Newsletter, Term 4, 2024

As our newsletter has grown in size the website pages have struggled to keep up with the great content shown! This issue will guide users through a series of pages hopefully capturing the essence of the newsletter, showing our community the excellent happenings around TC.

You can click on an area of interest or scroll through each section using the buttons at the end of each page.

Congratulations to everyone on reaching the end of another successful year here @ TC.

As always, the newsletter is an excellent showcase of the many opportunities available to students, staff, families and community members.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate all VCE Students, including our VCE VM students.  Everyone did superbly and should be very proud. As part of this, we have many students challenging the status quo around what a successful school education looks like, with outcomes such as VCE, VCE VM and non-ATAR pathways used to move onto further education or apprenticeships.

A few staff are leaving us this year. With over 130 staff here, this is a normal part of the process, especially with some retirements, moving Interstate, overseas, to the country, or their new roles. We wish Tony, Anthony, Mia, Steve, Mitch, Hannah, Mani and Adam all the best in their future endeavours.

In 2025, we have some key priorities that we are looking forward to focusing on. One focus is on “high-quality learning facilitated by high-quality teaching,” with high expectations for all of our community and a focus on celebrating individual growth and success. Another focus will be on how our community builds relationships with each other. Our staff will be carrying out training on unconditional positive regard whilst students will look at how they develop healthy relationships with others and respect each other as individuals as we continue to ensure that TC is everyones safe space, especially as we continue to aim to be unapologetically inclusive.

I want to finish by wishing everyone a safe holiday. I look forward to welcoming our truly great community back in 2025.

Learning Showcase

Across the learning areas of the school we have had some fantastic achievements inside and outside of the classroom. Some of the notable achievements include;

Ongoing excellence in the interschool debating and Music, Drama and Dance showcases as well as the Art Day Yay, Art Show and the TC Market exhibiting the creativity of our students. 

Music put on weekly Stage Dive gigs, a sellout May concert series, another Unleash gig for Victorian Youth Fest, busked at Macedon Square, recorded original songs in the studio, and rocked the walls of the PAC all year long! 

We also had students participating in competitions including the Parliament Prize Speech Competition, Science Talent Search, Australian History Competition and Big Science Competitions, with notable achievements 1 high distinction, 2 distinctions and 1 credit in the Big Science Competition and 1 high distinction and 1 credit in the Junior Olympiad for Science and 1 high distinction in the Biology Olympiad. Special mention to Jaimie Sarysky and Aiden Chan for their high level awards, with Aiden Chan being invited to attend the National Science Summer School at ANU in Canberra.

Well done to Ruby Puskas who won a High Distinction in the Australian History Competition and Nathan Mitchell and Isaac Renehan who both achieved distinctions.

In terms of Maths competitions Olivia Green, Jamie Sarisky, Zoe Farrow and Max Kong placed first and Gabe, Rishi, John and Cole placed 4th in the MAV Maths Games, where students work together to beat other schools. 

In the Australian Intermediate Mathematical Olympiad Distinctions were awarded to: Zachary Liu, Jamie Sarisky, Yui Sawada and in the Australian Matematics Competition Distinctions went to: Alvand Aboufazeli, Afra Aboufazeli, Tom Haviaridis, Will Goudge, Steni Dimopolous, Yutong Guo, Arad Farhadpour, Nathan Chan, Toby Bell and High Distinctions went to: Zachary Liu, Lennox Lee, Jamie Sarisky, Yui Sawada, Aidan Chan. Also Zachary Liu won a Gold award in Australian Informatics Olympiad.

Well done to Millyca Robinson and Kate Dickeson for winning the Parliament Prize for their speech about teaching AUSLAN in schools.

The Robotics teams have continued to dominate state and national competitions, participating earlier in the year in the World Championships and recently junior and senior teams once again qualifying for Nationals and travelled to Sydney.

In Animals  we celebrated the grand opening of the new Aviary For Life, with representatives from Zoos Victoria coming along to celebrate the exciting event at our Expo. Two students completed the Zoos Leadership Program and had attended the Zoos Fighting Extinction events at the Melbourne Zoo to share what we do in turtle conservation.

We have also had 2 Entry cross curricular PBL programs and 2 FLE programs including a mock United Nations Forum and the TC Shark Tank and a group putting together the TC Market. The final of Shark Tank was held in week 8 and was very competitive. Congratulations to the winners of the $500 prize money Jacob Redhouse and Nicholas Logothetis. Additionally we had a team of Entry students compete in an interschool design thinking PBL this term with their idea about making packaging out of mushroom waste, winning $1000 for the school and best school overall! 

We also had many amazing opportunities to get out of the school environment and into the wider community through excursions and camps. These have included trips to the city and the sea, into local parks, shopping centres, creeks and lakes, to rivers and mountains, with and without snow, to universities, zoos and farms, to restaurants and factories and even overseas. 

VM students created an amazing Escape Room, ran the bbq and stalls at the pool party and aths day, cooked up meals for Fareshare and Carenet, tended the Rose Garden, and began modifying a go-kart into an electric vehicle whilst becoming qualified electricians, carpenters, mechanics, beauty technicians, and early childhood educators. 

Sporting and outdoor educations excursions included ice hockey, fencing, yoga, wheelchair basketball, frisbee golf, V02 max testing, lawn bowls, ultimate frisbee, snorkelling, skiing, swimming, rock climbing, snow boarding, hiking, bush walking, caving and bike riding. 

An amazing year of learning!

Thank you to all the staff who facilitated these great experiences for us and those students who participated and helped make the experiences fun and memorable.

By Student Learning Area Leaders

Final Assembly Awards

Congratulations to the following students for their successes in 2024 acknowledged by the following awards:

• Kwong Lee Dow Scholarship - Jamie Sarisky

• Long Tan Youth Leadership - Year 12 and 10 - Scarlett Evans and Millyca Robinson

• ADF Future Innovators - Year 10 and 12 - Olivia Green and Jack Greatorex

• Menzies Shield (Leadership) - Tya Robinson

• Expanded Measures of Success Award - Kate Dickenson

• Empowered Learner Award - Charlotte Green

Look back on this terms TCNEWS articles, written by TC Journalists Ruby Egan-Douglas, Rory Opie and Mietta Palmer TCNEWS provides great stories to our community! To revisit our term 4 stories, click on the pictures below and to and stay update, find Next Week @TC in your email inbox every Friday or under the community tab on the website.