Mercy News - 25 March 2022
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Prayer
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Message from Our Principal
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Student Executive
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RE and Identity
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Key Dates
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Deputy Principal
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Director of Student Engagement & Wellbeing
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School Psychologist
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Business Manager
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Humanities
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Arts & Technology
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Languages- Indonesian
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Information Centre/English
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Neurodiversity Celebration Week
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Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD)
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Careers @ Mercy
Prayer
Loving God,
We thank you for our Catholic school communities in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
We pray that we may walk ‘the way of the gospel’ together,
as we accompany each other in our learning this year.
May the Holy Spirit guide us and give us new eyes, new ears and open hearts,
helping us to bring your love to all we encounter.
Mary, mother of the living gospel, pray for us.
We ask this prayer through Jesus our Lord and teacher,
Amen.
Message from Our Principal
Dear Mercy Community,
It's lovely to be with you at the end of another school week. Over the past fortnight there's been lots going on. From all reports there have been wonderful opportunities for students to engage in activities both inside and outside the classroom and it’s been great to have as much sport as we possibly can back on. I thank the staff for providing the many learning opportunities for the students and thank the students for the spirit in which they engage in all things Mercy.
CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK 2022
This year, all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne celebrated Catholic Education Week 2022 from 13 to 20 March. The theme for Catholic Education Week 2022 was ‘The Way of the Gospel’.
‘The Way of the Gospel’ challenges us to find the living Christ in our midst and to respond and adapt to the questions that are asked in each generation.
- Where do we find the living Christ in the midst of these questions?
- How might our Catholic school communities continue to bring to life the way of the gospel today and in the future?
- How might we continue to invite our students, our families and our staff into the fullness of the way of the gospel?
There are 335 Catholic primary and secondary schools across Melbourne, enrolling more than 150,000 students and employing approximately 17,000 staff. Catholic schools provide a high-quality education in a faith-centred environment. This annual event is held to promote the special ethos of Catholic schools and to highlight the great things that take place in Catholic schools every day.
ENHANCING CATHOLIC SCHOOL IDENTITY (ECSI)
We are preparing to undertake our ECSI surveys. Mercy College and Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne aim for continuous school improvement. An essential element of this improvement is understanding how staff, students and parents/guardians perceive the Catholic identity of our school and what they might like Catholic identity at Mercy College to look like in the years ahead.
Staff, students and parents/guardians have an important voice in our planning and so we have invited all staff, parents/guardians and students to participate in the ECSI Survey.
Responses to the survey will assist us in better understanding how our Catholic identity is expressed. The results will contribute to a reliable picture of our school's Catholic identity, which we will use to inform our school improvement for the next four years.
eSAFETY
Social networking, entertainment and educational activities are the most popular activities online for children and young people, and there can be many positive outcomes of this use.
However, children and young people are at a dynamic stage of development in which risk-taking behaviours and emerging decision-making can lead to negative outcomes (Viner, 2005). As a result, parents need to remain actively involved and vigilant regarding the nature of their children’s online activities, and to continue to communicate and negotiate with children and young people about their use of technology.
Parental involvement in the safe use of technology should start from a child's first use, and parents continue to be a critical influence in children and young people being responsible digital citizens and engaging in online activities safely.
eSafety provides parents and carers with the knowledge skills and tools to support young people to have safe, positive online experiences.
Below is a link to the website which has a number of resources including for parents, young people, children and women.
There are also a number of live webinairs for parents and carers
https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents/webinars
Know that we are committed to working with students and their families to ensure we have safe and positive experiences s online.
SEASON OF LENT
As we continue through the season of Lent we are reminded that this is an opportunity for us to reflect on our lives and to re-examine our relationships with others and with God. It encourages us to make a difference and to live more purposefully and fully.
Let us never lose trust in the patience and mercy of God.
Lila McInerney
College Principal
Student Executive
CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK
St. Patrick’s Mass for Schools
Last Thursday, on St. Patrick’s Day, Amelia P, Co-Captain and Rhea S, Mission Captain had the honor of representing Mercy College alongside Ms Dilettoso at the St. Patrick’s Day Mass for schools as part of Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools celebrations for Catholic Education Week. This opportunity allowed us to pray and meet with other Catholic schools across Melbourne and Archbishop of Melbourne, Archbishop Peter A Comensoli.
Lizzie Blandthorn, was also a guest who joined in prayer and celebration. She is the member for the Electoral district of Pascoe Vale in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, who in the past has been involved in many renovations and recent safety measures within our school.
The celebration was a welcoming experience, it gave us an opportunity to reflect on the current situations happening all around the world and to pray.
To have come together with the other Catholic schools and members of Parliament for the last time in our final year of school, was an exciting and fulfilling experience. We are honored to have represented Mercy College during Catholic Education week at this Mass.
RE and Identity
Year 7 Retreat
Last week Year 7 students came together for their Year 7 Reflection Day. The day cantered around the theme of ‘ Together as Mercy we belong’ and included a variety of activities designed to help the students get to know one another better, to explore the school’s history and grounds, to understand what it means to be a Mercy student and to reflect upon the place of God in their lives. Our guest speaker was an ex-student Theodoula Vorenas who encouraged to students to expand their friendship groups and get involved in school life. The day began with a lovely liturgy in the College Chapel where Ms McInerney presented to our Year 7 leaders their leadership badge of service. A lovely lunch at Coburg Lake saw the students enjoy free time in each other’s company. The students are to be commended for the way they participated in the day.
Project Compassion Activities
The theme of Project Compassion 2022 is ‘For All Future Generations’ and reminds us that the good that we do today will extend and impact the lives of generations to come. It invites us to make the world a better place by working together now. The Mercy College Student Executive have led a number of initiatives to raise funds for Project Compassion this year. Occurring at lunchtimes, the students have organised and led a ‘Just Dance’ competition, a Dodge Ball Competition, a Karaoke competition and a BBQ. Joining Mercy’s commitment to raise funds for Project Compassion, the VCAL class, coordinated by Ms Liz Moore has also organised a number of fundraising activities including a Staff vs Student Volleyball game and a Easter Raffle using Fair Trade Chocolate. All students are to be commended for their involvement in these activities. Every little bit helps to support those in need.
Year 9 ‘Way of the Cross’ Project
This term in Religious Education all Year 9 Students have been completing a unit on 'The Way of the Cross' a study of Jesus' final journey to the Cross. Sometimes known as the 'Stations of the Cross' this unit coincides with our preparation for Holy Week and Easter. Students have been given a particular moment or 'station' in Jesus' journey to the cross and have completed an in depth study of their station through research, which includes examples of art work. This unit culminates with each student creating their own art instillation for the station they have been studying. On Tuesday 22nd March the Year 9 students utilised the Art facilities at the College to create their instillation. Their artwork will then be used at the Easter Liturgy held at the College at the end of the term. A big thank-you to the RE teachers, Ms Callery and Ms Romano as well as our Art teacher extraordinaire Ms Carnibella for supporting the students in this initiative. The pieces created reflected a modern understanding of Jesus’ suffering tied to humanity’s suffering in our world today.
Josie Dilettoso
Director of RE and Identity
Key Dates
Wednesday 30th March 2022
- Years 7-10 Parent Teacher Student Conferences 1:30pm-8:00pm (Unit 3 and 4 classes to run)
Monday 4th April 2022
- Term One Year 10 Wellbeing Day
Friday 8th April 2022
- Final Day Term One
- Holy Week Liturgy
- Learning Showcase
Deputy Principal
Feedback is a compelling influence on learner achievement. When teachers seek or at least are open to what learners know, what they understand, where they make errors, when they have misconceptions when they are not engaged- then teaching and learning can be synchronised and powerful. Feedback to teachers makes learning visible.
Source: Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning, Oxford, UK: Routledge, p173
One of the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) is feedback. Feedback
provides the bridge between assessment and learning and aims to inform a student about their progress and overall performance as well as identifying areas for future growth and improvement.
Providing frequent and ongoing feedback is a significant means of improving achievement in learning. Effective feedback assists the learner to reflect on their learning and their learning strategies so they can make adjustments to make better progress in their learning.
Progressive Reporting and Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences are key elements in providing such feedback. They also provide an opportunity for parents to work in partnership with their daughter’s teachers in developing a shared understanding of what student progress looks like for their daughter.
Reporting Milestones
At Mercy College there is a strong emphasis on providing feedback to all involved in the learning partnership (students, teachers, parents/guardians and the community). Feedback is viewed as a crucial part of improving and empowering performance. Mercy College provides students and families’ access to continuous online reporting.
Reporting Milestones will be available for parents to access via PAM from Monday 28 March where each subject reports on at least one task per term.
Years 7-10 Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences
The Years 7-10 Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences will be held on Wednesday 30 March.
This is an opportunity for teaching staff at Mercy College to share with families their understanding of the needs of each Year 7-10 student, working in partnership with parents, guardians and students to discuss strategies that will enhance the understanding of the course content. Such partnerships are essential to the success of each student and ensure that each girl can achieve their personal best.
We encourage all parents and guardians to make appointments with their daughter’s teachers. Students are strongly encouraged to participate in these interviews.
We look forward to meeting with you and your daughter, and discussing how to best support and extend her to achieve her goals and ‘flourish’ in the learning environment.
Families will receive further correspondence outlining how to access and make bookings for the Years 7-10 Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences.
In the meantime, we encourage your daughter to continue to apply herself to the best of her ability across all her subjects and look forward to discussing your daughter’s progress with you.
Grading Scale
During 2021 the College undertook a review of the ‘Grading Scale’ used to make judgments on student assessment. As a result a new ‘Grading Scale’ will be used for all Year 7-10 assessment in 2022. The table below outlines how letter grades will be allocated based on percentage results.
Nick Ambrozy
Deputy Principal
Director of Student Engagement & Wellbeing
Activities Week 2022
During one week in the Academic Year, each year level at Mercy College participates in a compulsory activity - Activities Week. The week is aimed at assisting the students’ social, emotional and spiritual development and also allows the “fostering of personal growth”.
The scheduling of these activities during this one week minimises disruption to the learning-teaching program throughout the year. All students from Years 7 through to 12 and all Mercy College teaching staff will be involved in Activities Week during the second week of Term 2, May 3 – May 6. Monday May 2, is a Student Free Day.
During the last two weeks of this term, each year level will receive further information about their respective activities and communications, including permission consent and medical forms, will be sent home. It is important that all medical information is completed and the College is advised on any medications that will be required to be taken on the camp. If there are specific questions or information that needs to be shared relating to a camp, please contact the student’s Homeroom teacher or Learning and Wellbeing Level Leader.
All activities will be run according to COVID safe protocols. If a student is a confirmed or probable case and on camp while infectious, the parent/guardian will be required to collect their daughter from the camp. If this were to happen, some students on the camp may be identified as household-like contacts and be required to quarantine for 7 days. In this instance the College would seek advice from the local public health unit as to the course of action. Students are strongly encouraged to conduct rapid antigen test the morning of the camp. The College will continue to keep abreast of the Government COVID requirements and hence some of the above actions may change based on the advice at the time.
Lunch deliveries to the College
Students are not permitted to order food to arrive at the College via Uber or any other food delivery service. If parents/guardians are dropping off lunch or resources to the College, they must do this via Reception. Parents/guardians are not permitted to deliver fast food to the College for their daughter. If a student forgets their lunch and does not have money to purchase lunch from the Cafeteria, they can present at Reception and lunch will be provided. These rules are in place to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of the College community.
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Jane Goodall
Vanessa Folino
Director of Student Engagement & Wellbeing
School Psychologist
Special announcement from Psychologist, Rachel Calalesina
Dear students, parents and guardians,
It is with much sadness that I am announcing I will be leaving Mercy College at the end of this Term.
Mercy College is an incredibly special community that welcomes students and families from a diverse range of backgrounds. It has been a great pleasure being part of this community and building connections with students, parents, families as well as staff members. I feel privileged that so many students have felt comfortable discussing their thoughts, feelings and experiences with me in sessions, and I wish all the students the best of luck as they progress throughout their secondary years of schooling. I would also like to thank parents, guardians and families for working collaboratively with me to support our school community.
I would like to formally thank our School Principal, Lila McInerney, for her faith and trust in me working closely with the students and families and for all her ongoing support and consideration provided throughout my time at the college. I would also like to formally thank the Director of Student Engagement and Wellbeing, Vanessa Folino, and my friend and colleague, Psychologist Jo Banks, for their continual support and kindness.
If you/your child has seen me previously and would like to formally say goodbye and schedule a check-in session before the end of term, please feel free to email me at rcalalesina@mercycoburg.catholic.edu.au.
Thank you to the entire school community for welcoming me to the college, and I wish all of you the best of luck for what your future brings.
Rachel Calalesina
Psychologist
Business Manager
Term One Holidays Uniform Shop Hours:
Wednesday 13th March and Thursday 14th April, 9:00am-3:00pm
Thursday 21st April , 9:00am – 3:00pm
Access via Gate 2 (Sydney Road)
(No appointments will be scheduled)
Humanities
Year 12 Legal Studies
On the 11th of March 2022, the Year 12 Legal Studies students had the opportunity to listen to criminologist, Arthur Bolkas, who spoke to us about his experiences in prison and the criminal justice system.
We were able to gain an understanding of what it is like to spend time in prison as well as learning different statistics. With Arthur, nothing was off limits. This provided insight into the thought process behind criminals and how making one mistake can affect your whole life. We were privileged enough to be told about his friend who was unfortunately part of the 50% of youth offenders who return to prison after their first offence. Ultimately this was an incredible learning experience that we can take with us throughout the year.
Claudia D & Angelique K
SHG5
Arts & Technology
Year 9 Art has kicked off to a great start. We are back in the classroom and doing what we do best, create amazing artworks. Using the famous Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, as our inspiration and guide to create a ceramic tile. We have explored concepts of faith, passion and freedom of speech to depict our thoughts through our artworks. Stay tuned for the final artworks in a few weeks time.
Students in Year 8 Textiles have explored the Finnish fashion and lifestyle designers Marimekko to learn how they use the elements and principles of design in their work. Students then used these to create a design for their sewing kit. Now we are exploring the sewing machines and the students are really looking forward to using these to produce a simple garment.
Unit 3 Food Studies are in the process of completing their first outcome and started with an experiment looking at the effect of acids, heat and mechanical forces on proteins.
Languages- Indonesian
Indonesian partner school update
As most of the College Community would be aware, Mercy College has an established partner school relationship with a school in Indonesia.
In 2018, Mercy College was fortunate to be accepted into the BRIDGE (Building Relationships through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement) program, a program organized by the Asia Education Foundation, an initiative of Asialink at the University of Melbourne. It was through this program that Mercy College was partnered with SMP Progresif Bumi Shalawat, a co-ed, boarding, Islamic school situated in East Java in Indonesia.
Since 2018, we have continued to foster our partnership with one another through participating in several shared activities. One of these occurred in March last, when we both celebrated the International Day of Happiness.
Have a listen to this podcast to hear about our partnership to date:
https://aefbuildingbridges.podbean.com/e/episode3-keep-calm-stay-wise-be-kind/
Information Centre/English
Poetry to the Rescue
On Tuesday 8 March all Year 9 students experienced an author visit. Steven Herrick, one of our Australian author and poet, is the author of By the river, the text that they will study in Term 2. Steven talked about his love of writing, poetry and visiting schools. This was intertwined with the reading of various poems that he had written. The Year 9 students responded positively to the guest speaker and his poems, here are some of their thoughts.
Steven Herrick is quite energetic and also quite funny. He talked to us about several books he has written, one of them being By the river, the novel we will be reading during English next term. Steven writes verse poems, he told us about his life and experiences being a poet and provided us with many comical stories. Steven then used several students as subjects for poems which he wrote on the spot. One of the chosen students was Rebekkah, he used her for a poem called ‘My favorite pet’ and it said that her favorite pet was boys! We all loved that poem, it was really amusing. I do hope that I get to see Steven Herrick again as I really enjoyed the incursion. Alanna 9A
Steven Herrick came to our school and was talking about his poems and how he writes them. He read a few of his poems to us and explained their meanings. He talked about By The River and explained that the story was based on events that had occurred in his life. He also told us a little bit about himself and he even created a poem about some of the Year 9 students. Overall it was a great experience meeting him. Francesca 9B
Steven Herrick performed his hilarious and wild poems that brought many smiles and laughs. He showed that poetry can express many emotions and thoughts about any topic. He also explained that you don’t need to live such a crazy life to have inspiration, something small but important can lead to bigger ideas. Kyara 9B
Neurodiversity Celebration Week
Neurodiversity Celebration Week aims to celebrate the advantages of being neurodiverse and raising awareness about people within our school community and beyond who experience the challenges that ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia & Dyspraxia bring. Neurodiverse people have many gifts and strengths. They have had to work hard to overcome the challenges and obstacles caused by their learning differences. As a Mercy community, if we are to create a more inclusive, supportive and understanding environment then we must celebrate diversity and recognise the advantages of being neurodiverse.
Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD)
Careers @ Mercy
WORK EXPERIENCE 2022
The Work Experience dates for 2022 are Week 2 of Term 2 Monday 2nd May – Friday 6th May.
It is a compulsory whole year level program that all students participate in and Year 10 classes are canceled in this week.
Students have several opportunities during their weekly Next Step sessions to prepare for work experience in term 1 2022.
Students are required to complete a work experience form AND due to Covid an additional Work Experience Covid 19 Form. These forms are a legal contract between the students, parents/guardians, employer and the school to ensure the safety and protection of our students.
Please note, to avoid any processing delays, the employee and parent/guardian must first sign the work experience arrangement form before the form is returned to school. All forms are available on the Google classroom page for each year 10 class and also via the link below.
See the Department of Education & Training website for Work Experience (WE) see here
The Work Experience Manual also contains all the information regarding WE guidelines and is a great reference for Work Experience.