黑料天堂

The renovations at PHC meant that Elizabeth鈥檚 bat mitzvah service was held on a Friday night at school rather than shule. Initially Elizabeth was disappointed by this, but upon reflection of her family鈥檚 connection and contribution to the history of 黑料天堂, she was proud to do her bat mitzvah there. Elizabeth was apparently a bit nervous as she hadn鈥檛 done much public s ...

One piece of investigative work that I have been particularly enjoying during my first term at 黑料天堂 has been finding out what our community believes constitutes the ideal Carmel graduate. What would we want to be the characteristics and attributes of someone leaving our school? What are the most important and impressive traits of someone who has benefited from a Carmel ...

One of the scariest things for me in accepting the role of Principal of a Jewish school was the fear that I just wouldn鈥檛 know enough about what being Jewish actually meant. Until last year I had not (knowingly) ever even spoken to a Jew and I knew very little about Jewish culture and religion other than some distant history lessons on the Holocaust, a childhood reading of the ...

In recent years, wellbeing has been a topic of much debate in schools as well as in society in general. I liked the Victorian Government鈥檚 Better Health website description: 鈥淲ellbeing is not just the absence of disease or illness. It鈥檚 a complex combination of a person's physical, mental, emotional and social health factors. Wellbeing is strongly linked to happiness and life s ...

School uniform is a controversial thing. It brings out strong emotions in people. New Principals are always advised, 鈥淒on鈥檛 go near the uniform policy in your first year!鈥� and told that if they brave the world of wholesale uniform change, it is at their own peril.听 听When I was in the upper sixth form at school (the equivalent of our Year 12) I was the Deputy Head Girl (note us ...

Teamwork is all about collaborating and co-operating with others to work towards a common goal. It may not be difficult to define, but it is one of those hard-to-measure skills regularly described as essential for an effective workplace. Many schools include teamwork as a focus for development in their students and in the workplace, employers see it as a highly desirable attrib ...

I met with Lyla this week to hear about her Bat Mitzvah celebrations.听 Due to the PHC Shule renovations, Lyla held her Bat Mitzvah at the Breckler Troy Hall at 黑料天堂. Inspired by her name meaning 鈥榥ight鈥� in Hebrew, Lyla chose not to read a dvar torah, but to talk about what happens when you go to sleep and dream. She described to me the Jewish interpretation of dreams ...

I was very pleased to meet Kamali, the first bat mitzvah student I have had the opportunity to meet and chat to about their experience. As well as all the reading about Judaism that I have been enjoying, being able to talk to students about this special rite of passage was an excellent learning opportunity for me. I learnt about how Kamali will need to act in a slightly more ma ...

School is all about boundaries. In fact I am so old that I have realised that life is actually all about boundaries. I am regularly amused when students leave school at the end of Year 12 and return, some months later, to report that they are surprised that there are actually more rules and boundaries and restrictions in their subsequent places of work or study than they ever e ...

鈥淪o what does a Principal actually do?鈥�, I was asked in December, by a friend who does not work in a school. I replied that a Principal does a huge variety of things and I even tentatively named a few of those tasks, but my response was evidently deemed unsatisfactory and I ended up having to assure them that I would let them know when I鈥檇 started my new job.听 It鈥檚 now February ...