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I am honoured to have been offered the opportunity to be Acting Executive Principal at Footscray High School for Term 4. I am the substantive principal at Strathmore Secondary College which is a large secondary school in the suburb of Strathmore near Essendon. I believe this opportunity will benefit both my own learning and, in turn, Strathmore Secondary College.
At Footscray High School our pillars are:
These pillars apply to all members of the school community, students, staff and families and place an emphasis on shared responsibility. In welcoming students back this term, I spoke about our school pillars and what they mean in our learning context. In summary, I asked the students to ‘Be their Best’ and to take advantage of every opportunity our outstanding school offers.
Of particular importance to parents are our Student Coordination arrangements. The central role of Program Managers and Learning Community Leaders is to work with students and families to ensure students are happy and successful at school. Each campus is led and overseen by an Assistant Principal and Campus Principal. The information below will assist parents to know the relevant staff member to contact.
Year 12 – 2024
We congratulate our Year 12 students on the successful completion of their final weeks at Footscray High School. In my final speech to the students at Graduation, I encouraged them to cherish their memories at Footscray High School as they move forward to new adventures, new dreams, new challenges and new successes.
The manner in which the students have conducted themselves during this time has been outstanding.
Graduation
On Friday 25 October, we celebrated our annual Graduation Dinner at Flemington Racecourse with 650 attendees.
This was a wonderful family event. It was so gratifying to be able to come together again as a school community.
Our Year 12 students and their parents joined with staff to celebrate the completion of their formal schooling. We presented each student with their graduation certificate and announced the College’s Valedictorians Xavier and Sophia who gave an outstanding speech to their fellow Year 12 students.
Thank you to the Senior School Team: Vicki Tentzoglidis, Liz Simpson, Malcolm Fretz, Leni Vamvesos and Sun-Mee Railton for their outstanding leadership of Senior School.
I have greatly appreciated the welcome I have received from the Footscray High School community.
I am happy to meet with parents or carers to discuss your child’s learning and to hear your feedback. If you would like to take the opportunity to meet with me, please contact Kaylene Tanti – Executive Assistant, to make an appointment.
Jillian English
Acting Executive Principal
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are one great way our teaching staff collaborate in a cross-campus, cross-faculty manner to share and improve our practice. At Footscray High School for PLCs, teaching staff meet regularly throughout the year in groups of six to eight to investigate a particular topic using an inquiry process. It is all about helping each other to help our students. This year’s PLCs were framed around the theme of ‘Connecting through Differentiation’ and PLC topics offered by leaders included:
Staff self-selected their preferences of topics and all staff who put in a preference on time ended up receiving their first preference of PLC topic! During the cycle PLC members conducted literature reviews, surveyed students, trialled, retooled and retried practices, tools and pedagogical frameworks, observed each other, and more, all in order to explore their topic in the context of supporting FHS students.
At the end of the cycle, to further share our learning, we held two afternoons of PLC presentations to highlight findings, evidence, tools and more. A little bit of food, and a lot of ‘Pecha Kucha’ presentations assisted in making the tone both informative and celebratory.
PLC insights don’t just finish at the end of the cycle. The theme stays with us over the years until we can ensure that we’ve investigated it in depth and applied it effectively. Topics that merit further work carry through to subsequent cycles and we can continue the ongoing process of learning and growing. If you’d like to hear more about PLCs feel free to contact Maria Chrisant or Prudence Mann who head up these processes in the school.
For a bit of Halloween fun, our junior campus libraries invited year 7 to 9 students to participate in two activities; the Spooky Spine Poetry Competition and the Creepy Crawl, our annual Halloween costume parade. It was fantastic to see so many get involved and prizes were awarded to the students whose efforts were deemed particularly outstanding!!
Pilgrim’s Costume prize winners were:
Eney – dressed as The Witchfinder General of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.
Cael – dressed as Demon Lord.
Toby & Chris – dressed as Lemon and Lime.
Barkly’s Costume prize winners were:
Griffin – dressed as Emily, from Corpse Bride.
Henry, Orbie, Samuel & Johno – dressed as The Wiggles.
Luka – dressed as Genghis Khan.
Thanks and congratulations also to all of the students who submitted entries in the Spooky Spine Poetry Competition where students had to create poems using the titles on the spine of library books. There were many great entries, but our three main prize winners were:
3rd place: Henrietta
“The host William Wenton and the Luridium thief,
Burn our bodies down,
Me and Earl and the dying girl,
Nothing more to tell.”
2nd place: Ned
“I’d rather not risk a night in terror tower,
One of us is next,
None shall sleep,
Fear the king of crows.”
1st place: Jessica
“Surrender before the devil breaks you,
The body lies black and blue,
The lost girl’s gone.”
On Monday and Tuesday this week, our Year 8 Leadership volunteers and Year 9 School for Student Leadership team visited Footscray City Primary and Footscray Primary School. FHS students led 2.5 hours of engaging activities, including Q&A, Icebreakers, Number Soccer, Goal Setting and Gaga. This was a fantastic opportunity for our students to lead and support each other. We thank the teachers who participated and helped our students build their confidence and communication skills. The collaboration and positive vibes enabled a successful day.
We look forward to seeing the grade six students at our junior campuses on December 10 for State Transition Day.
Kindred Studios Bands Night
On Monday October 14 FHS students took the stage at our favourite off campus venue, Kindred Studios in Yarraville. Looking and sounding fantastic yet again, 89 of our music students from years 9 to 12 performed in 15 acts over nearly 4 hours. For some, this was a nervous first time in a professional setting; for our seasoned Year 12 musicians, it was the last of many such events and a nostalgic farewell.
Each band had a name chosen by the members such as WD40, Abi and Chipmunks and The Pilgrims. There were groups from the various elective music classes and bands that students have initiated and led. There was a student composition getting its first performance and songs that had been reimagined to serve new purposes. All of the groups were well prepared and delivered their material convincingly. Our Year 12s got to play their sets as a final run-through before their performance exams a few days later. If they played as well for the VCAA assessors as they did this Monday night, then we should see some good results.
Student comperes Sylvie and Kiana introduced each band and kept the audience engaged between acts. Congratulations to all of the students who rose to the occasion and demonstrated the results of dedication to their craft to produce a night of very entertaining performances.
As the last interschool sports event for 2024 took place today, it was a fitting effort from our FHS regional hockey team on the field today.
Starting on fire with a win over Suzanne Cory and a goal in the last play from Matt, we narrowly missed out on states with 4 very close games that could’ve gone either way.
A fantastic team effort led by Renee, Fred and Matt to uphold FHS pillars today.
Other results this week include the year 7 boys regional basketball and the junior girls hockey team who fought hard on Tuesday but didn’t take the chocolates. Term 4 interschool sport has come to an end with all our qualifying teams now eliminated.
I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank all the students, staff, coaches, parents and supporting FHS community who have been part of the 2024 sporting calendar year. It takes a village to implement the sports program and without everybody showing their support and getting involved, especially the students for having the endeavour to better themselves with movement and sport. As the focus moves on to the Great Vic Bike ride in November and 2025 planning. FHS will be back, bigger and stronger than ever in 2025. Go the ‘Scray.
A heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who attended the FHS Senior Art Exhibition!We were thrilled to share our students’ incredible artistic talents with you. Your presence meant the world to us and our talented students, who were super excited to showcase their work.Your support and enthusiasm made this event truly special.
Best regards,Malisa, Dinah and Hannah
Congratulations to the 7 senior rowers who attended Lauriston regatta in Geelong over the weekend.
The students provided some exhibition rowing against top Victorian schools and have shown huge growth already in this 2024/2025 season. I cannot wait to see them flourish as training continues!
Student in attendance:
Year 11 – Tom, Charlie, Indi
Year 10 – Levi, Renee, Charlotte
Year 9 – May
Now we look ahead to The Melbourne Head on the 16th November which is held on the Yarra. An event established in 2004, and has since become the Head Race Championship of Australia – the largest regatta of its type. If you find time in your schedule, please pop across. It’s always a ripper!