From the Principal
Today was a historic day for our First Nations students and wider College community as we officially opened our First Nations Garden. Tucked away in a peaceful, green pocket of the College, the central feature is an emu-shaped yarning circle symbolising the local star stories of the Emu Dreaming. With open hearts full of gratitude and curiosity, we learned about the significance of the emu from Uncle Neil, who also performed the smoking ceremony, and watched the Dinawan Dance by our ‘song ladies’ (also known as our First Nations dancers). Dinawan means emu in Wiradjuri, which is the language of Diyan Coe who worked with the girls to choreograph their beautiful performance. The garden welcomes one and all to come together to learn more about First Nations culture, acknowledge their stories and experience, and reflect on how we can all work towards a reconciled future.
Thank you to all the students and staff who helped bring this seed of an idea from our Stage 5 History Co-ordinator, David McKinlay, to fruition. Our 2021 Aboriginal Studies students are responsible for the design of the garden, and David, along with Ryan Stewart, Edwina O’Brien, Kate Howie, Nikki Kiddle and our Senior Deputy Principal, Julie Shaw, all helped bring it to life.
Please click here to learn more about our First Nations Garden.
Our incredible teaching, coaching, operations and administration staff find so much joy and purpose in devoting their professional lives (and, at times, a great deal of their personal time) to ensuring each student in our diverse College family continues to grow and flourish in a learning environment that sets her up for a fulfilling and exciting future. You may not know this, but some of our staff have left previous careers in law, health, media, the corporate world, sports and the arts to retrain as teachers or to redeploy their skills and expertise in the education sector because they are passionate about helping to shape young people’s lives. Such is their belief in the value of a life-long learning mindset, many staff members take on the additional commitment of post graduate study and professional learning throughout the year for the sake of continued innovation and excellence in the work they do at Pymble.
Today it is my great pleasure to showcase and celebrate some of the formal learning achievements of Pymble staff in 2022, but please note this is by no means a comprehensive list!
Pymble Plus accreditation – congratulations to our first five graduates!
This year was the first year of implementation of an internal accreditation process developed specifically for Pymble by our Director of Professional Learning, Kerryl Howath. The program recognises experienced teachers with exceptional teaching practice, just as the NSW Education Standards Authority Accreditation (NESA) accreditation program does. To achieve Pymble Plus accreditation, teachers engage in innovative student-centred professional learning projects that directly benefit student learning.
Congratulations to the following teachers for their completion of their Pymble Plus projects:
- Catherine Casey (Kindergarten): developing oral language skills as a precursor to writing.
- Victoria Aikman (Year 4): increasing student voice through the use of visible thinking routines.
- Stephanie Attley (Science): integrating STEM learning into the subject of Agriculture.
- Cara Smith (Mathematics): growing and developing students’ ability to think mathematically and solve challenging problems.
- Julia Squires (Mathematics): improving flexible thinking in Year 10 accelerated mathematics through multiple solutions tasks.
- Candice Cooper (Mathematics): strengthening outcomes in statistics in Stage 6 mathematics.
How wonderful that this work will significantly benefit student learning as well as other teachers at Pymble who will draw from the findings and be inspired to undertake their own projects. A huge congratulations and thank you also goes to Kerryl Howarth for her outstanding leadership of this important program.
The following teachers have also worked hard to achieve their next level of accreditation from NESA:
Experienced Teacher Accreditation
– Sree Raniga (English), Brendon Long (Science), Valerie Agapides (Science) and Luczia Bain (Music).
Proficient Teacher Accreditation
– Ashleigh Mead (Design Technology), Peter Veliotis (Mathematics), Peter Fogale (Geography, Business and Economics), Cedric Le Bescont (Data Science), Penny Charalambous (Junior School), Sarah McGeoch (Junior School) and Scott Johnston (Science).
At last count, we have 15 staff members who are working towards or have achieved a PhD or a Master’s degree. Adam Levin (Upper School/PDHPE) has also achieved his MBA. Fantastic work – congratulations to you all!
Teachers’ Guild Awards
At the recent Teachers’ Guild of NSW Awards dinner, three Pymble teachers were recognised for excellence by their peers. Mariel Lombard (Middle School/Languages) was announced winner of the Research Award; Alexandra Storey (Science) received an Early Career Educator Award and Kate Giles (Junior School) received a World Teachers’ Recognition Award. Go team Pymble! It’s so wonderful to have our outstanding educators recognised for leading the way in their profession.
Kate Giles also became a Global Action Research Collaborative on Girls’ Education (GARC) Fellow, which involves undertaking a series of professional learning requirements. This includes a research project exploring how to create optimal environments at school and home for students to be able to collaborate and work in genuine partnership with their families and educators, and presenting these findings at the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools (ICGS) Conference. How exciting – and congratulations, Kate!
ICGS, which is mentioned above, also runs the global Bright Field mentoring program, which three of our staff members undertook this year. The program matches staff with a mentor who is an international leader in their field and involves completion of a project, which is later presented at the ICGS conference.
Through this program, our Head of Senior School, Nikki Wise, is investigating how light-hearted or comedic literature may assist students with building a sense of hope, fun and joy in their lives, especially during challenging times. Cedric Le Bescont launched our Data Science course, and Stephen Robinson (Junior School) focused on staff wellbeing, exploring the needs of academic staff from beginner to experienced level and how the College can best respond. Great work from all!
In other external awards, we celebrate:
- Maddie Gardener (PDHPE) who was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Bank Early Career Teaching Award.
- Asaph Mross Becker (Robotics) for winning the FIRST Robotics Competition Woodie Flowers Award celebrating effective communication in the art and science of engineering and design.
- Our Wellbeing and Robotics teams whose programs were finalists in the 2022 Educator Awards, which of course is a testament to the excellence of our staff leading and working in these areas.
- Our Horticulture team and contractors, Green Options, who jointly received the GoldAward for Best in Category, Commercial Maintenance (Educational Campus) at the recent Landscape Excellence Awards for 2022.
Pymble also has our own staff recognition program, including biannual LOVE Awards through which individual staff members nominate colleagues who Live Our (College) Values Everyday, and the less formal Staff Members of the Week acknowledged every Monday morning. In our half-yearly LOVE Awards, 18 staff members received a trophy and prize for being role models in a diverse range of positions across the College and we look forward to celebrating our second group of LOVE Award recipients for 2022 at the end of this term.
Wow, wow, wow. That’s a seriously impressive Staff Honours Board for 2022 and no doubt there are many other fabulous staff members who have quietly gone about adding to their skills and credentials when no one was looking – such is Team Pymble’s commitment to excellence in all that they do.
We have a few more student awards events to go before the end of the year. As we continue to come together in our last week to celebrate your daughter’s learning and achievements, can I ask you to please take a moment to acknowledge the 500+ people on our campuses – here at Pymble and at Vision Valley – along with an equal number of casual staff involved in our co-curricular programs who have spent the last four terms guiding and caring for her every step of the way. Sometimes these people are front-of-stage and visible, other times they are way back in the wings, beavering away behind the scenes. Either way, they are a remarkable group of people who continue to make me so very #PymbleProud. Team Pymble, take a well-deserved bow. ❤️
Dr Kate Hadwen