Catch up on the events of the Middle and Senior School Houses for the past few weeks.

Read a brief overview of the past few weeks as written by the Heads of School.

Aquinas myFUTURE provides an enrichment opportunity for Aquinas College students with a direct link to real-world experience through our Internship partnerships.

The asynchronous nature of our Aquinas myFUTURE blended learning model allows for the flexibility to conduct these Internships as an embedded element of a student’s Senior School journey.

Many of our current Year 11 students have recently submitted an expression of interest for this exciting and valuable opportunity. In the coming weeks, they will be put in contact with our partnered organisations and to finalise the details of their placement.

One of the strengths of this model is the flexibility to meet the needs of our students and modern workplaces. There are two models which will be the most common arrangement for our Internships being; on Fridays during the term, or as an intensive vacation experience similar to what many university students experience. Establishing these networks early and gaining invaluable real-world experience puts our students ahead of the curve in such a competitive marketplace. Some of the placements secured for our students exist in the following occupations:

• Accountancy and Business
• Property and Asset Management
• Agricultural Business
• Events and Marketing
• Agricultural Science
• Law
• Architecture
• Orthopaedics
• Engineering
• Robotics and Technology

As a community, these Internships are an outstanding opportunity for our students and we are very grateful to those organisations who have offered to take on a student or small group of students.

If you have any questions relating to this Aquinas myFUTURE Internship model, please make contact with Graham Powell, Director Aquinas myFUTURE.

BREAKING NEWS 🎥

Mr McFadden has been murdered!

No...not really. He's fine. But members of AC TV gathered the other week to undertake an intensive training session - led by BBC Producer (and wife of Mr McFadden) Mrs Eastman - where they learned to craft a news story based around the tragic murder of our College Principal.

Take a look behind the scenes.

Catch up on the latest sports news.

The uniPATH IPQ course has been an intriguing and insightful experience so far.

The experience began during the final weeks of Term 4 2020, where the full uniPATH cohort travelled to the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Campus on a Friday to undertake a Research Skills and Methods class. In this class, we learned about many of the fundamental skills useful in the research and construction of a report. This included ideas such as the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and the need to take notes on sources, authoritative and non-authoritative sources and how to distinguish between them, and how to use text strings to find relevant sources using an online database. To put these skills to the test, our final assessment was a report on an aspect of one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Goals. My report centred around Sustainable Goal Seven, which is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. I chose to focus my topic on solar microgrids, which are a system of solar panels installed around a region, where electricity can be traded amongst its residents. This technology experimentally used in developing nations to provide clean and affordable energy. I enjoyed the research thoroughly, as I love to learn about engineering and its application to solving problems such as this. Overall, the experience with UNDA and their Research Skills and Methods course was informative and very obviously applicable to future university courses that I will embark on.

After this, the uniPATH group split into a Cambridge IPQ group, consisting of Ashton Teixeira, Rourke Barlow, Seth Hambley, Zayn Buhkari and myself and a LOGOS group. On a Friday, we go to the University of Western Australia (UWA) Crawley campus, where we work with mentors there to write a 5000-word research report which we submit to Cambridge by the end of the year. The topic is open to your own choosing, which allows us to engage in something we are passionate about. The question I formed during Term One ‘is our technology advanced enough to create a probe capable of interstellar travel?’ has me specifically looking at propulsion methods and fuel types, telecommunications, automation of the probe, and the ability to gather electrical power. I will also consider other critical challenges, such as time. Our ability to travel freely to the UWA on a Friday not only helps us with our research projects but also allows us to engage with the facilities there to assist us with our school work. Through the course we are given the freedom, not only to pursue what we are passionate about but also to excel inside of the classroom. This is what makes the experience great.

The uniPATH IPQ course has been an intriguing and insightful experience so far. The experience began during the final weeks of Term 4 2020, where the full uniPATH cohort travelled to the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Campus on a Friday to undertake a Research Skills and Methods class. In this class, we learned about many of the fundamental skills useful in the research and construction of a report. This included ideas such as the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and the need to take notes on sources, authoritative and non-authoritative sources and how to distinguish between them, and how to use text strings to find relevant sources using an online database. To put these skills to the test, our final assessment was a report on an aspect of one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Goals. My report centred around Sustainable Goal Seven, which is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. I chose to focus my topic on solar microgrids, which are a system of solar panels installed around a region, where electricity can be traded amongst its residents. This technology experimentally used in developing nations to provide clean and affordable energy. I enjoyed the research thoroughly, as I love to learn about engineering and its application to solving problems such as this. Overall, the experience with UNDA and their Research Skills and Methods course was informative and very obviously applicable to future university courses that I will embark on.

After this, the uniPATH group split into a Cambridge IPQ group, consisting of Ashton Teixeira, Rourke Barlow, Seth Hambley, Zayn Buhkari and myself and a LOGOS group. On a Friday, we go to the University of Western Australia (UWA) Crawley campus, where we work with mentors there to write a 5000-word research report which we submit to Cambridge by the end of the year. The topic is open to your own choosing, which allows us to engage in something we are passionate about. The question I formed during Term One is ‘how effective are our current and experimental propulsion methods at meeting requirements for an interstellar capable space probe?’. Our ability to travel freely to the UWA Campus on a Friday not only helps us with our research projects but also allows us to engage with the facilities there to assist us with our school work. Through the course we are given the freedom, not only to pursue what we are passionate about but also to excel inside of the classroom. This is what makes the experience great.

“Without challenge, there is no change.”

This was the main theme I took into Zero2Hero’s Camp Hero.

The camp certainly challenged and changed me both mentally and physically. It was a camp with 39 inspiring students from years 10 to 12 who helped me to grow on my path of self-discovery. The experience was five days long, and each day had a specific focus point.

The first day was focused on self-discovery, as you cannot help others if you cannot help yourself. The main activity on this day was the E-Colours personality test. It is a system of personality classification, based on how a person goes through life. This classified people by their dominant trait, based on whether they are a thinker, relater, socialiser or doer. The second day was about physical health, which involved several activities where we were divided into groups. It was a combination of problem-solving, physical ability and teamwork under time pressure. Mental health was the focus of the third day. This day was both about our own health and supporting the health of others. We all completed safeTALK, which teaches us the skills to identify and assist people with suicidal thoughts. The fourth day was a personal challenge, where we looked inwards. This was a day where we each considered what we hated most about ourselves and made a promise to leave it behind. The final day of the camp was focused on community impact and beginning to consider how we would transfer what we learnt on the camp into daily life.

This article is the beginning of my community impact. I want to let everyone know how incredible Camp Hero is. Although it is described as a mental health camp, it is so much more. It helped me discover who I am and who I want to be.

I have two main messages that I have taken from the camp. Get educated about mental health, so you can help yourself and those around you, and challenge yourself, as you never know when a life-changing experience can occur.