Churchill Avenue News

This week's St John's Campus Report brought to you by Mr Dean Millard, our Year 7 Year Level Coordinator.

The Push Up Challenge

Caroline Chisholm launched into the Push Up Challenge for 2023 last week and after the first few days had close to 350 staff and students registered to push for better. The Push Up Challenge is a mental health awareness initiative that helps to educate participants about the links between physical and mental health while also providing them with a range of information and resources to support their own mental health.

The take up from the students has been amazing, particularly from the junior years, with the two leading LM teams after Day 2 both being Year 7 teams (7A and 7C), while 8A and 9A are also in the top 5. Mr Gavran’s Unit 1 and 2 VCE PE are also strong contenders on the leaderboard. Our main focus at school this year for the challenge is around participation, so while fundraising is certainly a good outcome, it is not how we are measuring our success. Instead, we want to see as many of our community, staff and students alike, contributing whatever their best effort is. Our big theme is that even if you can only do one push up per day across the challenge that is one that your team could not have done without you. We want our students to see that it doesn’t matter if someone else can give more than them right now, each of us has something within us that we can bring to the community that no one else can. We are so proud to see the way the students have got behind this concept.

Sports

Our Year 7 SACCSS Premier League AFL team has really hit its stride recently and looks on track to compete in the Division Two finals for the first time in a number of years. After losing their first two games of the season the boys have continued to work on coming together as a team and this has resulted in three consecutive wins, including knocking over the previously unbeaten ladder leaders, Penola, 50-44. This is an outstanding achievement for a team that had a large number of players who had never played a competitive game before. With one game to go in the regular season, against Thomas Carr this Wednesday, they are an excellent chance of finishing in the top-two and earning a chance to play in a final. The development of the team, both in terms of their fundamental skills and game sense but also their teamwork and sportsmanship, has been exciting to watch and a key part of the improving results. The team is proving to be an excellent example of what can be achieved through a growth mindset and being willing to stay focused on doing the work even when you get off to a rocky start. If these young athletes can replicate that approach to learning into their classroom work, they will go a long way.

Dean Millard
Year 7 Level Coordinator