From Principal

11 November 2022

The College continues to look to our future focusing on our learning and teaching programs, staff training and the facilities that will continue to house our students in ways that compliment contemporary learning.

Our Year 12 students are finishing strong and have been exemplary in their approach to their VCE final examinations. These students will receive their results on 12 December 2022. We wish them well.

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The second best time is today.

I read the following statement recently:

‘The final term of the school year is a crazy time in schools. End of year reporting, class allocations, timetabling, budgets and planning for next year swamp us at a time when our energies are low and many of us feel we are running on empty. It is when times are tough that reputations are truly made.’
By the end of the year we are more likely to be sensitive, ‘thin skinned’ and emotional because we are run down and in need of that well-earned break. We shouldn’t be surprised. The same thing happens at this time every year. The important thing is HOW we respond to this challenge.
Remember back to the start of the year! Most of us start the year with energy, vim and vigor. We were rejuvenated by the break and were ready to put all of our energies into being as effective as we possibly could. The old adage ‘beginners are many, finishers are few’ is worth remembering.
It is important to finish strong, just like we started the year! Whilst our reserves may be running low it is vital to remain focused and finish the year well. Our credibility in the eyes of others is based on results. Not just academic results but our ability to complete our projects, meet deadlines and follow tasks through to completion.’ (Steve Francis MScM, BEd, DipT)
This is a good message for our Thomas Carr community, students, staff and parents, as we approach the end of a challenging year.

Remembrance Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the nation will take time to commemorate Remembrance Day. At Thomas Carr College we will have a commemoration service where we will lay a wreath at the base of our Memorial Stone as a mark of respect for all those soldiers that have given their lives for our Country as we recall the end of World War 1. It was supposed to have been the war to end all wars. Yet human beings are slow to learn.

On November 11, 1944, the surgeon Weary Dunlop was entering the last phase of his long imprisonment, along with thousands of others, on the Thai Burma Railway. He had learned that all violence is futile. He wrote in his diary:

But courage, mon ami: That is the real foundation of life. When this blank page turns I shall find enchantment somewhere, somehow. ‘To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ That is why violence is so futile. Nothing is so destructive to a cause as violence wielded on its behalf. We have learned much of the inadequacy of material things, much of tolerance, much of endurance, even if it be only to endure failure in the commerce of life hereafter. There is plenty of courage all about us, even in the most maimed and damaged human beings.