The Week Ahead - Term 2, Week 5
Monday 18 May to Friday 22 May 2020
From the Head of College
Sharing the good news
Throughout the last week, it has been wonderful to greet the students who were able to resume their education in the classroom. Kindergarten, Prep and Year 1 children were full of energy, and used the days to reacquaint themselves with formal schooling. Students from Years 11 and 12, including boarders, were simply relieved to enjoy instant feedback from their teachers and colleague students in these important years of their formal study.
I do thank our community for working with us through the past months – particularly staff and students who enjoyed many worthwhile learning and teaching experiences, and perhaps some that were not so worthwhile.
It is time to celebrate and share your experience with the wider community, and to that end we will be filming some short commentaries regarding the experiences of students, staff and parents to share through our media channels. If any member of the Concordia community would like to submit a short video clip discussing their experience with online learning, then I would encourage you to send these to Mrs Bianca Coleborn – Director of Marketing and Enrolments.
Health and hygiene
It is inevitable that one aspect of permanent change will be the focus on hygiene and general health within all schools around the world. While we have well developed hygiene programs, and health and wellbeing programs for students, our gaze must also be on adults within the community.
I am afraid that the notion of ‘we haven’t had a recent case in Toowoomba’ does not hold up when we are dealing with such a virulent virus. I would urge parents and other adults to continue with the guidelines that have helped us as a nation come through this phase of the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Social distancing (1.5 metres), coughing into the elbow or tissue (disposing of the tissue and washing hands), washing hands and/or sanitising regularly and as required, avoiding congregating at places such as student drop off points, are all measures that will remain with us for the foreseeable future.
Please support our children and staff by being mindful of what good hygiene practices look like - I thank you because I know how our community has managed the recent COVID-19 challenges with the utmost responsibility and understanding. 'Stay safe' remains the key message.
Early next week I look forward to writing a more comprehensive note to parents, students and staff about what the remainder of Term 2 will look like. As a Leadership Team, we have been meeting (using virtual platforms) on an almost daily basis to map the way forward. I am looking to sharing this with you next week.
Kindest regards and blessings.
Mr Adrian Wiles
Head of College
From the College Pastor
Community News
Online Learning Survey
We invite all parents and guardians of the College community to complete a short survey regarding their personal experience with online learning this term. The survey is anonymous and should take less than a minute to complete. Please click on the following link to complete the survey:
ONLINE LEARNING SURVEY FOR PARENTS AND GUARDIANS
As per Mr Wiles' article, if any parents would like to provide a short video testimonial regarding their online learning experience, please contact me by emailing bianca.coleborn@concordia.qld.edu.au or telephone 4688 2700 during school hours.
Mrs Bianca Coleborn
Director of Marketing & Enrolments
LLL Banking

Project Based Learning at Concordia
Junior College
New Junior College items on LOVE CLC
Make sure you take a look at the following new items in the Junior College section of LOVE CLC this week:
- Makerspace Mondays: Make leaf people with Mrs Blackwell
- Teach Me Something Tuesdays: Draw a manga style eye with Mr Trappett
- Where in the World Wednesdays: Egypt with Mrs El Attar
- Think outside the Box Thursdays: I am not a snowman...
- Fry-day Fitness: Mr Fry is joined by some friends this week - see the below video!
- Online Learning Materials: Try this Maths Trick!
As always, we would love to see more photos of our students participating in these activities. Please send us your photo to marketing@concordia.qld.edu.au.
Mrs Bianca Coleborn
Director of Marketing & Enrolments
Outside School Hours Care
Stephen Street Campus
From the Director of Campus
It has been so refreshing to finally have Stephen Street Campus coming back to life with our Years 11 and 12 students back on campus and in boarding. It is interesting to hear student feedback around their online learning experience and for me to be able to explore which aspects of this style of learning must remain as part of our standard teaching practice.
Having resources available in Teams in advance, has been extremely beneficial for the students and is a practice that we must continue. We are looking forward to the return of our Years 7-10 from 25 May.
For students returning we have made some minor changes including:
- Students may wear their sports uniform to and from school if they have PE during the day.
- Students are to bring their water bottles to school. We do have a water bottle refilling station.
- All students, on arrival to school, must come via the hand sanitising station in front of the CSI building.
An easing of the border restrictions, as they applied to our interstate students, provided me with the perfect opportunity to do a “Boarder Border” bus run to meet one of our boarding families from NSW at the border in Goondiwindi (that sentence alone requires a boarder check…). As chance would have it, one of the Defence personnel on the checkpoint was a Concordia Old Scholar!
Lastly, I would like to direct attention to this COVID-19 specific resource that has been provided by the eSafety Commissioner’s Office. I encourage you to take some time to browse through the range of resources. We are all spending a lot more time online and in front of screens and “connected” virtually and it is worth having a conversation in families to explore how that is going.
I hope that you have a great weekend.
Mr Jason Smith
Director of Campus