Enews - 14 July 2021

It is always enjoyable to move around the College at the beginning of term and witness the friendly buzz amongst the student and staff community.

Over the break, we received the tragic news that Raj Gilkam, father of Omkar in Year 9, drowned while rescuing a family member on a South Coast beach. Raj is well known, particularly within our Cricket community, and his wife Silpa wishes to pass on her deep gratitude to the community for their love and support. Please keep the Gilkam family in your prayers.

The Wolnicki family have also been in contact to express their appreciation for the continued love and support they have received from the Mary Help of Christians Parish and the Marist school community over the past few months. 

It was a great delight to learn that former Marist student and NBA basketballer star, Patty Mills, was chosen as the Australian team flag bearer for the opening ceremony at the Tokyo Olympics. We wish him and all of our Olympians the very best in their respective competitions. 

I hope the break provided an opportunity for parents to review semester reports with their sons. I never cease to appreciate the deep knowledge our teachers have of those in their care, and I hope parents took the opportunity to meet with their son’s teachers this week at parent/teacher/student interviews. These important academic conversations with teachers should set the agenda for the semester ahead. 

When interviewing potential new students, I often ask them what they are curious about, in a vague attempt to understand their desire for learning. Some responses are amazing while others admit that very little captures their attention. Certainly the most successful learners are curious. Their minds are active rather than passive, they are observant to new possibilities and their lives are far from boring.

Recently there has been debate regarding the place that curiosity plays in learning and its relationship with knowledge. At Marist, we believe for a boy to ask quality questions about a specific field, they must first possess a sufficient level of knowledge of that field. It is a pedagogical model that begins with teacher-to-student transfer of knowledge and moves opportunities for questions and curiosity to subsequent parts of the learning journey. For us, the acquiring of knowledge remains our top priority and curiosity does flourish in a nurturing, knowledge-rich environment.   

We do not ignore the importance of 21st century skills such as problem solving or discovery learning. These are vital skills, but we know if a subject is foreign to your son, he will struggle to demonstrate critical thinking ability. The ability to think critically, like the ability to understand what you read, is inextricably linked to how much knowledge your son has about the situation at hand.

As parents, one of the most important tasks to fast track a learning focus is to encourage and celebrate your son’s curiosity, not just marks and results. Demonstrating that you are a curious person and you value the acquisition of knowledge provides a wonderful role model to emulate.

Matthew Hutchison 
Headmaster

The presentation included information on how to help educate our children on appropriate internet use, the design and purpose of different apps and how to choose these safely, as well as how to protect our information online.

The following day two additional members of the AFP made presentations to all Junior School boys. These presentations were designed to build positive engagement between children, young people and police, while equipping students with the knowledge and skills to be able to take actionable steps to maintain their safety at all times. It was fantastic to see our boys so engaged in the sessions.

Thank you to all three of the AFP presenters who did a fantastic job with a difficult topic. Thanks also to the parents who attended Wednesday night’s session.

Craig McMahon
Head of Wellbeing – Junior School

On Friday of Week 18, the Junior School held its annual Public Speaking Competition. One representative from each Year 5 and Year 6 class was chosen by their teacher to present their speech in front of both grade levels.

Public speaking requires great skill and the chosen boys did an amazing job in providing their peers with the opportunity to witness what a great speech sounds and looks like. 

Well done to the following boys who were chosen by their teachers:
Charlie Dopita, Theo Campton, Kian Grover, Liam Charles, Damon Brown, Kalindu Karunaratne, Riley Edmondson, Xavier Hewton, Adhavan Sundar, Jono Harington, Alexander Nano, and Gus Larobina.

A special congratulations goes to Gus Larobina (first place), Riley Edmondson (second place), as well as Charlie Dopita and Kian Grover (equal third place).

Katherine Dickson

On Friday 11 June, the Marist Year 4 and Year 5/6 Yellow teams participated in the Regional Finals of the Matt Giteau Cup to find a winner for the ACT and Southern NSW Inland area.

Our Year 5/6 team performed admirably throughout the day and were unlucky to go down in the quarter finals to a spirited team from Griffith. The boys represented the College with pride and are to be congratulated for their efforts.

The Marist Year 4 team swept all before them in the lead up to the final, including the eventual winners from Holy Family Primary School. Despite a very brave performance, a few injuries throughout the day meant that we were bravely defeated and finished as the runners-up.

Thank you to the boys in both teams for their efforts on the day and to Mr Henry and all the parents for their support.

Craig McMahon

Mrs Lofthouse had invited an inspirational and knowledgeable guest speaker, Cay Merritt, to come and talk to the boys about the experiences she had during her time volunteering in this poverty-stricken country, which is the poorest in the western world. 

We heard a motivational speech and watched a moving PowerPoint that highlighted vividly how the people of Haiti coped after the devastation of the 2010 Earthquake. We learnt about their culture, customs and ways of life, which opened our eyes to the privileged position we have grown up in.

After the striking PowerPoint, we had a short lesson on Haitian Creole, one of the two main languages of the island. We learnt basic greetings and conversation starters and were able to see the similarity between French and Creole. We learnt basics such as, “Hello, how are you? = Bonjou koman ou ye?” and everyone was given a chance to practice this new language in the classroom.

During the aftermath of the 2010, 7.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked the small island nation, child slavery became even more of an issue in Haïti. We learnt about the Restavek child slaves aged from three years and up, who, having been orphaned by the earthquake, have grown up with no parents and were forced to work long hours in a host house doing all of the menial chores that were required of them. Everyone was touched by this experience!

Along with inspirational videos about Haïti and its beautiful and rich culture, we tasted some of their diverse food for lunch, eating a beautiful chicken dish cooked by the boys at home. The small insight into the food that the Haitian people ate allowed the boys to feel connected with them and understand their way of life. The boys discovered the hardships that the guest speaker had endured in a heartbreaking array of photos, ranging from charity work, hospitals, and youth homes. The presentation was truly amazing and left a mark on each and every boy in the room. 

For the last two periods, we relaxed and watched a French movie, and discovered the beautiful countryside and small village communities that are scattered throughout France. The day was a highlight of the year for many boys and a huge thanks goes to Mrs Lofthouse and Mrs Merritt for organising such a moving and inspirational event. It has made each and every one of us appreciate what we, as the “lucky country” fail to value on a daily basis.

Ross Lamb (Year 9) and Will French (Year 9)

MacqLit

About the program:

MacqLit is a small group reading intervention based on systematic, explicit instruction of phonics. MacqLit fits into the RTI model as a Tier 2 intervention for older, low progress readers. For students that fail to progress with MacqLit or who are unable to work within groups for a variety of reasons, a one-to-one intervention such as RTP/WASEx may be necessary.

MacqLit includes:

• sentence dictation
• scripted phoneme segmenting and blending activities in early lessons
• vowel discrimination activities in early lessons
• reading of sentences, paragraphs or stories each lesson to generalise decoding skills
• scripted comprehension questions at two skill levels for each story
• an introduction to useful suffix rules
• teaching of multi syllabic words from the beginning, and
• use of sound prompt cards across all skill levels.

Additionally, MacqLit offers benefits from working in groups with other students. 

Quicksmart

About the program:

The aim of QuickSmart is to enable students to become automatic (quick) in their basic skills in order to move onto more complex problem-solving skills (smart). It is based at the SiMERR National Research Centre, located at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.

Quicksmart includes:

• recall of basic number facts
• performance of elementary calculations
• acquisition of appropriate mathematics language
• problem-solving explicit teaching, and
• individual worksheets to practice the skills.

Additionally, Quicksmart offers benefits from organisation and routine through having a set time and place.

If you would like any further information on these or any other aspect of ELS, please contact us. 

Recently I met a frazzled mum at a conference about special education. “I’m so worried about my 16-year old son,” she confided. “He is defiant, hates school and won’t let the teachers help him. He is really struggling.” As she went on literally wringing her hands, I finally had to ask her, “Does your son understand his disability? Does he know he has one? Does he know how to manage it?”

The mum stumbled over her words as she told me that she had “sort of talked to him about it in primary school” but it quickly became clear to both of us that her son did not really know he had a disability. He was acting out because he thought he was dumb, “a loser” — and that he was a failure. And here was mum, trying to get ideas and help so she could advocate for him. I put my hand over hers and said, “How can you expect your son to rise above his disability if he doesn’t even know he has one? How can you start to work with him to make things work better for him?”

While these kinds of stories illustrate why it’s important to inform our children and not ‘protect’ them by withholding vital information, there is an even bigger reason to learn to advocate with your children. It’s a simple equation, really: If we want and expect our sons to be self-determined adults, we have to teach them how to advocate for themselves. And in order to advocate for themselves, they have to know their strengths and weaknesses, how they learn, what they need to learn and how to engage with others. And if they have a disability, I believe they need to know what it is and how to manage it.

Learning to advocate with your child requires compassionate diligence, accurate information and kind flexibility. It requires that parents understand their child’s strengths, learning style, needs, and interests along with their disability. It requires ongoing, age-appropriate conversations, and clear and realistic expectations. Teaching your child about their AD/HD, dyslexia, learning disability or autism has to be balanced with not allowing them to use is as an excuse.

I understand why many parents don’t tell their children about their disabilities; they are trying to protect them. But the children know. Withholding information about who they are and how they learn means they will likely internalise it and feel badly about themselves. Children process very differently from adults and often blame themselves for not being good enough.

When you see it from their perspective, you can see what you need to do differently. Talk to your children about their challenges just like you talk to them about how tall they are or the colour of their eyes. It’s just part of them, and does not define them. Humans show a wide range of abilities — you and your child are somewhere on that continuum. Normalising differences with honesty, support and love will help your child reach their own dreams. Advocate with your child and watch them blossom.

While the weather was not hospitable, the company certainly was! There was rich conversation reflecting on the joys and challenges of fatherhood.

Fathering Project representative, John Kirkland, had travelled down from Sydney for the event and he shared insights from the founder, Prof Bruce Robinson. In his role as a surgeon, Bruce was inspired to start the group following many conversations with men who were critically ill with terminal lung disease. Knowing their life span had been shortened, these men often asked ‘how can I be a good dad with the time left to me?’

John also shared stories from other members and spoke of his experiences of implementing some of the Fathering Project strategies with his own children.

I encourage parents to join the Marist College Fathering Project as this gives you access to a wide range of resources. Click here for more information.

Many thanks to those men who joined us on the evening and I encourage you all to keep an eye open for our Term Three gathering.

Peter Hawes
Assistant Head of School – Mission and Identity

Over the holidays the following boys represented ACT in the Southern States Championships.

Well done to: 
Oliver Clayden, James Smith, Ned Swain, Zander Stoddart, and Patrick Hill. 

Xavier Batch was a member of the U11 Div 1 Canberra Hockey team that won the ‘York Cup’ in Tamworth over the school holidays. It was the first time Canberra has won the cup in the 20 year history of the competition. Well done to Xavier and the whole U11 Div 1 team. 

Anyone interested in trialling for the various regional sports needs to log onto the School Sport ACT website and register for the sport that your child wishes to trial. It is the responsibility of parents to monitor the website for any upcoming sporting events, if your child is interested in competing in the regional competitions.

Please also note: if your child is successful in being selected for an ACT team to participate in a national or regional tournament, you need to write a formal letter to the Deputy Headmaster or Head of Junior School to seek permission for absence from school during this period. Once the College has received such a request, it can then be formally approved for your son’s participation in this activity with School Sport ACT. Secondly, we will also be able to acknowledge his achievement in the College newsletter. 

Paul Mead
Head of Sport