Principal’s Log

We congratulate our Da Vinci Decathlon teams who have performed very well this week.  Our Year 5 and Year 7 teams were the winners of the Queensland Regional competition which also included schools from the Darling Downs. The prestigious competition sees highly able students pitting their skills against each other in the areas of engineering, mathematics and chess, code breaking, art and poetry, science, English, ideation, creative producers, cartography and legacy. We congratulate all the students involved and thank our teachers Mr Andrew Block, Mrs Linda Sydes, and Ms Adelle Byerlee for their leadership and support of our students.  We wish our Year 5 and 7 teams all the best as they now go on to the State Competition at the end of May. We look forward to sharing results from our Years 8, 9 and 10 Da Vinci Decathlon team who are competing in their Regional competition today.

We were delighted to have the Hon. Andrew Wallace, Member for Fisher, the Hon. Jason Hunt Member for Caloundra, Executive Director of Lutheran Education Queensland, Mrs Tanya Crooks, Local Councillor Mr Peter Cox, our architects from Bickerton Masters, Principals from Sunshine Coast Schools, College Council Members, and representatives of the Friends of Pacific join with us to celebrate the Opening and Dedication of our new Year 3 and 4 learning spaces. It was a special moment for us as a community to have Dr Richard Hauser open the buildings and for Dr Mark Vainikka, Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia, QLD District to dedicate the spaces.  We expressed our appreciation to the State Government for their provision of $1.6m to the total project cost of approximately $4.7m with the College contributing just under $3.7m to the project. The new building includes 6 general learning spaces with large adjoining withdrawal spaces. The new spaces connect to our existing Year 5 space, and we have seen Year 3, 4 and 5 staff and students revel as they have enjoyed the opportunity to develop contemporary learning skills and ways of being and thinking as they have grown across the Four Pillars.

There was a purposeful air to the conversations as Middle College parents and students took advantage of the opportunity to engage in their parent-teacher-student conferences this week. We thank our parents, teachers and students for committing the time to engage in these conversations that support our Middle College students to refine their learning.

We look forward to Open Day on Sunday 7^th May where we come together and invite others to join us to celebrate and explore the rich learning that occurs within our community.

Middle and Senior College families are reminded that we move to our formal winter uniform from Monday 8^th May. Middle and Senior College students will also return to travelling to and from College in their formal uniform and getting changed into and out of their sports uniform for double PE lessons.

We pray that God would guide us to look for opportunities to refine and grow in our learnings and in our relationships.

Dr Bronwyn Dolling, Principal