important that young people learn that friendships, like any relationship, require hard work and forgiveness. Dom’s Day reminded us that community matters and that being together unifies and heals. 

Our school community is a village, and together we share good and bad times, often holding each other up when we face heartache and revelling in one another’s joy when we have cause to celebrate. I am often in awe of our young people and want to say thank you to our musicians and choir and our Gioia girls who formed the Guard of Honour recently for Mrs Azizian at her son Eric’s funeral. These students demonstrated a level of maturity, respect, empathy and grace that is at the heart of what it is to be wonderful humans. 

Huge congratulations to our students who have started the term so well. Our Year 12 girls and Year 11 Accelerants have started their HSC Trials and IB examinations and it is the first time in three years that these trials have proceeded smoothly on campus. Our prayers are with them and we wish them well as they complete their exams. I would also like to congratulate our Gioia and Secondary girls awarded Academic and Pastoral Awards at our Semester 1 Awards Assembly this week.  

I would like to thank the P&F who facilitated a parent information session presented by Madonna King, author of L Platers, her most recent book. Some of our Year 12 girls and I were interviewed by Madonna last year while she was conducting her research into the impact of COVID on our 16 to 18 year olds. Having interviewed more than 1000 young women, Madonna was able to present an insightful perspective on how our girls are faring. Touching on topics such as the real impact of social media, fostering confidence and a better life balance amongst other relevant topics, she offered practical advice for ways to support teenagers on the road to adulthood. Given the benefits of team sports and the role they play in supporting confidence, mental health, wellbeing and leadership capacity in young women, we are reviewing our co-curricular programs to ensure we are giving our students the very best opportunity to participate in sport. We have recently conducted a sports survey with students and will be analysing that data to improve our students’ engagement with sport.

This term, we kicked off our Career Women’s Network Roundtable breakfasts. We are fortunate to have very generous members of our community whether that be past pupils, parents or friends of the school who have generously volunteered to work with our Year 10, 11 and 12 girls to run micro sessions focused on specific career areas. We started with Medicine and then moved to Economics. Both Roundtables really brought home the fact that within disciplines there are so many varied pathways that careers can take which was great for our students to consider.

During the holiday break, our Property and IT teams were busy overseeing a wide range of improvements from installing a new bell system at the Santa Sabina campus, to painting classrooms, updating security and safety systems and the refurbishment of Literature Building classrooms at Del Monte. We have also completed all stakeholder consultation meetings with our architects and they will now consolidate the information gathered to begin the process of creating a plan that will see our campus develop over the next 20 years. I am very grateful to everyone who participated in these workshops and appreciate their ideas, thoughts and perspectives regarding the future of our school.  

Go gently.

Paulina Skerman
College Principal