Ingenuity, autonomy and creativeness are three words that might describe our Year 9 Industrial Technology Timber classes. The boys have been busy learning the ins, outs and techniques to timber functionality. First, they assembled a folding table (and assembled again to display them), then later in the year constructing a Uekele with a touch of their own flare. The results were awesome and some of the designs first rate.

With restrictions lifted, our musicians were finally able to put their talent on display. On a Wednesday night, late in term 4, as something of a curtain raise for their Year In Review performances, a concert was put on. Whilst Alex and Ryan are the only ones included in the snaps below, we thank Sam, Harry, Fin, Oskar and Lee for their performances on the night. By all accounts, it was a resounding success. Well done boys.

The conclusion to our eight-week program with 21 selected Year 9 and 10 Commerce students at St Pauls on 18th November was a very memorable occasion with a wonderful series of presentations in The Waterford Hall with employer mentors present along with Seven Mile Venture Lab, our enterprise coaches. The four groups of boys worked with a local business owner taking up a problem and through diligent research and creative thinking came up with potential solutions to their issues; entrepreneurship in action. I was struck by how professional our boys were and the depth of their insight. We need to be doing more of this in education. We also had present for the first time at a College gathering, Ms Zali Steggall, our local Member of Parliament who also addressed the gathering. We look forward to her return to the College in 2021. For those students who participated, their parents and the wider College community, find here a Youtube link for the student presentations held that day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agQFQ_4xkI0&feature=emb_logo

The program was such a success that our local business representives offered a follow entreprenurial workshop for select Year 9 students to participate in. Well done to Sam, Oskar, Beau, Josh, Ryan and Lachlan for their original participation in the Enterprise program, and also to Jai and Dylan for coming on board for the follow up workshop.

Each year our students proudly continue the tradition of creating quality hampers that are personally delivered to local needy families. Many of these families are facing hardship for the first time because of COVID and are worried about how they will keep a roof over their head and put food on the table. Thank you to Finn, Nathan and George of Year 9 for volunteering to help deliver the Christmas hampers. Being involved in something like this is its own reward, as you can see from the boys in the shots below.

Respect, Understanding and Acceptance is the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies flagship schools harmony program. It has brought together thousands of high school students from diverse backgrounds since 2006. An example of social harmony in action, the program breaks down barriers between students from different religious and ethnic backgrounds by having them share stories about their culture, demonstrate rituals and discuss multiculturalism and racism. About 35 schools are currently involved in the program, including Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, government, Greek and Armenian schools, with Indigenous representation from schools in metropolitan Sydney.

This year, unfortunately we were unable to meet the other participating schools in person, but we found ways around these barriers to still connect. Ahead of the day, the participating schools assembled a box, full of artifacts about their school, the school's culture and their religion, that was later shipped out to the other schools for discussion and deeper learning. The boys watched a video of Pymble Ladies' College opening their culture box, and received two boxes to open themselves from two Sydney Jewish schools, Masada and Moriah College. They examined the items, learned about their significance, and adapted their learning to the context of ignorance, prejudice and discrimination that still exists in our society today. The boys were stunned to learn that 49% of Australians would support a ban on Muslim migration, despite 70% of Australians saying they know little-to-nothing about the religion. The boys understood the significance of what they were doing, and emphasised their desire to what they can to combat the closed mindedness that sometimes plagues our society (driven mostly by the sensationalism of media, of course).

Under 15 Cricket - the boys had a nail-biting victory over Cromer High. Electing to bat during the early morning drizzle, the boys batted both patiently and intelligently to compile a total of 150 off 35 overs. Stand out performers with the bat included Luke Watts (34) from Year 7 who showed great maturity in what was his debut for the school and Jedd Thomas of Year 9 (38) who showed his power, smashing the Cromer attack to all parts of the oval.

With the ball, the younger members of the St Paul’s team stood up. Connor Beat (2/20) from Year 7 started the rot by up-rooting the stumps to dismiss the opener and first drop. All of the St Paul’s bowling cartel tormented the batman - Rishi Pande (1/20) showed great control with his leg spinners, Donnell Prince (0/18) bamboozled, Lenny Foley (0/22) hit the pitch hard and Noah Pitkin from Year 8 made runs non-existent with excellent figures of 1/6 off 5.2 overs. The dominant performance was again Luke Watts, who akin to a young Brett Lee, bowled with pace and accuracy with fantastic figures of 4/11 off 6 overs. George Saunders and Jack Day also showed their value throughout the day, but the unsung hero was Sam Smythe, scorer extraordinaire! Thanks for your efforts their Sam.

A fantastic win for St Paul’s in which was a great team effort.

Ingenuity, autonomy and creativeness are three words that might describe our Year 9 Industrial Technology Timber classes. The boys have been busy learning the ins, outs and techniques to timber functionality. First, they assembled a folding table (and assembled again to display them), then later in the year constructing a Uekele with a touch of their own flare. The results were awesome and some of the designs first rate.

The 2020 highlight for the group in terms of those things that happen outside of the classroom, was unanimously their camp to Somerset in Term 4. After spending months couped up, isolated and restricted, the boys got out into the wilderness and had a thoroughly memorable and enjoyable time in and around the Colo River. Thank you to the boys for adopting our “Y.O.G” growth mindset and getting the most out of the Camp. In case you don't want to flip through these photos and would prefer to watch an awesome compilation assembled by Luca B (thanks mate, great job!), you can check it out here.

Thanks to the work of Miss Kalayzich, our College's Youth Minister, we have a new team that's nearly ready to hit up the local primary schools and catechise! For those of you unfamiliar, catechesis is a basic Christian religious education of children and adults. Many of our boys remember St Paul's students coming to their schools when they were in Primary school and running "scripture" lessons, and they were keen to continue this tradition. If they only knew how far back this tradition goes - Mrs Toni Walsh (pictured left) taught my cousins, who are 14 years older than me! We look forward to hearing more from this group about the work they do in 2021. Thank you to John Donnelly and Joe Pulis from CCD Broken Bay for leading our Year 9 students with their training to become Catechists at Harbord Public in 2021. We had a record eighteen students interested in the program.

October is Catholic Mission month - a month devoted fundraising for communities in the world that are much worse off than we are. Catholic Mission is a worldwide movement, and the schools in the Diocese of Broken Bay have been exemplary in their fundraising efforts toward this month. 9PC3, led by Miss Weight, were no exception. They got on the fundraising bandwagon early, setting the standard and the tone for the rest of the College to follow, resulting in a very successful month of fundraising. The boys may have also been rewarded for their efforts, thanks to Miss Weight, again, a very welcome addition to the Year 9 PC team.

Later in the term, after Jersey Day, was Fluro Friday, which we celebrated alongside RUOK day, the Thursdasy before it. Again, the boys got in the spirit and did what any upstanding young man does - check in on his mates. That's what RUOK day is about - checking in on your mates to make sure they have someone to speak to should they need to. The boys also had a SEL session on this day, and the boys were given a guide for how to have a difficult conversation with their mates. A beyondblue report found that 50% of us blokes have deeper personal issues that we rarely talk about, but a third of us wish we could open up more. In an ideal world, men who are struggling or in crisis would feel confident and empowered enough to speak up and ask for help - but many don't. So, their SEL activity: "Conversation Corners" was invaluable. As was the accompanying Fluoro Friday, a One Wave intiative, which asked the boys to wear something bright to brighten up someone's day who may not be feeling so hot. Both days were participated ina nd contributed to in the spirit in which they were intended. Thank you to our young men for making the days what they were.

Jersey Day, a day that is designed to raise awareness for the importance of organ donation, is also a commemoration of the life of Nathan Gremmo, a Sydney school student whose life was taken unexpectedly in a road accident. In Nathan's last instagram post he said: "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough". The students embraced this, and the need to raise awareness around organ donation, by getting in the spirit and meaningful participating in their SEL session, which asked them to recognise and acknowledge the positive qualities in those around them. The session also posed challenging questions to them, like: "If you knew your mate wasn't going to be here tomorrow, would you say to him today?".

With sport finally resuming on the Peninsula post-COVID, we turned our attention to our Peninsula Cup Rugby League side, expertly coached by Mr Emmerson and Mr Vumbaca....

This semester's Year 9 Science incursion embraced Living Ocean's Northern Beaches Council program called No Plastic Please. It was an Ausmap program is about mapping pollution hotspots around Australia, building a network of data collectors whose work will help to save our river systems and coastlines. The boys got the opportunity to be firsthand researchers in the incursion, sifting through earth samples from Sydney Harbour to find our microplastics. The key learning perhaps being that plastic does not break down, it only gets smaller - this impacts our local sealife, and therefore entire ecosystem. Much to learn we have a race we do.

Our Japanese elective continues to go from strength to strength. It is typically highlighted by the Senpai Kohai Cup - this is a Japanese speaking competition where the Year 9 students, in their first year of elective Japanese, are mentored by the Year 10 students, in their second year of elective Japanese. The result is a great competition, with an awesome reward - as the photos will reveal. Well done to Remy, Jedd, Ben, Luka and Tyler for their participation (and achievement) in this.

As the boys begin to realise that if they want to achieve at the higher levels, they have to put in that little bit extra, the demand for extra time from their teachers became apparent. So, Mr Malcolm, being the man he is, put on some optional early morning Maths' classes. Over a number of weeks the boys continued showing up, GROWING in confidence and developing a deeper understanding of the content to aid their learning and performance.

Michael wears with pride the Mark Hughes Foundation 2020 Beanie for Brain Cancer, which featured during NRL round 6, June 18-21 because we don’t dare stop. It is too important!

Whilst not all of what followed occured just in August, the boys as quickly as possible, after their return to school, returned to the kitchen (in a COVID safe way of course). I won't comment individually on the creations you see below, but I think the quality of the pictures which show the quality of the work, speaks for itself.

The boys are back but school is going to be a little different for a while. The boys are learning to grasp the concept of social distancing - I have my metre and a half stick to show the boys just how far that needs to be. This is going to be a tough (re)initiation!

Whilst we did have students on site in phases, separated year groups, etc...it was largely an empty site with a lot of stressed teachers. April through July, there wasn't a lot to celebrate other than our student's ability to learn independently, and to understand and appreciate more greatly our College's capacity to continue learning with the students in spite of significant challenges. Read on (post July) for more photos of the students in action as the restrictions eased and the students returned to school.

Kirra Pendergast from Safe on Social Media led a session on Cyber safety – giving the boys tips and tricks for using social media with awareness. The session was informative, direct and hands on. The boys were well-engaged, interested and at times, shocked, with what is available for those who aren't careful with how they use social media, gaming platforms and other online forms of communication.

As part of the new look St Paul's swimming carnival, students had the privilege of participating in novelty races - races that are a little less serious in nature. Thank you to Mr Vumbaca, Miss Weight and Mr Taylor for facilitating these races. See the photos for some of the novelty swimming fun. Scroll down to the bottom for a sequence of Joseph swimming in the College gift - the 8 fastest swimmers at St Paul's, he finished 4th!

You will find here photos of the 23 students who said "yes" to embarking on the challenge of completing their Bronze Award in the Duke of Edinburgh program. The preparation session was planning and formation for their qualification trek as part of their Adventurous Journey component. It was led by Simon from Somerset, with Mr McDonnell guiding the boys along the way as well.

Year 9 2020 House Leaders have been elected. These boys will be proudly promoting the spirit of their house this year. Their leadership will be valuable for their house, as well as the remainder of the year 9 cohort:

Taylor - Ash; Moran - Remy; Bourke - Harry; Gilroy - Kye.

St Paul's Open Evening in 2020 took on a different format. This year our College was put on show 'exhibition' style - in 2020 we witnessed the College Open Expo. It was well attended with a warm feeling of community and healthy energy about the place. Particularly impressive was the attendance of our Year 9 students, and the level of their involvement in the night's activities. The Music department were very grateful for their contributions to the night's performances.

Invited to our Ash Wednesday liturgy were the students of our College's Grandparents. They gathered in the morning for the liturgy and were escorted by their grandsons to morning tea. Some endearing photos below. Thank you to those who could make it for accepting the invitation and being a part of our community.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent – we are starting a Lenten journey. It is a season of temptation for 40 days resembling Jesus’ temptation to give in to the devil and sin. The boys each received their ashes and heard said to them “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Bible” - the day and the season of Lent began with a liturgy led by Mr Callow and our College prefects, and began the College's Lenten commitment.

Pictured is our boys with their lenten promise wristbands, in St Paul's red and black colours.

We welcomed back the Class of 2023 in January with the addition of three new students to our year. We welcomed Emmanuel, welcomed (back) Finlay and our other new addition, Jude (not pictured) is set to join us in week 3. Welcome boys. We hope you make the most of your time in our community.