From Head of House, Matthew Barr
Day 1 we welcomed new O’Connor students to the senior campus to start the new year. Students from Yr 7 partnered up with their ‘Big Brothers’ in Year 12. Our Year 12 students were able to advice and guide their new ‘Little Brothers’ around the school, and engage in a number of activities aimed at making positive connections early.
To extend on the Big Brother/Little Brother Program, our Year 5 students were also partnered up with Year 10 students in Week 4. This was designed to assist in building stronger relationships between our senior and junior students, with the intention of giving our younger members confidence in making the transition to high school as well as giving our senior students leadership opportunities. The students participated in a range of activities that included: Tug o war, Touch Football and Soccer.
Year 7 started their journey into Senior School with a 3 day camp at Broken Bay Sport, Life and Recreation. It is a great venue with individual and team building activities that provided the students and staff a flexible learning environment and an opportunity to form and build relationships with their peers and staff.
We had the Senior College Swimming Carnival at Des Renford and the Junior School Carnival at the College Pool. The boys and staff of the O’Connor House demonstrated great enthusiasm and participation throughout both days. There was a lot of strong performers, however, the best performance of the day was out of the pool, was once again the Senior School boys demonstrated great spirit and passion, winning the House chants with “O’Connor’s Call”.
There was three House assemblies throughout the term that enabled us to come together as a community to build on the Wellbeing content and student achievements. I would like to congratulate and thank the House Prefects Luke Harris, William Durkin, Noah Glasel and Nikita Hatjinikitas who have displayed outstanding leadership in their roles. These assemblies provide time to develop on our culture and recognise the great achievements by our students.
The Wellbeing Mentor Interviews took place on Tuesday 12th February. This was an opportunity for students and parents to catch up with our very supportive O’Connor House Wellbeing Mentors to review the individual student effort of 2018 and set important goals for the new year.
O’Connor House also had a Cake Stall to raise funds to purchase Solar Buddies for our students to take and donate to students in Timor Leste. A big thanks to many students and staff for bringing in treats to help raise $860 dollars. We will be constructing the Solar Buddies during Wellbeing time next term so they are ready for the students attending the Timor Leste Immersion to take along and donate to the students in energy poverty regions.
Other highlights of the term include:
- Amazing Race
- CAS Swimming
- World’s Greatest Shave
- Year 9 Ballroom Dancing
- Cadet Camp
- O’Connor House Easter Liturgy
I would like to congratulate all students in O’Connor House for the positive start to the school year. There was a high number of students from O’Connor that achieved excellent marks and grades for their Interim Report. I hope these exceptional standards and results can be maintained and even further improved on in Term 2.
I would especially like to thank the O’Connor Wellbeing Mentors for their wonderful support of students in O’Connor.
