PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
The first week of school is always one of my favourites. I love the energy of the new school year and the promise that it brings. Staff and students have returned in great spirits and ready for the challenges of 2024. Students have returned wearing their uniform with pride and are enjoying catching up with their friends. Our next newsletter will include some photo highlights of Year 7's first day and the return to school for the rest of the community. I recommend any new parents follow the college facebook page to keep up to date on events and activities.
Students have all received their timetables and we got off to a smooth start to the year. An important change this year is to our class structures. In previous years, the '6' class grouping has been a structured class with some additional support. This is now a mainstream mixed ability class, no different from the '2', '3', ;4; and '5' classes. In a number of year groups the '6' class grouping has the highest GPA of all the other mixed ability class groupings and this was deliberate to try and change the thinking about these classes.
New teachers to John Therry
We are lucky to have the amazing teachers below join us this year and we will photos in the next newsletter to help put a face to the name.
Mrs Wheeler - Leader of Teaching and Learning - Science Teacher
Mr Ferguson - Leader of Wellbeing - HSIE Teacher
Ms Eljed - Leader of Learning English
Mr Kennedy - HSIE Teacher
Ms Edis - TAS teacher
Ms Cozzarin - CAPA - Visual Arts Teacher
Mr Kelly - Mathematics teacher
Ms Prabakaran - HSIE Teacher
Mr Hicks - HSIE English Teacher
Ms Magro - TAS Teacher (coming soon!)
We are blessed at John Therry to have teachers who genuinely care about the students and work so hard to provide them every opportunity to achieve their potential. It is very clear already that the teachers joining us this year will make a wonderful contribution to our community.
We keep in our hearts and prayers the St Joseph's Catholic High School Albion Park community who have dealt with unthinkable tragedy over the holiday period. They have had a Year 12 student and a teacher pass away over the Christmas holiday period and they begin the school year trying to make sense of this. Our Catholic communities are often at their best in times of need and I am sure that the community will come closer together in this time. May they be comforted and strengthened by our loving God at this time of need.