Students share their experiences about the Urban Engagement Program
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Mr Ryan Leahy joins us this week, an expert in Drama and History!
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
1 in 3 people will need blood…only 1 in 30 donate.
Lifeblood Teams is a fantastic way for family, friends, colleagues, teammates, and communities to band together and give blood- nothing beats the feeling of saving lives together…and you never know when you, or your loved ones, may need Lifeblood.
Aside from genuinely saving lives, Lifeblood Teams is about friendship, inclusive community and a little healthy competition. It’s about lifting spirits and making you proud to be part of something bigger than yourself.
With this in mind, and as they become eligible, we are encouraging the year 12 cohort to consider making their first donation as part of the St Bernard’s College Lifeblood Team.
In celebration of St Bernard’s College 60th Anniversary, we have set an initial goal of
60 donations by 1st November, appealing for donors from our Year 12 students & the wider SBC community- so whether it’s your first time or your 60th, please join our team and donate in the coming weeks.
Group bookings, to donate together with family and friends, can be made online or via the Lifeblood App.
If you’re already a donor and would like your future contributions to be registered with the St Bernard’s College Lifeblood team, please follow instructions here.
For more information about Lifeblood and how to give blood, please click on the links within the flyer below or contact jwilkinson@sbc.vic.edu.au
You’re the Lifeblood of Australia.
Join the St Bernard’s College Lifeblood Team!
* GOAL: 100 donations by 1st November 2023 *
Can I donate blood? Are you 18-75 years old, healthy and weigh over 50kg? Find out if you can donate blood…and start changing lives.
Why donate? You can make a real difference! Read some of the inspiring Lifeblood stories:
Where can I donate? At any Lifeblood centre, the closet centre to the College is
Lifeblood Airport West Donor Centre
93 Matthews Ave,
Airport West
VIC 3042
Have a query or need help registering?
Visit Lifeblood or contact Miss Wilkinson - jwilkinson@sbc.vic.edu.au
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
2024 VCE examination periods
The following examination periods have been approved by the VCAA Board.
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Saturday, 12 August 2023 was the day the running tribe from SBC commenced their journey to sunny Sydney to show the world that who still produces the best athletes. The running factory that is St. Bernard’s College was led this year by two remarkable members of our beloved community. The first mention must be the Hall of Famer Gerard “Supinator” Brown. Respect shown by all for this man, to the point that if you spoke when he was, you’d cop a whack from a nearby body. Lessons were endlessly learnt being around Brownie from tips on the course to manners out in the community. The group being able to share the running stage with such a great make running a PB seem mediocre.
The next mention is without question our organising guru that has proven to be a better runner than talker - which if you have met her, you wouldn’t think is possible! She goes by the name Queen and her essence on the course would make a member of the royal family look twice. Without your dedication and planning Helen Roberts we would have never found our way to Terminal 4.
If you’re not up to date with headlining news around the world, then you wouldn’t have been aware that “Big Break” Cox had been spending time in Greece enjoying what many call a ‘Hot Girl Summer’. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop our Form Guide writer from clocking a 59.16 on his own and giving our mob a number to chase.
The sights were seen on the Saturday, laughs were shared, travel fines were dodged by sweet talking Robbo and the day became night where we all found ourselves around a dinner table in the Village Hostel that resembled a darkened bunker from WW2. Rumours spread that the room was less depressing than the meal to be cooked that night, however having athlete by athlete come up re-enacting a young Oliver Twist, Queen, Brownie and Ned knew they did alright. As morning sprung, influencers fled to the beloved Bondi beach to all post the same photo of a beach sunrise, skinny latè, and a caption “paradise”
Not for the Bernard Boys, as they remained in their quarters stretching, tying laces, and visualising individual victory on the track. Locked in runners found themselves on a pack filled bus where autographs by travelling fans were denied from the stars wearing black, blue, and gold. Within the 80,000 runners on the day, the Sydney sun shone brightly on the mesmerising 26 from Essendon.
26. Controlling the back of the pack with a sore foot and making sure no roughies broke through, QUEEN ROBBO (Roberts) found a 75.19 finish.
25. Burning holes throughout the course and showing that determination goes a long way HEATER (Daly) came in at 70.00 on the nose.
24. LATE ARRIVAL (Ranaletta) by name but not by nature as he showed the reporters that races are run on the track not on paper, as he timed at 68.07.
23. MATTER OF HONOUR (Harrington) battled a sickness that would make many pull the pin. But instead, this athlete pulled through and found himself across the line at 64.05.
22. Thunder struck the field around one of the last bends as AC/DC (Currenti) chalked up a 62.40 finish.
21. SUPINATOR (Brown) showed that age is truly just a number, as the number he proudly holds tight is 62.31.
20. WOLVERINE 2.0 (Firman) made the likes of the X-Men shiver in fear as he crossed over at 62.00.
19. MIDDLE AGE (Dwyer) proved that some people are afraid of turning 40, and others are afraid to see him in the line-up on race day, clocking at 61.29.
18. HEADLESS (Nedelkovski) came in with no times to read about but the real mystery was how he let Pace get him, sliding in at 60.18.
17. OFF THE’ (Pace) demonstrated that he may not be great at holding his phone on top of a Ferris wheel, but his name says it all as he held on strong to allow for a 60.09 time.
16. ITALIAN CHIME (Bell) made the course seem as easy as finishing a second serving of Nonna’s pasta finding himself with a 59.58.
15. SILENT ASSASSIN (Evans) killed the hour like a new plant you swore you had watered. Crossing over at 59.57.
12. MULLET (Treglia) gave all other runners a good look of what he can do from behind, as many never even got to see his face. Time stopped for at 59.28.
13. BIG BREAK (Cox) might have strapped his watch to a local triathlete in Greece while he sipped on the local produce, but credit given to a 59.16 time.
12. CYNOPHILES (Beecham) ignored the niggle many questioned and made others in the race question how he’d go at full health, finding the line at 59.10.
11. WATSON (Answerth) might have came out of the blue, but was looking at the blue ocean of Bondi well before others found the 12k mark. Timing at 57.51.
10. WHISKERS (Dent) made it big time with the media coverage as his name was showcased thoroughly, and for every right. Nice whiskers Patty clocked in at 57.34.
9. MERCHANT (Monger) proved that breaking point is a place he’s comfortable with experiencing to get the time he wanted as he finished with 55.06.
8. SUPERFISH (Purcell) may be great in the water, but showed that he’s also a menace on land, splashing in at 55.05.
7. DETOUR (Gwynne) made many wishing he’d take a detour off the course as he put all others that call themselves runners to shame. Official time states 54.20.
6. BACK FLIP (Jones) stated early that he’s here just for fun… I wonder what hard work looks like for this man then. Charged through at 53.49.
5. LUCKY CHARM (Mathews) revealed that some people make their own luck through grit and poise as this gifted talent will be a name remembered for years to come. Timed at 52.58.
4. FORTIFIED VINO (Scerri) snuck his way onto the Jetstar plane and also into the top 4 finish with an incredible effort. 52.46 the clock displayed as he passed Finish.
3. SPIDEY’S UNCLE (Parker) unlike Peter Parker that needed to be bit to gain his powers, this man was born to be as lethal as a redback. Found a 50.20 time.
2. THE KING (Saunders) made people forget the name of that other King from the United Kingdom with his performance clocking in at 50.03.
1. All very big mentions above, however, there can only be one winner and he goes by THE MISSILE (Cruse). Putting the timekeeper to work not long after the start gun, this athlete timed in at shocking 46.34 and 31st overall at the 2023 City2Surf Race. Now it is safe to say we know what is faster than a missile.
All in all, I am so grateful and appreciative to be part of something so influential. Thank you to all those involved and special shout out to Bec for sorting out toast and juice boxes for hungry boys after each training session. Moments like this weekend we’ll cherish forever.
I look to these young men with great certainty our future beyond the confines of St. Bernard’s College will be remarkable. If you made it to the end of the write up, please take on this advice - join our SBC running club. Whether you can run a metre or a marathon you are welcome and feeling part of a tribe is what life’s all about.
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
St Bernard’s College Year 7 students James Mastropasqua and William Young represented Victoria in the School Sports Australia, AFL Carnival last week.
The team was undefeated against teams from WA, SA, ACT, NT, QLD and NSW, winning the gold medal and bringing the cup back to Victoria.
Fantastic effort boys!
Wishing Jackson Bossio the best of luck for next week as he represents St Bernard’s in the School Sports Victoria for Under 12's basketball in Perth!
A fantastic achievement to be selected for a state team - We'll be cheering you on Jackson!
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Benjamin Jackson
Recently, my class completed the Urban Engagement program. It was like nothing I had ever done before. Spending four weeks in the city, what an exciting prospect! For me, Urban Engagement lived up to its high expectation, but not in the way I thought it would. For me, the sense of freedom was amazing, but what I valued most was the independence I gained from the program. But I’ll touch more on this later.
You might ask “What do you do during the program?” Well, it started with a week of exploration. We were assigned groups with the St Columba’s students, and our job on the first day was to visit various landmarks around the city in an Amazing Race. It was a great way to introduce us to the program, as we had to figure out how to use public transport to find our way around the city. Yes, we used Google Maps for absolutely everything, but it was about us finding our way, and still built a lot of independence as we learned our way around. The theme of exploration continued for the first week, as we were given plenty of worksheets that we had to fill out whilst visiting various locations. It may have seemed a bit pointless at the time, but we gained an unfathomable amount of independence over the first week, in terms of using public transport, and knowing where things are in the city.
This brings us to week two, where we were put into groups of four boys (which was a welcome reprieve for most). We were tasked with putting together a presentation on an issue in the city. My group got traffic and public transport. This was also our first taste of freedom, as without the excursions, we had all the choice on what we wanted to do! However, our whole class found out pretty quickly that the time would drain pretty fast, and spending an hour and a half at Melbourne Central may not be the best choice. In terms of my group, we decided to have three people conduct the necessary interviews, whilst I stayed back to do the research. It worked perfectly, and thanks to our time management, it was fairly stress free. My advice for people going in would be to manage your time properly, as you really don’t want to be in the situation when you run out of time.
For the final two weeks, we completed our Passion Projects. How good we thought it would be. Two weeks, and all we had to do was make a five minute video! But as we soon found out, it wasn’t about weeks or days, it was about hours. And fifteen hours goes by pretty quickly as I soon found out. It didn’t take long until I was editing from home, and I felt like nothing had been achieved. We were supposed to finish by Thursday of week four, and on the Tuesday, we had less than two minutes of horrendous quality footage put together. We had all the filming done, but I was on the verge of throwing a chair across the room, especially because half of my group couldn’t do anything due to technical issues. I couldn’t find any appropriate music for our project, which was The Shrine of Remembrance, and I was genuinely concerned it wouldn’t get done. Luckily for us, we had three hours the next day, and it’s remarkable how much work four people can get done without any problems, and by Thursday, we had produced something to be proud of. From these two weeks, I learned a lot about time management and productivity, and I would urge people to properly plan out everything you want to get done, and if you work as hard as you can, you will get so much pride out of it.
So, what has all this taught me? It would be an understatement to say I learnt more than I believed possible from the program. The responsibility is all on you. You have to make your way into and around the city, all on your own. You decide when you do what you need to, when you have lunch, and what work you want to do. It taught me an ungodly amount of independence. If I’m being honest, my greatest achievement was not having McDonald’s by choice, and the only time I had it was when it was my only possible choice unless I wanted to starve. It taught me how to use public transport. It taught me how to navigate. I can say with confidence that if you dropped me anywhere in Melbourne, I could figure out where I am within a minute, and I would know how to get home. It taught me time management, it taught me productivity skills, and it taught me how to behave in an adult environment. Overall, this experience is incredibly valuable for learning life skills, and although I think highly of Santa Monica, I feel that this experience will help me immensely in the future.
Ethan Gissara
During my time at the Urban Engagement program, I had an adventure of emotions throughout the program, from exciting too happy too sad. Urban was split into a few main projects which I will sum up for you. Week one exploration with the Girls which involved us exploring the city and the different building which are hidden with Melbourne. Week two was our first assessment which was the Big Issue, you and your group members would get a designated task and you would have to go out and conduct research and results which you would later present as a group.
During the first two weeks I experience many different parts of Melbourne and personally loved every part from the laneways activities to the Australian music vault to even the metro tunnel HQ. Every part left a different impression on me but overall, it contributes to the culture which we call Melbourne.
Week 3 was interesting as we got to choose our groups and choose the project we wanted to work on, my group worked on the Shrine of Remembrance which brought sadness and reminded me of the sacrifice they made for our country. I had some interesting interactions with people there but one thing they all had in common was they were all coming to visit the Shrine to remember and honour these people who died for our country. I personally found all the artefacts and the items very symbolic of the people and hold memories of the fallen. I thought the Shrine was a wonderful reverent place that you should visit one day.
Throughout week 3 and 4 I had many interesting interactions with members of the public from just a hello to interviewing people as people went about their days. At the start of the program I was a little nervous and confused on which public transport to catch and when going in and around the city, however having your peers around you helping it makes moving around considerably easier, hence the importance of teamwork throughout the program teamwork and organisation will be two of the most important skills you will continue to develop and will use throughout the program and you will gain so much more out of the program if you contribute to the team and are organised. This is an important lesson for life which you will already have plenty of experience due to the program.
Finally Urban Engagement left me with so much more than just teamwork and organisation it left me with a different view on the city and more knowledge on how to get around the city which I didn’t have before this will easily be one of the most memorable experiences of my high school journey and one, I won’t forget.
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Two of our Year 9's who recently completed the Santa Monica experience wrote the below reflective pieces on there experience - fantastic to see the postive impact the camp has on students
Hugh Sinnadurai
Santa Monica is a once of a lifetime experience as it is different from all other camps. If you have already been to Santa, you would probably know that the staff there talk a lot about listening and how to improve on your learning skills to become a better student and more importantly a better person overall. It’s fair to say a lot of us struggled with this for the first one or two weeks but by the end of the experience I am able to say that our classes behaviour has improved greatly. The camp is a fun but also hard experience due to many cleaning duties and gardening duties, those might sound annoying but when you get home you will be happy that you did them as when you get home you will take more pride in your room and be more resilient overall. On the camp you get to take part in many different activities such as surfing, hiking, camping, mountain bike riding and late-night tag with your mates proving to be the best game on camp. A great thing about camp is also the food as all meals are one to remember thanks to the camp chef David. During the 4 weeks you get to know your class much better than if you were just going to school with them. I’m not too sure about how other classes went but I’m very sure that our class has become more trusting, friendly and we have built great teamwork skills.
Tyler Fitzpatrick
In this Newsletter I’m going to be sharing some of class 9G’s favourite memories from Santa Monica with you. Firstly, if you want to be a part of the team you have to learn quickly what's acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and be tolerant of others. Our class learnt a great life lesson in resilience, especially when one of our classmates’ tents went flying high above the gumtrees at 2 in the morning and ended up upside down. I doubt that this was a highlight of his Santa Monica experience however, he proved to us that even in extreme circumstances we have the inner strength to adapt whenever something goes wrong. On camp we did many fun activities. Some of these include surfing, mountain bike riding, hiking, camping, making our own food on Trangia’s and kayaking. Even though these were fun we also had to do things that weren’t as fun such as spreading mulch, cleaning out the buses and feeding the chickens - on Santa Monica, our class didn’t like these things at all however, now I’m back to normal school I realise that doing these things was helping us prepare to do things that we don’t want to do and it was making our class better listeners overall. All in all, we had a great character-building experience that made us much tighter as a class and I highly recommend the Santa Monica experience.
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
The offical St Bernard's beanie is available from our online uniform shop, $25 per beanie with proceeds going to the St Vinnies Winter Sleep Out appeal
Grab one today!
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
Library News
St Bernard’s has a number of literary events coming up.
National Book Week is on next week. The Library will be abuzz with activities:
St Bernard's College will be hosting a Literary Festival for the Year 8 cohort.
There will be a range of authors, poets, illustrators coming along to enlighten, provide workshops and entertain the Year 8's on Wednesday 31st August. Authors, poets and creatives such as Melissa Keil, Fleur Ferris, Deborah Leiser Moore, Nicole Hayes, Mandy Ord, Amy Bodossian, Sofie Laguna, Steve Smart, Marc McBride and Justine Sless will be attending. The Year 8 students will be participating in sessions from 9-10.30am, 11-12.30pm and then be treated to special guest and multi-award winning author John Marsden from 1.30-2.30pm in the Frank Fitzgerald Auditorium.
There will be hamburger and ice cream food trucks in the Year 7 basketball court area at Lunchtime, food can be pre-ordered on the Canteen Homepage on MYSBC.
Collins Books from Moonee Ponds will be in the Peter Hogan Boardroom at lunchtime for those who would like to purchase any of our featured authors' books.
This will be a fun, creative and inspiring day for the Year 8 students. We want to celebrate authors, books and make reading and creative writing an event for the day.
SBC Short Story Competition
Theme: "The road ahead"This year the challenge is to create a character and/or world that explores what the road ahead will bring. The judges will be excited to read stories from a range of voices and perspectives.
Prizes
Year 7-8 1st: $100 voucher 2nd: $60 voucher 3rd: $40 voucher
Year 9-10 1st: $100 voucher 2nd: $60 voucher 3rd: $40 voucher
Year 11-12 1st: $150 voucher 2nd: $100 voucher 3rd: $50 voucher
Competition closes 7th October
Dear Parents and Friends of St Bernard’s,
The SBC uniform shop is only a click away - now operating via appointments, Please click here to book an appointment or order via our online shop if you know your son's sizes'
Please note that the uniform shop is closed during the school holidays
For all other uniform enquiries, please email rbuhagiar@sbc.vic.edu.au or phone 9289 1176.
