I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalms 121:1-2
As I am writing this article on Wednesday evening, I am very conscious that this is the final edition of Bytes for Term 4. When you sit down to read the Bytes, there will be just one week of this term remaining and it will certainly be a very special week for our Year 12 students and their families as I will explain a little later in my article.
This past fortnight certainly began in a most colorful manner with the public opening of our Kindergarten Art Exhibition on Monday, 10 September. I attended this event last year and was truly amazed by the artistic talents displayed by our Kindergarten children. Once again our amazing Kindergarten staff and children presented a display of artworks that had to be seen to be believed! And there was certainly a large crowd of parents and carers, grandparents, uncles and aunties and family friends who had come along to enjoy this special event. It gave me great pleasure to see our Kindergarten children excitedly guiding their family representatives around the exhibition and introducing them to the various artistic creations that they had produced throughout this year.
The Friday of last week was another very busy day. I had the pleasure of presenting a session at the Secondary Student Leadership Training Day. This training program involved students from Years 10 and 11 who had put their hands up to be considered for prefect positions for the 2019 school year. I was greatly encouraged by the calibre of these students and their clear desire to explore what it means to lead well and especially how to lead from a Christian worldview perspective. At the conclusion of this day those involved in presenting this program were left in no doubt that student leadership at Nowra Christian School will remain in very capable hands next year! I would particularly wish to acknowledge the role played by Mr Howie Petts, our Secondary Chaplain, who was primarily responsible for the organisation of this excellent training event.
On this same Friday, I attended a Primary Assembly, led by our Stage 2 students. It was a vibrant assembly where numerous awards were presented and where groups of students provided the audience with great delight as they performed innovative dramas with original storylines that they had work-shopped. I then had the opportunity to briefly attend CRU group which is a creative lunchtime program for Primary students run by Mrs Emily Thuaux, our Primary Chaplain, ably assisted by a number of student helpers from Stage 3. This program is always full of variety and energy with plenty of games and activities and the presentation of a thought-provoking devotion.
If you happened to be visiting our school on either the Monday or Tuesday of this past week, you might have encountered some rather unusual sights! You may be forgiven for believing that time had stopped still as groups of students in a variety of locations were required to remain completely still for up to a minute or more. Well, there was a rational explanation! Our students were participating in the development of a ‘Virtual Tour’ of our school which, when fully completed, will be housed in a prominent position on the NCS website. As the name suggests, it will allow visitors to our website to click onto various locations throughout the school and to ‘move’ around up to a full 360 degrees as they explore our grounds and facilities. There will also be a range of videos that present interviews with our students and I was also asked to provide a ‘Principal’s welcome’. We will be sure to let you know when this new feature is fully operational.
This same Monday also saw the holding of a very successful Parent/Carer/Teacher Interview Evening for those who have children in Years 7-10. I was delighted to mingle with the many parents/carers in attendance and was pleased to hear your positive comments about how much you value the opportunity to speak with our staff about the progress of your children.
I stated at the beginning of this article that I am writing my comments on the Wednesday evening of this past week. Tomorrow is Thursday and it promises to be a very special day in the life of our school community. This is the day that we are calling our ‘Farmraising Day’ and we have especially set it aside to carry out two activities designed to support our farming community. This is because our farmers have been hit so hard by the current severe drought conditions. We plan to hold a ‘Dress as a Farmer Day’ and a ‘Parma for a Farmer’ canteen special meal. (As soon as I finish my article, I plan to get my farmers outfit ready but am wondering how comfortable it will be to walk around our school in gumboots for an entire day?) We are trusting that the members of our school community will give generously to participate in both of these events. We will certainly provide you with an update on our website in relation to the total amount that we have been able to raise through these two initiatives as well as including plenty of colorful photographs.