I certainly hope that you and your family had a relaxing and refreshing Easter break. We welcome our Somerset community to a term that will no doubt go down in history.
Please view our message from the Chairman of the College Board, Tony Hickey.
You would have seen the many messages and commentary about schools and their operation. I applaud the Premier for providing the hope of a timeframe for the first five (5) weeks. To recap, the College is continuing to offer our successful online programme, Somerset@Home. We will also have supervision for any students where families make the decision to send them to the campus. That supervision will include access to the online environment from the classroom. Students should attend in their sports or day uniform, not casual clothes. We will monitor attendance online and on campus with a hope to return to normal classes as soon as possible.
Nothing would give us greater joy than to be together again, but we will, as we have done consistently since this journey began, prioritise the governmental health advice and follow those directions. We enjoy autonomy in our decision making and we will take advantage of that as soon as we can.
We look forward to reconnecting with the beautiful faces of the students and reassuring them that all is well and all will be well.
My name is Karma Denzongpa-Bathols and for my Personal Project I have chosen to create an EP. An EP is a compilation of songs, which is longer than a single but shorter than an album.
I have grown up in a family passionate about music and the arts. From a young age it was clear that I loved to sing, I loved expressing myself through music and song. It only made sense that for this big project I do something I love; sing.
The Personal Project is a year long adventure where Year 10 students create something they are excited and passionate about. In my album I have chosen to record four songs; Lost Without You – Freya Rider, Don’t Know Why – Norah Jones, Forever – Lewis Capaldi and River – Joni Mitchell. Louise Perryman, who was Executive producer on The Voice, helped me with my song selection. She told me I had to connect and love the songs I picked. They also had to suit my vocal range and the feel of my voice.
At this stage I am recording and learning my songs. Due to the craziness of the world I have had to make some adjustments to my Project. Instead of going to a recording studio I have made my own at home and because using a band was going to be extremely difficult, I have been contacting multiple musicians including Aussie legend Jack Jones to record backing tracks for me to sing too.
I have started experimenting with the software I am using to record my songs, Garage Band and found success. When recording with the microphone it picks up all your voices' imperfections and flaws so you need to know the song really well.
My Personal Project really helped me think more creatively and improve my skills in time management. You have to learn to progress in your Personal Project whilst also managing your assignments and school. This term our goal is to start and complete writing our essay. I am happy where I am at this stage, I am up to the most important part whilst also doing research about product production! I am excited to hear my results!
At the beginning of a new year students in the PYP collaboratively discuss standards as a group and agree upon a set of 'essential agreements' to set up learning for success. These are not a set of imposed rules, rather a team approach to agreeing how they will work together to achieve desired outcomes.
At the start of this term, with families learning from home, students have been asked to work together with those at home to form their own Family Essesntial Agreement, to give them a common language and something to refer to when the day is not running to expectation.
A few years ago my family had one of the best holidays we have ever experienced, and it only lasted two days. My wife, daughter, son and I flew to Melbourne for ANZAC Day where we walked with thousands to join tens of thousands to commemorate the fallen at dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance.
Standing on the side of Flinders Street, with what seemed like all of Melbourne, we cheered the parade of the veterans. After a brief lunch (and a little nap) we headed to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to experience a crowd of 100,000 passionately cheering, and loudly umpiring, Essendon and Collingwood as they played a classic game.
Each year we do the same thing, except in our homes. There is the dawn service, the parade and the afternoon AFL (these days accompanied by ANZAC cookies made by the granddaughters).
This is the essence of ANZAC Day, and it always has been. It begins with a sacred pause to remember the sacrifice made by those who lost their lives. While it is essential to reflect on the past, we must not dwell there, this is why we have the parade. It is to thank those who returned and encourage them by our cheers that their sacrifice and pain caused a wonderful good. And, once we have reflected and thanked, it is time to celebrate the future that has been secured. Breakfast at the RSL, two-up and beers with mates, barbecues in the park and, of course, the footy.
This year all of the public elements have been snatched from us, but the spirit will only be lost if we allow it.
Tomorrow, keep the spirit by maintaining the traditions. Join Light up the Dawn or watch the College’s online ANZAC Chapel, or do both. Share some stories about family or friends who have served or are currently serving in the military. If possible, phone or email them to thank them. Conclude it all by finding somewhere in your house or yard, or online, to share food, laughter and love with each other – and maybe a bit of kick to kick!
From the College ANZAC Service …
For almost all our College students and their parents this is the first time you have ever commemorated ANZAC Day while actually experiencing something of what our military, and their families at home, experience in war. This is not about trivialising their memories; our sacrifices, inconveniences and fears are nothing compared to theirs.
Take whatever sorrows, deprivations and anxieties our current global crisis bring you now, multiply them by a thousand and stretch into years, not months, and then you have a sense of what we remember and honour on ANZAC Day.
We enjoy a wonderful freedom in our nation that is built on the broken bones, bodies and hearts of all those who have served and those who kept families together while they did. We must always be thankful for that, but especially so in an ANZAC memorial where the only focus is to ensure that we do not forget. The ANZAC service has become a sacred event for our nation, as it should be.
ANZAC Day is not just about remembering those who served, and currently serve, it is about honouring them. The greatest way to do that is not in the minute’s silence but in a lifetime of our own service.
All war is the national product of three dark sins that live in each of us: envy, greed and hatred. When the desire to have what others have, and to have much more of what we want, and to judge others by what we think about them not by who they are, then division and enmity are fed and become rife. We have war.
To honour those who sacrificed let us, every day, do all we can to crush those dark sins personally, so they never again rise nationally.
Let us not envy others for what they have and are, but instead affirm and encourage them and choose to rise to equal excellence in our own skills and opportunities.
Let us not hoard the things that we treasure but instead generously share out of our excess that others might do well.
And, most importantly, let us be vigilant to stomp out the seeds of hatred – prejudices, gossip, judgmentalism and baseless criticism - before they become strong and overwhelm us.
So then, as we commemorate the Anzacs, fill your hearts with thankfulness and your minds with the decision to honour by action.
Our Deputy Headmaster, Michael Brohier has penned a poem expressing the void left with few students to fill the school. All staff look forward to a return of the lively we College we've come to love.
To you - our students (Saturday 18 April 2020)
I miss your faces,Each weekday morn,
As you stroll past familiar places,
Paths well - worn,Leaving ebullient traces;
Each smile you offer,
Conversation proffer,
Each heart you touch
with your life, your love,
Yes, there is so much!
And so, after that,
I (and by this, I mean ‘We’),
miss the echoing sounds,
as you gather in the Quad,
Your odd,
Now, strangely ‘comforting’ rebellions
against school rules,
Yes, we poor fools,
For placing store on that which,
- in the scheme of things –
now matter, not one jot!
We miss your prescience at every turn,
Boisterous, charming,
yet willing to learn,
always hungry,
at every brisk winter’s - recess - sojourn!
All that, and so much more,
We now yearn for…
Our school,
Reduced to just fine buildings now,
Is not a school,
Without its soul – you,
Without your faces,
Without you!
And so, we miss your faces,
We miss the traces
Of life that you leave,
On every sleeve you touch,
Every heart you brush,
With your brusque, adolescent charm,
Your insistence on nothing
but heady life!
This, and so much more,We miss – of you.
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