Acting Principal

Activities Week

By all accounts Activities Week was once again a huge success. After a long weekend to recover, students have returned to campus with many stories to tell and experiences shared.

I would like to thank the following staff for their effort in organising the retreats. Without the hard work of the following staff, Activities Week would not take place.

I would also like to thank Lauren Hartigan (Director of Operations) and Anne Musgrove (Daily Organiser Assistant) for their overall organisation of the program. This is a mammoth task which they do with precision and meticulous detail.

Attendance During Activities Week

Attendance early in Activities Week was excellent. We were disappointed that some students on return from camp chose to stay home and not come to school. A number of outstanding learning activities were planned on Thursday and Friday which many students did not get the benefit from as they were not on campus. This is disappointing for the staff members who organised the activity. In addition, the money spent on external facilitators or resources for these days was not fully utilised as many students did not get the benefit of the activity.

Research shows daily attendance positively impacts students’ social and emotional development. School participation maximises life opportunity for all students. It gives them the foundation they need to be successful in school and life beyond school. Regular attendance builds resilience and social connection. There is no safe number of days for missing school. Each day a student misses school, is a missed opportunity to learn and to build relationships.

I ask for parent support in encouraging students to attend school regularly.

Teacher Shortage

We are currently experiencing a teacher shortage. On the whole, Loyola is placed well for teachers, however, it is becoming increasingly challenging to source teachers for short term contracts. I am very grateful for our Loyola teachers, for their commitment to our student body, passion for teaching, for building positive working relationships with our students and their hard work. We all have a role to play in supporting the teachers that are educating our young students. The best way to show appreciation is through respect. Respecting teachers as the highly qualified professional they are and trusting them to educate our student body.

LCAA Car Show

On Friday 23 February, the Loyola College Alumni Association (LCAA) hosted a car show on campus. The night was an enormous success. I thank the families who supported this event, the LCAA committee members and the parents who volunteered to assist on the night.

Volunteers are the glue that holds a community together. Volunteering is a great way to connect with community and build a cohesive and support cultures. Even helping out with the smallest task can make a real difference to our college community. If you are interested in helping out at Loyola, please make contact with Monica Agius (College and Community Engagement Assistant).

I wish all students and their families a positive end to term one. A reminder that there will be many assessments due in these last two weeks.

Daily school attendance is crucial for young people to succeed in education and to ensure they don’t fall behind both socially and developmentally. Young people who regularly attend school have better health outcomes, better employment outcomes, and higher incomes across their lives.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE – CSEF

The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF) offered by the Victorian Government to assist eligible families by reducing the costs of school trips, camps and sporting activities, included in the Loyola fees, has been increased to $250 annually.

Families that hold a valid means-tested concession card such as a Health Care Card or Pension Card, temporary foster parents as well as asylum seeker and refugee families may be eligible for the CSEF payment.

Please click here to access the CSEF application form or contact the school office to obtain a copy. For queries regarding eligibility, contact our Finance Department on 9433 0752.

ICT NEWS
Cybersafety Part 3: Do you know who your children are talking to?

In a previous edition of the Ignatian we looked at Cybersafety and the perils of putting information about oneself on the Internet.

In this edition we’ll be looking at ‘stranger danger online’.

Real friendships involve face-to-face contact, whereas social media sites such as Facebook foster friendships between all kinds of people, including those between honest and dishonest people.

Unfortunately, teenagers may not be so selective! Picture this: It’s a quiet night in front of the television. The family’s had dinner, the dishes are washed, and the lunches are made. The children are playing quietly on the computer, chatting/texting with friends on their mobile phones, exploring social media or just playing Internet games. It’s great for parents/guardians to be able to just put their feet up. Except for one thing: there’s an unseen paedophile lurking in the house…

Do you know who your child is communicating with online?

Consider this true story. A teenage boy enjoyed playing online games with schoolmates. He also befriended a handful of gamers through the gaming site. Eventually he started chatting online with one of these ‘friends’, supposedly another 15-year-old like himself. They started sharing some personal things, and over time their online chatting became more and more frequent. They eventually exchanged mobile phone numbers and began texting each other at all hours. Eventually, with the summer holidays approaching, they made plans to meet each other. His friend invited him to come stay with him and organised a plane ticket for him. The teenage boy’s parents became suspicious when their son wanted to go to the airport unaccompanied, saying that he was old enough to look after himself – this is what his ‘friend’ convinced him to say. At the airport the police arrested a man in his forties and charged him with a number of offences. The teenage boy had no idea that he was being groomed by a paedophile.

Social networking sites are a great way to stay in touch with friends and family. You can tell friends what’s been happening and post photos, play games and basically just hang out. But there are dangers, and strangers making inappropriate contact is just one of those dangers.

The advent of personal digital devices in recent years has only exacerbated the problem. With more and more of these devices being placed in the hands of children, this means that children now have 24x7 access to the outside world around them, and the world has access to them!

What can parents do to protect their children from ‘stranger danger’?

1. Stay involved in your child’s use of new technologies – get them to show you how their online social networks work.

2. Help your child remain unidentifiable online, by name and by location: set up their profile to make sure that they don’t put too much personal information online – e.g. never put date of birth, home or school address, phone number, personal email address, sports teams your child plays in or the name of their school. Be careful that any photos that are posted do not reveal any of this information.

3. Check out the privacy settings for each online service and familiarise yourself with how to report abuse. Hopefully, you will never need to do this but it’s good to be prepared. Find out how you can manage your child’s access to the ‘adult’ content and services offered by their mobile phone carrier. Such information is usually available on the carrier’s website.

4. Talk to your child about what they like about social networking/gaming websites, explain what some of the dangers are in using them and teach your child ways to stay safe. You may be able to discuss and create some house rules together with your child. Always keep the lines of communication open. Kids need to be confident that they can talk to parents/guardians about what’s happening, without being afraid that they’re automatically going to get in trouble.

What can teenagers do to protect themselves from ‘stranger danger’?

1. Never give out your personal information – check out point 2 above. Check with your parents or guardians first before deciding to give out or post personal information.

2. Remember that you may feel that you are just talking to friends, but the whole world could be tuning in. Keep an eye on what’s being posted and guard your privacy! Don’t post photos that you might not want strangers or your grandmother to see!

3. Learn how to make your profile and other content you post private. You’re the one who should be in control, here.

4. Think twice before posting blogs and profiles – they can stay there forever. Your parents, future employers and perhaps your future children may end up seeing it! Don’t post photos of other people without their permission.

5. Remember there are impersonators out there – not everyone is who they claim to be. Although it’s great to have lots of online ‘friends’ including these unverified people on your friends list, allows them to see everything about you. This information could be used in a scam, to steal your identity, or worse.

6. Keep your online friends online! However, if you want to meet someone that you haven’t met before in person, ask a parent or another trusted adult to go with you and always meet in a public place, preferably during the day.

7. Say ‘NO’ to any offers that seem too good to be true – they probably are! Never accept the offer of a free mobile phone (or other digital device) from someone without asking your parents or guardian first. Never sign up for free ringtones – you could be signing up to receive porn! To prevent this, just type in the word ‘stop’ and by Law they have to stop sending you the stuff – if they don’t, tell your parent or guardian to contact your service provider.

8. Never on-send a chain email, even if it says that you will die if you don’t or even if it seems to be for a really good cause – it may contain a macro that automatically sends your email address to someone who sells email addresses to paedophiles. These predators then randomly seek out children to try to start a conversation with them.

9. Always check the URL (Internet address at the top of the browser) to ensure you are actually at the website you think you should be at. Bogus sites seek to impersonate real ones, in order to get you to enter your personal information and start looking for exploitation opportunities.

10. Don’t stay. Don’t respond! – If someone in a chat room posts offensive pictures or says something rude or scary, or if you are sent these in an email, don’t respond; instead, save them, leave the chat room immediately and tell your parent, guardian or another trusted adult about the incident. Saving the offensive content means you can produce it as evidence to help catch online troublemakers and predators.

If you are concerned about any of these issues and wish to discuss them with a trusted person, please contact the School Counsellor. For more information on Cybersafety go to https://www.esafety.gov.au/. Add this website to your favourites on your computer.

Stay safe while socialising online.

Hello this is the 2024 McAuley House captains, Patrick and Summer. 

Throughout our journey during this year, we have seen our fellow students strive to be the best version of themselves each day. We started 2024 on a bit of a rocky start when we came fourth in the annual House Reading Challenge. Days later, we leaped into the pool for the House Swimming Carnival. Compared to previous years, this year introduced a new and inviting opportunity for our year 9s to step up and become role models for our year 7s and 8s. This meant that only selected senior students were invited to the carnival to participate in specific events. Despite our reputation, McAuley house came fourth place, beating Manix and McKillop house!!! Well done everyone for trying our hardest and a special thanks to students that volunteered to jump in on the day.

We then finally started McAuley House Mentor Challenge, where individuals from each mentor across different year groups competed against other mentors for points to ultimately win the grand prize. This week, we played Jenga. As selected students quickly played, it created an exciting and energetic atmosphere that was full of encouragement as well as a little bit of friendly banter.

We were then gifted with a temporary break from studying during Activities Week. All the year 7s travelled to Marysville, the year 8s travelled to Queenscliff, the year 9s travelled to Torquay, the year 10s stayed at school and had a careers week, the year 11s commenced Christian Service and the year 12s travelled to Point Lonsdale, Queenscliff or Anglesea for retreat. As a fellow year 12, Activities Week will be a highlight for this year as it was an opportunity to step outside of your comfort zone and make some new friends.

With only a few weeks to go, tests, assignments, sacs and sats are starting to creep up on everyone, including the annual House Eisteddfod on the 26^th of March. This year, McAuley House is pleased to announce our play, High School Musical!!!! With only a few weeks until the performance, we are all super excited to see the final result after weeks of practice.

Finally, we would like to Thank everyone for their participation and hard work throughout term 1 and we wish everyone good luck for any final assessments until the end of term.

Go McAuley house!

Your McAuley House Captains:

Summer and Patrick.

Student Of The Week:

This fortnight's student of the week goes to Olivia Juka, 11AMSG. Olivia has demonstrated outstanding leadership within the House at both House swimming and especially House Eisteddfod. Olivia has really stepped up and contributed her positive energy and love for performing arts to make enormous contributions to the planning and production of McAuley’s Eisteddfod. Hard work does not go unnoticed, and we want to thank Olivia for her dedication to the house.

Friday 23rd February saw the long-awaited return of the LCAA Classic Car Show, a favourite community event on behalf of the Loyola College Alumni Association to raise money for College Scholarships.

As 'show cars' started to roll in, hearts were in mouths when the rain started to come down. Luckily, it was only a short shower, and car owners were happy to get out the chamois and dry off their pride and joy.

The event was a great success with over 230 cars on display, with plenty of food trucks, BBQ and our children's entertainment corner set up for our local community who came out in droves to support this event.

Thank you to our staff, sponsors and the LCAA committee and subcommittee for all their hard work in organising this spectacular event.

Please see some photos from the event below.

Presentation Ball Information Night – Monday March 25

A Parent and Student information night will be held on Monday March 25 at 7.00 pm in the Theatrette (LCH) for Year 11 students who would like to express an interest in participating in the 2024 Presentation Balls. The Presentation Balls will be held at Melrose Events, Tullamarine.

All students participating in the Balls, must be present Year 11 Loyola Students. Males can ask a female, a female can ask a male, a male can ask a male and a female can ask a female.

There will be nine rehearsals which take place on a Sunday evening in LCH from 6.30pm.

Interested students and the parents are required to attend this evening. Please register at https://events.humanitix.com/l...

If you do not have a partner at this stage, please feel very welcome to attend the Information Session.

An email will be sent for you to register your expression of interest.

2024 House Masses
The final House Mass for 2024 will be held this Sunday 17 March for Xavier House. Please see details below. We welcome your attendance to this annual House Mass where Year 7 and Year 12 students will be presented to the Parish community.
                 Xavier House: Our Lady of the Way - Sunday, 17th March 9 am

Thank you to the parents/guardians and students who attended the House Masses and supported our Parishes during February; and thank you to Heads of House and House Parents from the PWP who kindly organised the morning teas after each Mass.

Morning Tours 2024
Morning Tours for 2024 take place from 9.15am – 11.00am. Our next Morning Tour will take place on Wednesday 20 March. Tours can be booked by visiting the College website at https://www.loyola.vic.edu.au/

Uniform Donations
We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of families through donations of quality uniform items. Our second-hand uniform is utilised by families and overseas students who visit Loyola on short term programs. Donations of blazers, summer dresses and new sport uniform which would be greatly appreciated.

Upcoming Events
May is shaping up to be a very busy month in the Loyola calendar. Parents are encouraged to take note of ticket sale openings and secure their place at https://www.loyola.vic.edu.au/...

Tickets on sale Monday 15 April at 7pm

Tickets on sale Monday 15 April at 7pm