2024 | ISSUE 2 | SJC Newsletter

Principal's Video News

Hello everyone and welcome to this second newsletter of 2024. Over the last two weeks, there have been multiple parent information evenings and awards ceremonies. I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to attend because good communication between families and school is an important element of a successful educational journey for students.

I had the opportunity to speak to many of the parent gatherings and I emphasised the importance of school and family working together. One way to assist this is effective use of ‘PAM’ (Parent Access Module) in Simon. It allows you to monitor your son’s progress, see what work he has due and access outlines of the classes he is taking. Later in the Newsletter, Deputy Principal – Learning, Lisa Pope, provides some more information to assist you in gaining the full benefit from PAM and other online school resources.

Earlier this week, I attended a staff meeting where teaching colleagues led professional development activities. Peter Ryan took us through how to access and process really detailed data on each of our classes and our students to ensure that we are in a position to meet the needs of each boy. Brad Smith showed us how to monitor and use individual student attendance data and how it relates to student achievement. Rebecca Barker outlined our instructional coaching model which is in place to support new and current staff and Scott Harris challenged us to use artificial intelligence software to help improve our questioning technique and teach boys to ask the right questions to get the outcome they desire. I left the meeting enormously impressed by the commitment of our teachers and somewhat overawed by their capacity to utilise technology to augment the craft of teaching.

In the last newsletter, I detailed some new programs operating in the school that are designed to provide students with additional opportunities to pursue excellence in their chosen field. I am delighted to be able to outline three new developments which will further assist our students in their pursuit and achievement of excellence.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are being used extensively across the world to provide engaging and effective training and educational experiences. I am proud to announce St Joseph’s will be installing the largest VR and AR school laboratory in Australia. We have commissioned this to be installed in April and expect to have students learning in this space (the mezzanine area above the O.S. Adams Gymnasium foyer) by May. There will be a formal launch at around this time.

I am delighted to announce that we have appointed a Coach / Technical Director of Football (Soccer). Josip Zilic will be working with our elite players and teams at training during this semester and for their ACC games in Term 2. Josip has a wealth of experience including a 20 year involvement coaching at a variety of levels with the North Geelong Warriors. He will be supported by Tom Trupkovic as our Liverpool Site Lead. Josip’s appointment is an important step in our comprehensive 7-12 elite program to support the identification and development of football / soccer at St Joseph’s.

For about 15 years, the Edmund Rice campus has been well served by the Adam Bryant Wellness Centre and its weights and fitness training equipment.  As part of our commitment to providing facilities and programs to assist students who are elite or aspire to be elite in their chosen sport, we will be upgrading this facility over the Easter break. It will include the installation of state-of-the-art training facilities and will support the work of our Federation University PhD student researcher and elite sports coaches and programs. It will also ensure that students have the same or better training facilities that they have access to at the Westcourt campus.

Last week it was wonderful to celebrate our 2023 high achievers and award winners at the College Awards Ceremonies. We welcomed back our high achievers from the graduating class of 2023 along with their families, from College Dux Henry Beggs, 2023 College Captain Jaeger Fawcett and guest of honour Dr Zac Fitzgerald (Class of 2012). The award winners included 23 graduates who achieved study scores of over 90. I hope that seeing these high achieving graduates and award winners from the other year levels, inspires each of our students to strive for personal excellence in their studies this year.

Each year the College is provided with summary data of the tertiary institutions that last year’s graduates applied to for the current year and the areas in which they have chosen to study.

Students Course Offers for 2024

Students Course Preference Type

This data only reflects those students who are seeking to continue their education in the tertiary sector. It does not include those who have chosen to enter the workforce, continue their studies at a TAFE or those who have commenced apprenticeships. It is important to note that all pathways are equally valid and valued and are a question of individual goals and ambitions. Within the VCE, our Vocational Major stream and our scored and unscored stream of students are all still expected to achieve academically and vocationally.

The destination data reflects the goals of our VCE graduates and in some senses gives us a measure of success, as do the VCE results and number of students placed in apprenticeships. A good job is not the only or even the most important outcome of a good education. Pragmatically, Education helps you get a job, which in turn helps the country because you contribute to its overall productivity, but education is deeper than that.

A good education, like that provided at St Joseph’s, gives us so much more than a job and an income. It helps make us happy and it helps us make others happy, it helps us learn to be problem solvers, to develop our spiritual selves, to learn skills that help us in our relationship with others, to learn about ourselves and really importantly to learn how to learn which sets us up as lifetime learners.

This week the first of our Year 7 camps will take place. I wish our younger students well as they embark on this experience. I also wish to thank and acknowledge those staff who have organised the camps and those who will be away from their own home and families to help create this memorable experience for our Year 7 boys.

God Bless

Tony Paatsch
Principal