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Dear parents, The College received a certificate of appreciation this week from the Australian War Memorial in recognition of the "exemplary behaviour and conduct ... and the level of respect for the commemorative role of the Memorial and involvement in the Education Program" during the recent Year 11&12 trip to Canberra. At both the War Memorial and Old Parliament House, experienced tour guides commented that our SMMC students were the best groups they had worked with. While

Dear Parents, In the previous newsletter, I spoke about the SMMC response to AI and the shift in schools more broadly to a focus on learning integrity rather than digital literacy. While many schools that have adopted one-to-one laptops, iPads and digital texts are finding this shift to be an agonising reversal of policy, practice and strategic resourcing, this is not so at SMMC. In part this can be explained by an innate wariness of screen overuse and the tendency of the i

Dear Parents, AI continues to draw intense interest among educators. Universities seem to be genuinely grappling with the phenomenon of AI-generated assessments; for them the question is more around how to build AI capacity while ensuring academic integrity. For schools, the issue is more around learning integrity than capacity-building. If a university education is geared to professional pathways, school is about foundational learning. In this way AI marks a genuine shift

Dear parents, All bar one of my children have moved out of home or are studying full time in Sydney, and my youngest is spending this weekend with her siblings in the harbour city. Nappy-changing and nighttime get ups is a long way in the rear vision mirror, but how to be present to my children in this new phase is a real challenge. I once asked an older friend what his strategy was and he said that he set aside time, an appointment if you will, with each of his children

Dear parents, Everywhere I turn, it's Michelle Milthorpe. When I catch up on some news on YouTube, there she is again. We don't get a residential postal service in Jindera, but that's not stopping Michelle Milthorpe. When I unlock the parcel compartment of the letterbox, I half expect to see her jump out to hand me a flyer. The Farrer by-election feels quite different to a general election, which tends to be marked by the de facto presidentialisation we are long accusto