Parents Bulletins & Letters - No.2 Print E-mail

Parent Bulletin - No 2Second Letter from the Gnurad-Gundidj Campus and Community

2nd Letter Home from the Gnurad-Gundidj Campus, Monday 6th November, 2017

Letter Snapshot

Welcome again to Gnurad-Gundidj Campus. Here we are after more than two weeks already. Time has flown by and I am really pleased with how things are progressing at our school.

Homesickness is a normal emotion at this time in the program, although it does tend to diminish. If you think that your son or daughter is still unreasonably homesick, do call us and we can compare notes, so to speak. None of us can really predict how this anxiety may manifest itself. Our staff members really do make a priority of ensuring students’ wellbeing during these first, more unsettled weeks.

We normally see in our students in their first weeks of living here being very concerned with self. They often ask, “When is dinner? or “Where do I wash my clothes?” On the inside, we feel students are asking, “Who are my friends and how do I fit? Does she like me or what does he think about me?” They are concerned about “me”. This is a very egocentric period. After this normal and possibly “selfish” time, students find themselves comfortable with this day-to-day concern, and tend to identify with their team very strongly: “I belong to ‘‘Doncaster Secondary College’ or ‘Rainbow P-12 college’, or “I am a city/country person”. Students tend to be placing themselves in a category so they can find their position in a “new social/school order”.

Cooking

Students are currently on or preparing for their first expo. I am sure this will challenge many of them, as it involves long distance bike touring and camping overnight. They have undertaken some terrific team building activities, such as “bridge building” where the team construct a bridge to rescue stranded figurines. I know the students enjoy learning in these practical and hands-on ways. I also note how much the students enjoy using their laptop computers and hope you have received lots of emails (or “real” letters, which I might add are highly valued by our students) and maybe some photos about their life here at Noorat and the surrounding lakes and craters!

Michael Castersen



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School For Student Leadership

School for Student Leadership is a Victorian Department of Education initiative offering a unique residential education experience for year nine students. The curriculum focuses on personal development and team learning projects sourced from students' home regions. There are four campuses in iconic locations across Victoria. The Alpine School Campus is located at Dinner Plain in the Victorian Alps. Snowy River Campus is near the mouth of the Snowy River at Marlo in east Gippsland. The third site is adjacent to Mount Noorat near Camperdown in Victoria’s Western District, and is called Gnurad-Gundidj. After consultation with the local aboriginal community, this name represents both the indigenous name of the local area and an interpretation of the statement "belonging to this place". The fourth and most recently opened campus is Don Valley Campus, situated on land that was once known as Haining Farm in the Yarra Ranges.
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Our school community acknowledges the Gunaikurnai, Bidawel and Gundijmara people as the traditional custodians of the land upon which our school campuses are built. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their Elders past and present, and especially whose children attend our school.