The Addams Family

The cast and crew of The Addams Family are ready to entertain you! Performances will be held in the PAC at 7.00pm this Thursday, Friday and Saturday night (22 - 24 May). I highly recommend this production to you and your family - follow the link below to book your tickets.

https://www.trybooking.com/DAINT

City Experiences

In the first week of May, the City of Melbourne hosted Casey Grammar students from both Year 4 and Year 9. The Year 4 students enjoyed an overnight stay during which they learnt more about various places around the city. The Year 9 students travelled into the city each day as part of the Casey Challenge program. After an enjoyable and educational week, the students returned to school with a deeper understanding of their home city.

Careers Week

Last week was Careers Week when Senior School students were involved in a variety of careers-related activities. There were several highlights in the week including a well-attended Senior School subject selection information evening where parents and students had their questions about subject selection and careers answered. The week concluded with a whole school careers dress-up day which was a lot of fun for everyone.

Senior School House Cross Country Carnival

Last week was the Senior School House Cross Country Carnival. Due to construction works at the centre of the school, we could not use our usual cross-country track so the students were bussed to Casey Fields for their event. Happily, the weather was perfect, and students did not have to contend with muddy and wet conditions. The scores have been calculated, and the winning house will be announced at school assembly.

Senior School Debating

The Senior School Debating teams continue to go from strength to strength. Last week all but one team took out wins in the Debating Association of Victoria debates. Each team had a Best Speaker awarded in their debate and Kylie O (Year 11) received the highest score in the entire senior division. Congratulations to the Debating Coordinator Ms Weiler and Debating Captain Anushka A (Year 12) for coaching and inspiring the teams.

Fiona Williams
Principal

Body Safety Australia/Consent Education

This week, as part of our wellbeing sessions, we are running a range of activities designed to empower and equip students to keep themselves safe.

In our Junior School, our Foundation and Years 2, 4 and 6 students will participate in workshops run by Body Safety Australia offering preventative programs that focus on identifying and communicating emotions and the body’s stress responses, the difference between private, personal and public body parts and their trusting relationships. This material and these concepts will be reviewed for the Years 1, 3 and 5 students by Casey Grammar School staff. These workshops were also conducted in 2024. You can learn more about Body Safety Australia here. There will be a parent information session conducted on Tuesday 3 June.

In the Senior School, our Health and Physical Education staff have developed sessions for Years 7–10, delivered over the course of the week. Years 7 and 8 will be told that consent means permission and asked to consider the different contexts in which consent is required. Years 9 and 10 will have two sessions which will reinforce key relevant parts of the Health curriculum for these year levels.

Should you have any concerns or questions about these workshops and programs, please contact me (r.jacob@caseygrammar.vic.edu.au).

Parental Controls

In the last 15 years or so, mobile phones with fast internet connections have become ubiquitous for adults and many young people. These powerful devices have enabled many positive developments, however, there are certainly some worrying consequences. Many parents I have spoken to over the years have felt powerless or unsure about how to put any sort of controls or limits on their children’s use of phones and other devices. Open and honest communication is a key foundation for dealing with this issue effectively, but most modern phone operating systems have built-in technology to help parents.

The Android operating system has Google’s Family Link app which allows parents to manage screen time, app usage and content filtering. You can read more about this here.

Similarly, iPhones offer quite sophisticated parental controls for children’s devices. You can read more about these controls here.

No purely technical mechanism is a silver bullet for the issues around young people’s phone use, but these tools can help and may also prompt worthwhile conversations with your children. We will be offering a parent workshop on internet and device safety in Term 3.

Robert Jacob
Deputy Principal & Head of Wellbeing