16 October 2015 volume 11

School grounds patrolled from 8:30am every

morning

Due to traffic safety concerns, students are re-

quired to enter the school grounds when they ar-

School Council Parents

John Melia (President) Kath Boyer (Vice President) Rick Creaser (Treasurer) Kathy Dellar Community Convenor Megan Ogle-Mannering Communications Convenor Susan Smith Yvette Higgins Staff Linda Mitchell 9488 1900 Rainer Parker-Stebbing 9488 1900 Community Representative Roger Smith Built and Natural Environment Convenor Executive Officer Pauline Rice

Finance Committee Tuesday 17 November 8.30-9.30am School Council Thursday 19 November 6.30-7.30pm

THE EDUCATION STATE

You have probably seen the Victorian Government’s recent commitment to provide extra funding to schools. A range of initiatives will be implemented including targeted funding to improve outcomes for students who need extra help at school. Fitzroy High School has received additional equity funding as part of this commitment. This commitment supports the government’s Education State targets. Ambitious goals have been set in the areas of:

Learning for Life that aims to have more students excelling in reading and

mathematics, scientific literacy, the arts and developing strong critical and creative thinking skills.

Happy, healthy and resilient kids that aims to have more students doing more physical activity and increased reported student resilience.

Breaking the Links that focuses on reducing the impact of disadvantage on student achievement and reducing the proportion of students who leave school prior to completion.

Pride and confidence in our schools that aims to raise the levels of community pride and confidence in Victorian

government schools. A new Framework for Improving Student Outcomes has been developed which outlines four priorities and six high-impact school improvement initiatives that will assist schools to take action to help lift student achievement, wellbeing and engagement. Schools will select the initiatives that best match the needs of their students, families and communities. In the coming months we will be consulting with the Education Department and determining the best way to allocate the additional equity funds to support student learning at Fitzroy High School. You can find more information about The Education State at http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/educationstate/Pages/default.aspx Pauline Rice, Principal

CELEBRATING WOMEN IN PHYSICS

In conjunction with the University of Melbourne's School of Physics, the Physics Student Society will be hosting the "Celebrating Women in Physics: A Careers Evening" at 6pm on Wednesday October 21st at the Hercus Theatre, Melbourne Graduate School of Science, University of Melbourne.

We strongly believe that the practice of Physics should be open and inviting for anyone, regardless of race, sexuality and particularly gender. For this reason we hope that such a night will inspire young women to pursue further study in Physical sciences.

The night will offer a chance to meet and learn about successful women in Physics. It will consist of a panel discussion with Physics students and graduates, followed by a break with light refreshments and a chance to chat with panelists.

Our panelists thus far are:

Innes Bigaran, Fourth Year Undergraduate in the Bachelor of Science (Physics) Diploma of Maths (Pure) justine Corso, PhD Student in Optics and the Centre for Advanced Molecular Imaging Cate Guenther, Postgraduate in Masters of Science (Physics) Experimental Particle Physics Group Dr Anthea King, Postdoctoral Researcher (Astrophysics)

More speakers are to be confirmed.

We would like extend an invitation to students and their parents to attend the night. Email Sandra Dickins at sandrad@fitzroyhs.vic.edu.au by Monday 19 October to arrange booking. Sandra Dickins Acting Assistant Principal Pathways and Community Leader

C

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter

REMEMBERING NAN GALLAGHER : A WONDERFUL FITZROY HIGH SCHOOL STAFF MEMBER, WOMEN’S ACTIVIST AND TEACHER’S MENTOR I value my memories of Nan Gallagher who died earlier this year at the age of 91 and I thought it appropriate that the Fitzroy High School community should be informed of her death and her substantial relations to this school. She not only made a major contribution to the life of Fitzroy High School, before it was closed in 1992, but in a wider sense the working conditions of today’s teachers and in particular women teachers.

I first met Nan at a national conference more than three decades ago. At that stage she was already making a major contribution to the education of young people in Victoria. At the same time Nan was also inspiring and educating fellow teachers. When I met Nan she already enjoyed a national reputation as an educator in humanities subjects and in later years she was rightly acknowledged for her great contribution to geography when she became an Honorary Life Member of the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria.

Nan really engaged her students in their learning and imbued in them a love of learning. Nan was a professional teacher in so many ways, for example, she published a key resource for teachers, What can students achieve? that provoked considerable interest across Victoria. Another of Nan’s many publications was the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association Award-winning textbook series A Geographer’s World for which she was a co-author.

Over several decades her best-selling textbooks, conference papers and workshops and work as a regional consultant provided guidance, practical classroom applications and inspiration to the teaching world.

Nan began her teaching career in 1942 at Doomburrin Primary School (near Fish Creek, near Foster on the South Gippsland Highway) and in later years taught at Kew and Fitzroy High Schools, finishing her teaching career as a Leading Teacher at Gardiner Central.

Nan always saw her role as much more than just a classroom teacher and in so many ways her life was governed by strong principles of justice and equal opportunity for all. She was a champion of reconciliation and egalitarianism for Aboriginal people and spent some time with an extremely remote Aboriginal community which led to the book

A Story to Tell: the Working Lives of 10 Aboriginal Australians of which she was the editor and a contributing writer. Nan, along with a group of other women teachers, also fought hard to improve and change the employment circumstances and status of female teachers in the Victorian Education Department. She campaigned to change the arrangements when women married - they had to resign and became temporary employees. Nan also fought to change the iniquitous situation where women teachers were paid less than men teachers for the same work. Nan’s influential and persistent campaigning for equal pay and equal rights for women led to positive outcomes for women teachers in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Nan’s endeavours in so many fields showed that she was a lifelong learner. Nan was an intrepid and unconventional traveller, mostly with her husband Hector. Her trips to remote, difficult to access and even dangerous parts of the world such as remote corners of Amazonia and little-known Asian kingdoms, were accompanied by wonderfully evocative postcards that were dispatched to her colleagues in Australia.

A special story about Nan that associates with her Fitzroy High School years also reveals her considerable sense of humour. As a very human and approachable teacher Nan was given a ‘tough’ Year 9 class and the students went about inventing a fellow student whom they named ‘Laurie Vann’, and persuaded Nan to call his name each day while marking the roll. This ruse was always in good spirit and Laurie was invariably sick or somewhere else. When told by members of the Year 9 class that Laurie was in Alice Springs, Nan organised for a fellow teacher then visiting Alice Springs to write to the class c/o Nan, with references to various students and events. This left the Year 9 class bewildered and for many months Laurie wrote to them from all over the world as Nan’s colleagues travelled. The situation became even more bewildering for the class when Nan invented a relative named ‘Mini Vann’.

10X Parliament Inquiry

when 19 October

where City

who MJE

mark your calendar

State Athletics Carnival

when 20 October

where

Albert Park

who DHI

7A/7D Mercy Hospital

when 19 October

where Mercy Hospital

who SJO

Hoddle Waddle

when 20 October

where

City

who JPI

VCE 11 Drama Performance 1984

when 20 October

where Playhouse

Who MT

Conception to Birth

when 22 October

where

Mercy Hospital

who SG

Yr 12 Valedictory

when 21 October

where FHS

who CM

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter

So many students and teachers across Victoria and

Australia have benefited from Nan’s wonderful

contributions to education. Nan wrote once that her

aim as an educator was to encourage young people

to “regard themselves as citizens of the world”. She

brought a distinctive and special humanity to those

who surrounded her both in schools and the wider

community. She is survived by her husband Hector,

also a teacher of distinction.

Vale, Nan

Roger Smith

Community representative on the Fitzroy High

School Council and Chair of the Environment

Committee of Council

I am indebted to my friend Elida Brereton, former

Principal of Camberwell High School, and her

obituary “A Tribute to Nan Gallagher: Geographer,

Teacher and Author Extraordinaire” which she

wrote for Interaction- the Journal of the Geography

Teachers’ Association of Victoria, Volume 43

Number 2, June 2015, in preparing this article.

YEAR 7 MUSEUM EXCURSION—Animal diversity and classification. What did you like best? The different animals in the one room and the bug and insects and everything pretty much, it was a good day. Seeing all the insects and animals there. Reading about the bugs and watching the live bug exhibits. The mammals! I loved the bugs area. The insects - I liked learning about the different insects and seeing the multi coloured bugs. As well as seeing the 'live' spiders. I liked it when I put my head in the ant bubble! Having spare time in the taxidermy section … I liked seeing the stuffed animals. I especially liked learning and looking at the Fennec Fox. I liked how we could come up close and see the actual sizes and what the animals liked

to eat. The bugs! I really liked that at each exhibition we could go and explore by ourselves once we had finished our booklet. Something you didn't like: I didn't like anything. Having to take notes at the museum. I wasn't a fan of the disgusting smelling things in the bug section. I also wish we had a bit more time in each section to fill everything in. We didn't have much time in the sections that we went in, so we should have had more time! The dead animals creeped me out. How short the amount of time we had in each exhibit. - I did not get as much of the worksheet done as I would've liked to. I like it all because I like to learn new things! I didn't like however, how we couldn't see the whole museum and look at the birds etc. I was looking forward to seeing it all. Something you would like to know more about: Some different animals that are endangered, I would have liked to have looked through a few more of the animal sections Sea animals. The poison in their fangs. The Indomalayan Region. The nearly extinct animals. I would like to learn more about the puma. The fluffy animals. I would like to learn more about Fennec Fox. I am really intrigued by it and it makes me happy and I love it! Different species and how they adapt and help the earth. I would have liked there to be more screens in the animal area so that I could get more info on them. Nothing. Spiders. I would really like to learn more about the other parts of the world as I have been learning mainly about Oceania, I now feel very strong in this area. A funny thing that happened was ... There was free wifi I didn't know about and I wish I used it. Nothing funny happened. Eve wouldn't leave the Fennec Fox! The head thing where you put your head in the hole and look at the ants. Lots of kids were scared of the bugs. Nelli and I ran away from Indira! Putting my head in the ants thing, they let you do that. Me and a friend thought we were taking photos with our friends when they were on the top level in the animal area, but they were actually yr 10s from a private school. When everybody was scared of the spiders in the open enclosure, none of us realised that there was no glass between us and the spiders! We all stayed away from the area after that.

Contributors: James, Ky, Indira, Nelli, Ruby, Javier,

Ella, Mohamed, Abdisamed, Lily, Aliyyah, Kathleen,

Stella, Eve, Kelly

9V Pre Driver’s Ed

when 22 October

where Bayswater North

who LET

mark your calendar

Macbeth Crew Movie

when 22 October

where Carlton

who KA

10Z Parliament Inquiry

when 22 October

where City

who MJE

10Y Parliament Inquiry

when 23 October

where City

who MJE

11 BusMan

when 23 October

where City who MP

Yr 7 Boys Volleyball

when 28 October

where Reservoir

who DHI

Yr 8 Boys Volleyball

when 27 October

Where Reservoir

who DHI

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter

MONDAY, 2 NOVEMBER IS A

STUDENT FREE DAY.

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter

16 October 2015 volume 11 edition 14 Newsletter