Student Leadership Team News (SLT)
What a fantastic start to the year for McAuley! The Student Leadership Team has been hard at work, creating, organising and running events for the college community this term. The first major event was the Valentine’s Day celebrations that we hosted at school. Dedicated students sold and delivered chocolates and messages from secret admirers, and the senior boys performed stunning renditions of famous love songs to many baffled and embarrassed students at lunch and recess. Overall, the event was a major success and raised $220 dollars for Caritas.
Next up on the agenda was the Swimming Carnival. While this was not an SLT run event, the Year 12 students certainly made a splash at the Maclean Pool with the dress-up theme of “Pirates and Mermaids”. This was an incredibly fun way to bring the cohort together for our final carnival and proved highly entertaining for the rest of the College. The dedicated House Leaders were instrumental in bringing school spirit and friendly competition to the day. Their enthusiasm and encouragement led to high levels of participation and student engagement, with a number of school records broken throughout the day. Some further highlights included the amazing Tracey house song, composed by Lucas Becker as well as Jaz and Lucy Smith’s inflatable costumes in support of their ‘Champagnat Sharks’. The day concluded with several exhilarating relay races that the whole school lined the pool's edges to watch, before Champagnat house was announced victorious!
Harmony Day was held on March 21st and the SLT decided to create a fantastic video that showcased the diversity of our community, hearing directly from a number of our students. Students were encouraged to wear an orange accessory to celebrate our diversity and unity as a student body at McAuley. March was also an exciting month for MCC as we were the host school for LEAD, a student leaders conference run by Proclaim Lismore that is run annually and aims to prepare Year 11 and 12 students for active ministry in their schools by nurturing their own faith and developing them into supportive members of their community. We had plenty of senior students from across the diocese travel to McAuley to participate in this event and stay overnight at the school. Dynamic keynote speakers gave students insights into youth ministry, and the band Wildfire gave awesome performances at the rallies, bringing the whole event to life.
The Project Compassion campaign at our school was incredibly successful. Over the six-week period of Lent, students and staff raised a grand total of $3756! This money will be sent to Caritas Australia and used to keep welfare programs running in local and international communities that are struggling financially. Along with the homeroom donation boxes, the Thursday Morning Breakfasts, which are run by dedicated volunteers and SLT members, the Easter Raffle, the Lenten Fish Fry, Year 8 RE stalls and the Return and Earn initiative were all amazing fundraisers and initiatives that raised substantial amounts of money and helped spread awareness of Project Compassion and their mission.
Looking forward to term 2, the SLT is eager to provide the school with further exciting initiatives. The Senior Charity Ball is set to take place on Saturday, the 11th of May, and our enthusiastic committee has been hard at work planning and preparing for this event. Dance practices are well underway, and fundraising and decorating committees have been busy behind the scenes to make the night a success!
The MCC Olympics is a further endeavour which will begin in week 2. This event has been held previously in accordance with the 2021 Olympic games, and our house captains have taken on the challenge to bring it back. Within each house, students have nominated to participate and been divided into ‘countries’. Each country will compete in a number of events including European Handball, Campbell Soup, Ultimate Frisbee and more, with house points up for grabs!
In addition, the Leadership team will be taking over Ms Deborah Parkin’s ‘Return and Earn’ initiative, encouraging students to recycle their bottles in our hessian bags. All money raised will go back into our school, used to fund school beautification projects and address requests put forward by the students via our ‘Student Suggestion Box’. More information on these events will be provided in the coming term.
Eva Patricks & Laura Hoade
Student Leadership Team