Principal's Report

Where's Our Water?

I was extremely proud and honoured to attend the official launch of the Where's Our Water? storybook and artwork on Saturday, 24 October at the Museum of Art and Culture, Lake Macquarie.  This beautiful and engaging text was created in collaboration between Newcastle High School, Hunter Water Corporation, The University of Newcastle and the Aboriginal Land Councils of the Worimi and Awabakal lands, with two versions being available in both Awabakal and Worimi language.  At the opening, our students represented our school with great pride and have been recognised as outstanding ambassadors for Aboriginal Education and leadership.  I thank the students, staff and community involved in this collaboration and encourage everyone to take the time to view this text which is outstanding:  https://youtu.be/DrWNc8EEf3E

School Development Twilight 

On Tuesday 27 October, our staff engaged with school development activities and collaboration around our culture at Newcastle High School, discussing the values and beliefs we collectively bring to the vision for our school.  We are actively working to develop our school’s vision for the future, to guide the plans we make to achieve excellent outcomes with our students, families and community.  The school’s Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP) is a 4-year document (2021-2024) and will guide all the school development and improvement work we do in this period.  Opportunities for parents and community to engage in the SIP process (as detailed in the below visual), will be created with the upcoming P&C Meeting this term, being a great place to be involved.  I will publish snap shots of this journey in the Parkway.  We are still currently looking at the Situational Analysis of the school and looking inward at our school evaluation of the past, to inform the future.

World Teacher’s Day

World Teachers’ Day (WTD) was celebrated at Newcastle High on Friday 30 October, with our student leaders surprising our teaching staff with positive words of affirmation and a personal cup-cake treat, as a small token of appreciation for the invaluable work and role they play.  WTD is a day for us all to celebrate and be proud of teachers and teaching as a profession.  This year, despite major challenges, our teachers have made sure Newcastle High School continued to educate the young people of our community through a global pandemic, demonstrating the extremely significant role they play in the lives of children, students, their families and our community.  Thank you to the Teachers of Newcastle High School!

Staffing Matters

As a priority this term, we are actively filling the positions we have vacant in the school, including the Head Teacher positions for CAPA, Cooks Hill Campus and the Support Unit, through merit selection. We have also filled our relieving Deputy Principal positions internally for the remainder of 2020, with Joel Anderson taking Year 7, 9, 11 (12) from Week 3 this term.  As Joel Anderson steps into the Deputy role, our Head Teacher PDHPE is Nicole Blatchford (4 days) and Alison Dennis (1 day – Friday Week A and Tuesday Week B).  Shannon Sager will be our relieving Deputy Principal for Year 8, 10 and incoming Year 7 from Week 4 and our relieving Head Teacher Wellbeing is currently being internally processed through expressions of interest, to be notified in the coming week.

Janene Rosser - Principal