From the Principal

Enrolments and more

Dear Parents, Students and Friends

In a recent article titled, “Bringing Good News for the Nones,” Br Michael Green writes about the increasing number of people indicating None as their response to the Census question regarding religion. Michael writes about our Australian secular society and the lack of belief in God. He compares this with the time of post Revolution France when St Marcellin was commencing the Marist Brothers.

In absolute contrast to the “unbelief” of the age, Marcellin was someone who had a heightened sense of being always, as he described it, in the “presence of God”. Many would argue that this abiding sense of the presence of God was the most characteristic element of his spirituality.

St Marcellin was called to the house of a dying boy by the name of John Baptiste Montagne. The young man was dying and knew nothing of a loving God. Marcellin spoke to the boy of his God and gave him the last rites before young Montagne died. Marcellin was so moved by the Montagne experience that he quickly went about forming the order of teaching brothers which we know as the Marist Brothers.

Marist Oratory

The Marist Oratory was held again last week at St Gregory’s College Campbelltown. A wide variety of Sydney schools plus Marists from Forbes and Canberra contested this high quality public speaking competition. Each school sends its best speakers to contend. The MCNS team returned victorious for the third time in five years. The speakers for each age group did an outstanding job under the direction of Janette Durand.



2021 Enrolment

Marist Catholic College North Shore will commence enrolling girls and boys for Year 7 2021 in Term 4 this year. We will be holding an Open Afternoon on Wednesday October 17, 2018 from 4pm-5.30pm. If you have family or neighbours who may be considering such an enrolment please encourage them to attend the Open Afternoon.

Tony Duncan
Principal




From the Assistant Principal

Leadership

Leadership

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”  John Quincy Adams 6th U.S President

The College has recently completed the process of nominations, election and announcement of our Student Leadership team for 2018/2019. The boys will no doubt represent Marist College North Shore and the student body with great pride and dignity. 


College Captain: Joshua Willathgamuwa, College Vice Captain: Thomas James, Academic Captain: Sean Auer, Arts and Cultural Captain: Jonathan Amirzaian, Faith and Solidarity Captain: William Gallen, Sports Captain: Lachlan Don. House Captains: Chanel: Sean Netting, Kelly: Kyle Devine, MacKillop: Timothy Pettigrew, Montagne: Guiliano Parisi, Moore: Nicholas Pagano, Salta: Chad Rogers.

Throughout the process the boys have been reminded of exemplar models of leadership. Leadership can often be characterised by two significant themes: gifts and service. St. Mark, in his Gospel, describes the many leadership qualities of Jesus that serve as a guide for our boys.
  • Jesus had a clear vision, it was simple and direct.
  • Jesus looked to build the people around him into a team.
  • Jesus empowered those he had contact with.
  • Jesus made his relationships with others a priority.
  • Jesus looked to promote the work of others before his own.
  • Jesus always met a crisis head on and did not walk away.
  • Jesus used his authority when needed.
Leadership will compliment our “character” but often times can also challenge it. Leadership calls for consistency, fairness and an altruistic view when making decisions and representing others. All this can be a challenge for boys as they mature from boys into young men.  Inspired by Jesus, our new team is called to a leadership that ensures they are not above or better than those they represent but lead with compassion and empathy, guaranteeing all are represented equally.

A thank you is extended to the outgoing leadership team ably led by Felix Jenney and Riley Sanders. Their humble but significant presence at the College throughout this year is a testament to the quality and integrity of our Marist men.

I would encourage all boys, especially in the Senior years, to continue to seek opportunities to display leadership. This can extend into the classroom, on the
sporting field or engagement in the many co-curricular activities on offer at MCNS.

Rick Grech
Deputy Principal

Creative and Performing Arts

Cultural Week 2018

The 2018 Cultural Week was an opportunity to celebrate the hard work and special talents that the students at Marist College North Shore have shared with the College community. The week mainly focuses on the Year 12 Visual Arts Body of Work Exhibition, the Spring Music Festival, and the Cultural Assembly which all occurred on Wednesday 5 September. 


Ms Amy Dunlop the 2018 Visual Arts teacher: Visual Arts is a subject that is easily dismissed within the school curriculum as a “fun” and “easy” practical subject. However, the process of developing the Body of Work throughout Year 12 is rife with the same sorts of challenges that all artists experience: self doubt, crippling indecision, mistakes and failed experimentation, stress, and of course, the fact that there is never enough time, nothing is ever perfect and nothing ever quite turns out as you imagine. In spite of these challenges, it is also a richly rewarding experience, providing a deep sense of satisfaction and pride when the hard work is done and the final product put on display.

The young men of the 2018 cohort have persevered through this difficult and trying creative experience with patience, dedication and no small amount of skill to achieve sensational results. On Wednesday night, the College hosted its annual HSC Body of Work Soirée, where the Year 12 Visual Arts students showcased their completed HSC Bodies of Work for the first time. This year’s exhibition featured artworks that combined high levels of technical skill with sophisticated and nuanced layers of meaning across diverse artmaking practices and expressive forms. The evening was a wonderful success, with many people coming out to see the works and celebrate the boys’ achievements.

To my Year 12s, congratulations! The works that you have produced this year reflect your consistent dedication and effort. It has been a pleasure to watch your ideas develop and mature into impressive, highly resolved Bodies of Work that I hope will be rewarded with the marks you deserve in the final assessment.


Show more

English

Oratory Competition



We won!

On Wednesday 5 September a group of accomplished public speakers travelled to St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown to participate in the 28th Marist Oratory competition. The competition draws over thirty eight Marist schools in Sydney and from a few regional areas. Representing year 7 was Taras Myronov, Year 8: Nathan Brabban, Year 9: Taylor Mirabelli, Year 10: Lucas Murphy, senior: Daniel Bowers and competing in the senior impromptu, Ryan Mirabelli.


There were a range of topics on offer for the students to respond to, Lucas Murphy spoke about the topic of ‘What’s in a name’, Taylor spoke of ‘turning the other cheek’ and Nathan’s speech considered how ‘it all began’ taking it to the metaphor of spectator sport and its intent. All of the students wrote speeches that demonstrated their ideas and abilities to go beyond the literal.

By the end of the evening Nathan had won his group and Daniel achieved second. With this, we finished the evening by winning the competition. We achieved this because most of our students finished in the top five of their year group. This is a great achievement and shows how strong public speaking is at MCNS. This is the third time in the last six years that we have won the competition.



I would like to thank Ms Kim, Ms Lee and Mr Rulewski for their support.

A victory for the power of words!

Ms Janette Durand
Public Speaking Coordinator

Co-Curricular

MCNS Chess Championships

2018 MCNS Chess Champion Prizewinners

TROPHIES

 1st PlaceRowan Cargill MK66.5/7
 2nd PlaceSean Auer K36/7 [higher tie break]
 3rd Place    Arvend Karunagaran MR1     6/7 [lower tie break]


MEDALS

17/18 Years Aldwin Arambulo S55/7
16 YearsDylan Odenthal C15.5/7
15 Years Tristan Oliveri MK45/7
14 Years Yutaro Yamada MK15/7
 12/13 Years        Darshan Jones MK1 5.5/7

HOUSE PLACINGS [Sum of 6 top scorers in each house]

1st Place MacKillop 30.5
 2nd Place  Kelly 29.5
 3rd PlaceSalta 23.5
 4th PlaceMoore 23
 5th PlaceChanel 21
 6th PlaceMontagne 18.5  

Newman Program

Teacher Professional Development in Gifted Education



NEWMAN SELECTIVE GIFTED EDUCATION PROGRAM
Teacher Professional Development in Gifted Education

Over the course of Terms 1 and 2 this year 13 teachers committed to building their capacity in gifted education by participating in the GEO 1 and 2 (Gifted Education Online) Courses. The aim of the College is to encourage and support teachers with their professional development for the effective provision for our gifted and talented students.

The GEO 1 Course focused on:
  • Definitions of giftedness and talent
  • Francois Gagne’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent
  • Characteristics of gifted students
  • Identification of gifted students
  • Subjective and objective measures
  • Gifted underachieving students
  • Twice Exceptional gifted students
  • Teacher nomination
  • Pre assessments
The GEO 2 Course focused on:
  • Pre assessment
  • Catering for the individual needs of gifted and talented students
  • Differentiated learning for gifted and talented students
  • Maker Model
  • Kaplan Model
  • Bloom’s Taxonomy
  • William’s Model
  • Cultures of Thinking - Visible Thinking
  • Supporting the social and emotional needs of Gifted and talented students
  • Acceleration opportunities 
  • Curriculum compaction
  • Flexible groupings
Through the Newman Selective Gifted Education Program we now have 16 teachers who have completed the gifted online course, 5 teachers have completed their Mini COGE Course and I am currently doing the Masters of Education in Gifted Education. The students in the Year 7 and 8 Newman class and all students will benefit from this professional development, as teachers are sharing their skills and expertise with their fellow teachers and they also use these strategies in all of their classes.

Congratulations to the teachers who completed the GEO 1 Course:
Greg Angelou - Technology
Amy Dunlop - Visual Arts
Simon Jenkins - PDHPE
Madelyn Kugel - French/Languages
Luke Hill - PDHPE Leader of Learning
Gabriel Rulewski - Religious Education
Liam Wells - Science

Congratulations to the teachers who completed the GEO 2 Course:
Sean Dowe - Technology
Matthew Fitzgerald - HSIE
Amanda Lee - English
Tony McDonnell - Music

Carolyn O’Brien CAPA Leader of Learning

Ben Smuts - Mathematics

Carolyn O’Brien
Director of Diverse Learning
Newman Selective Gifted Education Program Leader

School Notices

SSL Upgrade

This week the College moved to an improved internet content filtering system that will help to further protect students while using college IT services.

This involved cooperation between staff, students and their guardians to have the required software installed on each device.

The College IT Team would like to extend a thank you to everyone for creating the conditions for a smooth transition. The service is now operational with minimal impact to College operations.
Please read on if you would like more information about the changes that took place.

All Sydney Catholic Schools, including our College, use a filtering service called Zscaler. The change that took place this week was that SSL (encrypted traffic) Scanning was enabled for our school. Previously, not all web activity that was encrypted (uses SSL) was scanned fully, leaving potential gaps in the filtering system.

Zscaler is the web-content filtering system used in schools. Some of the reasons for enabling SSL scanning include:
- To protect against SSL encrypted threats on the Internet;
- To provide more granular policy setting for schools in Zscaler; and
- To enable more accurate auditing and reporting of web usage in schools.

Cian Byrne
Information Technology Officer

    Community Notices

    Stanton Library

    Yoga/mindfulness session
    Fri 12 Oct, 1.30-2.30pm
    For all students studying for exams (15-20 years only)
    Drop in on the day to Level 2 Conference room.
    First in, comfiest dressed! Mats are provided.

    Exam Conditions Study Space
    Wednesday 3rd, 10th & 17th October, 2.30 – 5pm
    Thursday 4th & 11th October, 9.30am – 12noon
    For HSC Students only. Exam conditions study space. Total silence. Bags, phones and computers at the front of the room. Heads down, pens up.
    Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
    Level 2 Conference Room.

    HSC Happy Hour
    Mon 15th, Tues 16th & Wed 17th October, 5-6pm
    Book in for a short study break with our adorable calm therapy dog Vega.

    Make a booking on the day for a 10 minutes one-on-one with Vega to read aloud to her while giving her some pats. Or talk about things you are studying, or how you are feeling.

    More information about these activities and our HSC resources can be found on our website. 

      Indian Bazaar

      Other

      Saxophone Champion

      Congratulations to Zac Coleman of Year 8, Salta 4 for another successful year playing his saxophone. Over the Easter break earlier in the year, Zac placed 3rd in the Australian Open Saxophone Championships in which he was the youngest in the field by a considerable margin. In June this year, Zac won the NSW Junior Saxophone Championships for the 2nd year in a row and just last weekend, Zac won the under 15 slow melody, the under 15 Saxophone and the under 19 saxophone at the East Coast of Australia Championships, again for the 2nd year in a row. Congratulations Zac.


      Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

      Congratulations to Varun Mehrotra, Year 11, Salta 9, who won the NSW Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Winter Cup on 1 September 2018. Varun has been training very hard this year and competed in 2 divisions above his weight class. The opponent was about 8-9 kgs heavier, so it was a big win for Varun.


      Well done in your efforts.




      Write a book in a day

      Here's another fantastic book from the day!  Click on book to view.






      Golf

      Congratulations Daniel!

      Congratulations to young gun Daniel Mascarenhas with a hole in one on the 3rd on Sunday. On the same day Daniel also managed to come 2nd in the Men's Individual Stableford.

      Well done Daniel!


      Rugby Champions

      Last weekend four boys from Marist College North Shore ( Jacob Basham, Alistair Kirk, Hugh Kellaway and Thomas Sage-Pickin) who play Rugby Union for Chatswood Junior Rugby Club in the U14’s, played there Grand Final against Narrabeen. Both team finished the regular season on equal points with both teams only losing one game throughout the season. After a very tough and hard fought match Chatswood went on to beat Narrabeen 19 -14 in the Grand Final. All four boys were very proud the representing the school at the club.



      Software Design and Development

      Excursion and combined class with Marist Eastwood Year 11 Software Design and Development

      On Thursday 6 September, the Software Design and Development class visited Marist College Eastwood to work with a highly experienced Software Design and Development teacher and her class to further prepare them for the Preliminary exams and the HSC course. Ms Willingham, the teacher at Eastwood  with 30 prior years experience in the field, helped the class with developing their understanding in pseudocode, flowcharts and control structures in software.

      Students actively engaged with Ms Willingham and the Eastwood class, asking questions and participating in activities such as converting between Binary, Decimal and Hexadecimal values. We also shared a collaborative document which both classes were able to write questions related to the software course that Ms Willingham went over during our visit.

      Overall, the visit to Marist Eastwood was a beneficial experience for both our North Shore and Eastwood software classes, through collaboration of sharing.

      I would also like to thank Ms Eggins for organising the meetup and Mr Sheringham for providing transport to the venue.

      Joe Barnier, MacKillop 2 Year 11

        Year 12 Study Skills



        On Thursday 30 August, Year 12 attended a study skills session titled, ‘The HSC Countdown’,  with Dr Prue Salter from Enhanced Learning Educational Services. The aim of the Seminar was to assist Year 12 organise together a strategic plan of attack for between now (post HSC Trial Exams) and their final HSC exams. The HSC Trial results have now been returned to the Year 12 students and the Seminar focused on how to effectively respond to the teacher’s feedback and how to maximise their learning. The session focused firstly on what students need to do before the end of Term 3. 




        Prue outlined in the Seminar that it is essential that study notes are completed, students work through their returned Trial HSC exam papers thoroughly (using the checklist provided), pinpoint areas of weakness and seek help on these areas, and to do essay writing practise and past examination papers before the end of term so they can obtain feedback from their teachers. These last weeks of school is the time that students need to use their class time effectively, however after making the plan for the weeks just prior to the HSC exams, students can now see how quickly the time will go and how important it is to use the rest of this term to the full. Year 12 also reviewed the study techniques they are using and looked at ways to improve and using a Growth Mindset Model. Each Year 12 student completed a grid with their HSC Examination timetable, planning the most effective way to allocate their study time over the weeks before and during the HSC Examination. Having a plan in place the students can prevent exam anxiety, as students know what they need to do to move forward and can see the steps they need to take. Parents are encouraged to review the handout from the session with their son and have their son explain their study plan as discussing these ideas can clarify students’ approach. Students can download the slides from the session and extra copies of the grid at www.enhanced-learning.net

        The Academic Resource Centre is a hub for the Year 12 students to receive support for study skills.  They can access past HSC exam papers and implement their study plan under the leadership of Ms Dunne. It is strongly recommended that Year 12 take advantage of the resources and the expertise of our Academic Resource Leader in their preparation for their HSC Examination.

        Carolyn O’Brien
        Director of Diverse Learning

        NVIDIA AI Conference



        On Tuesday 4 September, I was able to attend the NVIDIA AI Conference at the International Convention Centre (ICC) Sydney. The conference showcased a wide range of companies that were all working with NVIDIA (a computer chip manufacturer) to bring to life many proof of concept projects.

        Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way that businesses operate in a way never imaginable. It is the largest area of growth for both business and education since it became possible in 2012 for anyone to be involved.

        The Year 8 Newman class has been working on self-driving cars in technology classes and simulations in science classes that use the same core technologies as what was discussed at the AI conference. It will be great to pass on some of the experiences and ideas from the AI Conference and see them use these concepts in their class projects.

        The conference featured a talk from Marc Hamilton, the NVIDIA Vice President of Solutions Architecture and Engineering, on many new fields of research and development such as Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning, Virtual Reality (VR) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) optimised algorithms.

        Many other companies spoke at the conference ranging from beauty products (Olay), banks (ANZ), large technology organisations (Microsoft, Lenovo, NetApp) and companies that are specialising in machine learning or other AI (deep recognition, Neuri, Unleash Live). All of these companies used AI to either improve their businesses or as the basis of something new that is going to fix a world problem.

        It is great to see so much effort being put towards supporting these new concepts and technologies around the college that will greatly benefit students in the long term.

        Cian Byrne
        Information Technology Officer