Wongarette

Issue 17

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From the Principal's Desk

Staffing for 2022

The staffing for our school is currently underway and I am pleased to announce to you of the appointment of Miss Ellie Sanford from Cue Primary School and Mrs Megan Rawlings who have both been appointed positions in the junior primary. I am also pleased to announce that Lesley Arthur has accepted a position for 2022 in the primary. 

Scholarships for Years 7 - 12

Our school is very fortunate to have community groups that support us by offering scholarships for students attending Wongan Hills DHS. We have four scholarships for students in years 7 to 10 donated by Shire of Wongan-Ballidu, CWA, Wongan Hills Rotary and Kanyana.  Apex also offer a scholarship for students in year 11 and 12. We also are fortunate to have the donation of a laptop computer for the Ctrl Alt Lyle Scholarship for secondary students from year 10 - 12.

The interviews have been conducted today and will continue tomorrow with the successful students announced at the Presentation Assembly on the 15th December at the Civic centre.

School Survey

This is a reminder to encourage parents/carers at Wongan Hills DHS to complete the National School Option Survey to get feedback on key areas of our schools performance.   The survey has been opened for 2 weeks and closes this Friday 19th November.  Can I please request that each family completes the survey that should take about 10 minutes at most.  The more families that complete the survey the more that the data is valid.  Please use the link to start the survey:

 https://www.schoolsurvey.edu.au/s/2021WHDHSParentSurvey

 

Attendance

Student success at school is directly linked to how often a student attends.  Regular attendance is 90% which means that a student can only be absent one day a fortnight to maintain regular attendance. This requires parents and caregivers to further support their children to get to school to be able to achieve to their potential.  The lack of attendance does have a significant effect on your children’s ability to learn.  As the table below shows a child that regularly attends school still misses 4 weeks of school in a year. 

Informing the school your child/ren will be  absent

 

There are several ways you can inform the school your child/ren are going to be absent from school.

 

  • Inform the classroom teacher via email, note in the student diary or verbal communication

  • Notify the school office in person

 

  • Phone the school directly 96712300

 

  • Reply to the absentee text message sent out to all parents of students who are marked absent

  • Submit an absentee form via the Updat-ed App.

 

SIDE 2021

SIDE- School for Isolated and Distance Education

What is SIDE?

SIDE, school for isolated and distance education, is based out of Leederville, Perth, WA. The school provides work and lesson content on Moodle and WebEx lessons, it caters for kindy to year 12 students based internationally. The teachers are trained to teach students no matter the circumstances or location. SIDE maintains strong connections with the students, parents, and carers through the use of email and phone calls. They exist not only to cater for students who are isolated like us but for international students, people with physical or learning disabilities and people struggling with mental health issues. They also cater for elite athletes, a lot of which include ballerinas.

                         

Why do we go on camps each term?

Whilst a lot of people think that the Year 11 and 12 students get a lot of camps—SIDE camp is really a week of school at a different location!  On our Term 1 camp we meet our teachers for the first time, who before that have just been a face and a voice in a WebEx. This is the best, actually meeting them in person and getting to know them. Each time we go, our teachers make time to work one on one with us and tackle any problems we have been having as well as have a bit of fun. We get treated like young adults and some teachers will take us for a coffee or play a game with us. For those doing hands on subjects like Science or Media, we actually go to the lab or work in the greenroom etc with the specialist equipment. Another reason these visits are so important is for socialisation and mental health! We join with Dalwallinu each camp and so get some new faces and sometimes meet other students from our online classes. Being in the same room at Wongan all day every day can be tough on the mental health, so getting out and about once a term is great!

This year out of hours we have been to an Escape Room. Bowling, mini golf, swimming at Hillary’s beach, caught trains, explored Perth, gone shopping, explored Fremantle prison and much more!

What have been some of the highlights of the year?

Getting to meet and connect with our teachers

Getting the opportunity to study a class from a range of options

Be able to connect with students from Dalwallinu  who are also studying SIDE

Actually feeling like young adults and having some freedoms in Perth as well as doing cool activities at night

As well as attending SIDE visits, a highlight has been some of our teachers coming up to Wongan to offer assistance.

                                 

What advice would you give to a student who is going to study via SIDE?

SIDE is difficult and self-motivation is key, if we don’t have it, we need to rely on each other to help get motivated. The work doesn’t just do itself. ATAR students in regional areas have an RLS provided which is like your own personal tutor. One RLS for each subject visits and runs WebEx’s for us, generally completely one on one. The extra help for an ATAR workload is essential and these tutors in our experience are super cool!

If you are looking to study SIDE, don’t be afraid to text or email your teachers if you are struggling with your tasks.

Set daily goals for yourself e.g. what work you want to get completed that day.

Don’t stress too much, if you are struggling with the workload ask your teachers for assistance.

 

Written by Erin and Milayna (Year 11)



                     

Narratives

Arguments

By Anonymous, Year 8.


The door slammed. “You’re just like your father!” Mother screamed.

“Better than you!” Stacie yelled in response. Mum returned to the kitchen 5 minutes later, bags full of Stacie’s things.

“Go on then, try living with him.” Stacie turned white with rage.

“Here we go again,” she thought.

Waiting in line for a ticket is stressful, super stressful. Like trying to finish a NAPLAN test but only having a few minutes left. “alright dad, I’m coming” she mumbled to herself stepping onto the train knowing there was a long drive ahead of her.

“Next stop, Wongan Hills.” The driver said, loud and clear. Wongan is a country town with crop and cattle as far as the eye can see. Dad lives here. He owns a farm towards Dally with a butcher and cattle. In the afternoon, we arrived at the civic centre, which is where Dad was picking me up from. As we pulled in I saw Dad’s black Mercedes parked. I felt joy and happiness coming off that bus, ran up to Dad and gave him a long, tight hug.

The drive towards home was quiet in the sense that I wasn’t talking to dad and he wasn’t talking to me… until the Ballidu turn off.

“How are things going with mum?” he said

“If they were great would I be here, would I?”

“Can I give you some advice Stacie?”

“Mhm, I guess.”

“Sometimes you need to give up a bit of yourself for a valuable relationship.”

His words weren’t wrong, in fact they were almost perfect but I wasn’t ready to forgive Mum, not yet.

“Sure,” I say just trying to please Dad. He looked at me with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen and clapped my knee.

“This is your room, Hun.” he said with joy

“Wow!” I was speechless, the room looked awesome! Vines hanging down from the ceiling, LEDS covering the boarder of the room, a king size bed and a study desk next to the door.

“I thought it might have been a bit much, what do you think?”

“I love it.” I say “Thank you”

The next few days I helped out with the cattle, the butchers and got to hang out with some old mates. At this point I was missing Mum like crazy and wanted to go back home, but I couldn’t tell Dad that because every time I tried he would always fob me off (but tonight was the night, I was going to tell him).

“Dinners ready,” Dad yelled from the kitchen. “Hey Stacie, want to watch the footy game? West coast vs Fremantle.”

“No thanks Dad, I actually wanted to talk to you about moving back in with mu-”

“Your dinner’s getting cold, eat up.” He cut me off again.

“Dad I listened to you, so now it’s time you listen to me. I want to go and live with Mum and I’ve decided to leave tomorrow.”

“TOMORROW!” he yelled “WHY TOMORROW?”

“It’s just want I want to do. My bags are packed and I’m leaving at… umm... 6 I think”

“Righto, I’m going to bed.”

“What about the footy?” I ask

“Don’t want to watch it anymore.”

Guess it was my time to go to bed as well. 

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