Week 5 Term 4 2019

MINERVA SCHOOL

DATES TO

REMEMBER

November

Friday 22nd Possum Magic

Performance—

whole School

excursion

December

Wednesday

11th Presentation

Day & Year 12

Graduation

Wednesday

18th Last Day of

Term 4 for

Students

Learning for Life

66 Eton St, SUTHERLAND NSW 2232 T 02 9521 3433 F 02 9545 3316 E minerva-s.school@det.nsw.edu.au www.minerva-s.schools.nsw.edu.au

Week 5 Term 4 2019

DATES TO

REMEMBER

May

Tuesday 14th

School photos

Wednesday

29th Vaccinations Visit

2

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE Dear parents and carers

Term 4 is always a busy one for our students, families and staff. One of the highlights for Minerva Staff this term was being presented with a NSW Sutherland St George region world teachers day award from the Australian College of Educators. Along with Bates Drive and Cooks school, Minerva received a team award for outstanding contribution to educational initiatives for our excellent works in successful using a transdisciplinary model of embedded occupational therapy. Congratulations to all our staff who have worked hard to ensure our learning for life program is a success and thank you to the parents who have supported us in this endeavour. Our success speaks volumes about our small but strong school community. Please note the date of our annual School Presentation Day –Wednesday 11th November, when we come together to celebrate the successes of our whole school community. This is a relaxed and informal occasion, giving families an opportunity to recognise student achievements in front of their classroom staff and peers, followed by a school-provided BBQ picnic along with other families. Our Year 12 students, their families and staff will celebrate their time at Minerva School with a special Graduation ceremony in the school library at the conclusion of the presentation day. We also have our overnight excursion to Taronga Zoo on Wednesday the 4th December to look forward to. This will be a great opportunity to see what animals get up to after dark and will be a wonderful experience for students. It is the first overnight school excursion to be held by Minerva in many years. Our school sports program has been blessed with beautiful weather this term. All students have experienced the Sailability program and our senior students have been participating a Surf Safety and Awareness program. Students have enjoyed these new experiences and their effort to participate has been wonderful. We are on the count down to that last day of the 2019 school year, for students this date is Wednesday 19th December. We look forward to seeing you at presentation day. Melanie Hollands Relieving Assistant Principal.

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Happy Birthday to the following students for the month of

November—Flynn, Perry, Auralia and Ethan

The Hon. Mr Craig Kelly MP Member for Hughes and Mr Frank Zumbo visited our school on Rememberance Day—Monday 11th November to present us with new flags and a remembrance day banner in commemoration of the soldiers who fought and lost their lives in battle for the freedoms we have today. Mr Kelly also hosted an impromptu “question time” with Ethan, one of our class Banksia students around fuel efficiency differences between coal and methane gas. Ethan spoke with knowledge and great articulation. Mr Kelly was very impressed. I’m certain he will remember Ethan for a long time. Ethan was respectful, knowledgeable and well spoken, well done Ethan!

Week 5 Term 4 2019

DATES TO

REMEMBER

May

Tuesday 14th

School photos

Wednesday

29th Vaccinations Visit

2

BANKSIA CLASS

Week 5 Term 4 2019

BOTTLEBRUSH CLASS

Week 5 Term 4 2019

CLASS WARATAH

This term, Class Waratah are exploring Aboriginal Australia. We are focusing on our local Aboriginal community, Dharawal. We have learnt about the Dharawal seasons and Aboriginal land care practices. We are learning Dharawal words and writing our own version of My Country. Class Waratah have been cooking Aboriginal inspired recipes, such as Kangaroo burgers. We have celebrated student achievements with birthday celebrations for Billy and Kayne and a School Medal for Billy. We have been working with class Grevillea on our end of year performance and building friendships between our classes. We also went sailing with class Eucalyptus and had a fantastic day. Class Waratah have been going on regular community access around the local Dharawal community and having picnics in the surrounding parks to enhance connections to our local environment, community and each other.

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Engel Shrestha Male student in Year 7 He is 13 Years old

Engila Shrestha Female student in Year 5 She is 10 years old

Students sponsored by Minerva School Community

In June this year, you may remember that as part of the SRCs commitment to helping others, we held a fundraiser at school to raise money to provide one orphan child with the funds to attend school for one year. The Shree Janata Primary and Secondary School in Taruka in the district of Nuwokot, Nepal was damaged during the 2015 earthquake. The money raised will help to pay for educational resources, school uniform and shoes for an orphan child. Through the generosity of the Minerva community, we raised $200 which supports 2 orphaned students. Here is some information about the Strive Foundation and the 2 students that Minerva sponsors. Next year we hope to again raise funds to continue to support Engel and Engila through their school journey.

Week 5 Term 4 2019

The Strive Foundation Nepal Aid Tour April 2019 Katie, a secondary Science teacher and I, a retired Principal, returned to Nepal in April 2019. We were here to make our first visit to Shree Janata Smriti Primary School and Shree Krishna Secondary School in Taruka in the district of Nuwakot. This area was selected as it is the village that our guide from our Everest Base Camp Trek in 2018 comes from. Katie with our supplies bought with the generosity of our family, friends and school communities. This area had been badly affected by the earthquake of 2015. Rebuilding is still going on. Of the 1500 buildings in this area all had sustained damage and there were 35 deaths. 16,000 people live in the area. It is a hilly region and people predominately grow rice, corn and other vegetables. The area is known for its annual bullfights. The village is 69 kms from Kathmandu and it can take anywhere up to five hours to reach depending on the traffic, accidents and the condition of the roads. We were fortunate to spend 6 days living with our guide’s family and partaking in their daily lives. We slept in a room above the stable that housed the buffalo and goats. From the opening in the wall we had amazing views of the surrounding hills. We bathed where the locals did and ate locally produced food. Each morning we were greeted with warm buffalo milk tea – extremely tasty. The families had so little themselves but willing shared it with us. A small solar panel supplies limited power enough to run two light bulbs. Most nights there was no lighting. Small torches that we took with us were gratefully appreciated by the families as it allowed them to wash up and de kernel the corn. Students go to school from Sunday to Friday. They have Saturday off but it is not a rest day. The fields have to be ploughed and the corn sown, goats need feeding in the surrounding hills, food needs collecting for animals, wood for cooking , water from the well to name but a few. In April which is the beginning of the school year, children don’t turn up until the fields are ploughed. Every child has a series of jobs to do before and after school. We spent three days at Shree Krishna Secondary School. This is the only school in the area that children can attend if they want to study past class 5. The school population varies from between 350 and 400 students. Some classrooms are still not useable as a result of the earthquake in 2015. Therefore a class can have 60- 100 students in it. There are not enough desks for all students and some are missing tops and/or seats. Whiteboards if present are old. There is only electricity in the two storey building. The school has a small library, no speciality rooms and the Science equipment, including one microscope, takes up two small shelves in the staffroom. The students are inquisitive and ask so many questions. They learn with inaccurate workbooks, with no textbooks, no technology and limited resources – we took in books in English and Nepalese and a Teacher in a Box – a re-purposed laptop with thousands of educational and vocational material on it. Those in older classes worry about the future and have already a belief that being very poor will mean that they cannot hope to succeed in the future. They worry what it will be like. We ask ourselves could some scholarships offer those with potential a better future. On our last day we learnt that there were 34 orphan students in the school with no one to pay the limited expenses that parents are expected to pay – stationary, uniform, school bag, food and shoes . We are given a list of their names and told that $100 AUD per child would give them a year of educational support. As we leave what stands out is the incredible welcome and generosity of people who have so little and the children who kept saying “Please don’t forget us’. We will return each April to do what we can to make a difference. Anyone interested in joining us please don’t hesitate to make contact. Gail and Katie Taylor The Strive Foundation

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Learning For Life Update

Hi all, OT Christine here. We have so many exciting things to talk about this term with the Learning for Life project. Our UTS researcher Dr Kirsty Young has visited our school to interview teachers and gather data to contribute to the second research paper focussed on student learning. The teachers really enjoyed sharing all of great work done by our spectacular students at Minerva School. We also developed a caregiver survey with Dr Young to gain your valuable insights into how you feel your students have benefited from the project. Thank you in advance for your time and for adding to the research by completing the survey! Also, excitingly Minerva School are WINNERS!!!! Last week, the Australian College of Educators (ACE) Sutherland & St George Regional Committee hosted a celebration of World Teachers Day 2019. On the evening, ACE recognised excellence in education across our region and celebrated the incredible work of our Sutherland & St George Educators. ACE awarded Minerva School, Bates Drive and Cook School an award for ‘Outstanding Initiatives in Education’ for our combined Learning for Life Project. It was an honour and privilege to showcase our project amongst so many esteemed colleagues. We also really enjoyed spending an evening celebrating with all 3 schools and our wonderful Schools Plus coach- Gerry!

Representatives from Minerva School looking great- all dressed up!

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Minerva School, Bates Drive and Cook School REPRESENT!

Our 3 visionary Principals and our exceptional Schools Plus Coach- David Toogood (Bates Drive), Dave Hobson (Cook School), Gerry McCloughan

(Schools plus coach) and John Mazzitelli (Minerva School).

Week 5 Term 4 2019

Class Grevillea had so much fun at sailing! Everyone made positive, safe choices in the community and were polite to the wonderful volunteers.

What a lovely experience!

Week 5 Term 4 2019