Anne Hastings – Principal

Night of Instrumental Music

On Tuesday evening the MPH was a large performance space, with every child from Years 3 – 6 showing how well they had learnt to play their musical instrument in the Instrumental Program this year. The Years K – 2 students stole the show with their performances on tiny violins and violas as part of the Infants Strings Program. There were Concert Bands and String Ensembles for each year group, as well as Junior and Senior Bands and Jazz Ensembles. To have over 50 young children playing together on their instruments that they’ve only been learning for one or two years, and sounding pretty good together, is an amazing feat. Much credit goes to the patience of their teachers and perseverance of the students.

Learning a musical instrument provides so many more lessons than just the acquisition of musical skills, which in itself is important. The students learn that they can improve by continually practising, that working together with others results in a much better result than they can have by themselves, but also requires them to be aware of and support each other, and that over time they can progress and master their techniques so they can then concentrate on other aspects of their performances.

Congratulations to each child who has worked hard to further develop their skills so they can come together with their year group and delight us all with their music. Many thanks go to Diana Springford and Jo de Araujo for their wonderful organisation of the event, and to the Music teachers and Tutors who have guided the students through the year towards mastery of their musical instruments.

Refugee evening

Last night saw a wonderful evening of talks and discussion from a panel of refugees and people who work with them. People who attended felt that it was an exceptional evening of learning about the issues faced by refugees in Australia. Congratulations to Rabbi Danny Siegel for his organisation of the evening and to Hannah Shteinman for her work in setting up and chairing the evening so superbly. In the words of one of the attendees:

“Sometimes, we get caught up in our own lives and get overwhelmed by our trivial problems and we forget there are people out there who are experiencing hardships we could never imagine. What resonated the most for me was that they kept persevering despite almost insurmountable obstacles and they stand before us so grateful to be alive. What truly inspiring individuals.”

NAJEX Presentation

On Wednesday morning at our Assembly, Roger Selby from the NSW Association of Jewish Service and Ex-service Men and Women addressed the High School, telling the students about the organisation and presenting an award to a Year 11/12 student. NAJEX this year has provided a Youth Leadership award to each Jewish school for a student who has demonstrated the qualities of integrity, Loyalty, Courage, Innovation and Teamwork. 

Jade Reuveny

From a very large group of students who have demonstrated such qualities at our School, we nominated Jade Reuveny for this award. Congratulations Jade, your award is very well deserved! We are very grateful to Roger for taking the time to come to our School for the presentation of this award.

HSC Examinations

A couple of final comments on the recent HSC examination papers, appear below.

Economics

This paper offered students a range of extended responses to select. Most of the Emanuel students chose an essay that dealt with the government’s policies to create a low inflation environment. This would have included an explanation of monetary policy and microeconomic reform. The other extended response that was popular with our students involved their case study on an emerging nation and how the globalisation process has effected the standard of living. Many Emanuel students had chosen China, Vietnam and India for their case study. 

A large part of the short answer section dealt with income distribution and challenged students to explain why Australian women accumulate less wealth than their male counterparts. Students were also asked how the Federal Budget could be used to influence income distribution. 

The 20 multiple-choice questions assessed how well students understood ideas such as international competitiveness, the Terms of Trade, a depreciation of the Australian currency and the labour force participation rate. 

Overall the paper rewarded students who can relate the syllabus to the Australian and global economy in 2017. This year’s HSC students had plenty of scope to talk about subdued inflation, stagnant wage growth, trade surpluses and a domestic economy that has created over 250 000 jobs. 

David Bartlett

Society and Culture

This paper challenged the students with a range of contemporary examples in order to test their understanding of both the core concepts and research methodologies. The short-answer questions prompted the students to describe nature in a country, which allowed our students to write about Afghanistan or Japan in their response. The Depth Study questions provided students with the opportunity to relate the methodologies of content analysis and interview to their focus studies of Hip Hop and Buddhism respectively. Our students would have been able to recall their assessment task which required them to interview a Buddhist proponent to respond effectively to this question. 

Allison Lee

Parent survey – report

The page below summarises where parents who responded to our survey identified areas of high performance and areas for review. The Executive team and the Board have reviewed the survey report and are very pleased with the extensive list of high performing areas, while noting those areas for review and using the results to develop plans for areas of focus in 2018.

Mazal Tov to

• The PDM (Photographic and Digital Media) classes and Year 5 for their beautiful photographs on display in the LLC
• The Year 10 Drama students and their teacher Sam Bauer for their inspiring performances on Monday evening
• The new senior basketball team for the determined effort against Moriah
• Elia Berelekhis (Year 9), Jordan Fleischer (Year 8), Luca Calderon Havas and Jack Smagarinsky (Year 7) for their tenacity and success in playing in the 15 years AICES Tennis tournament
• Leo Carroll, Jordan Behr, Joel Ehrlich (Year 10) and Gidon Grunseit (Year 8) for their surfing success at the AICES Surfing competition
• Our Douglas Shield Cricket team for their strong showing against St Andrews
• Danielle Rutstein (Year 9), who competed at Little A’s Centre Championships this weekend in four events and came
  
  

  Danielle Rutstein – Year 9

  home with four gold medals in Triple Jump (new PB), Long Jump, High Jump and 100m. 
• Jake Langman (Year 12), who was invited to participate in a North Sydney Council film project. Together with his friend they created, filmed and edited a short movie called “Sketch” which will be featured in the Story To Screen Project.
• Amber Langman (Year 9), who successfully auditioned for the 2017 Royal Randwick Busking Festival. She will be performing two songs on Saturday 18 November which will help raise money for The Sydney Children’s Hospital
• Aron Jaffe (Year 12) and Max Salamon (Year 4) who each played the Last Post and Revellie on their trumpets – Aron at Montefiore and Max in front of the whole school
• Adena Sheps (Year 10) for her successful Science Blog on STEM (see the Careers page).

Coming up

• House Music, Monday 20 November, 6 pm
• Volunteers Assembly and Morning Tea, Tuesday 21 November, 8:15 am
• Year 10 Chavayah leave and Sydney Experience begins, Wednesday 22 November
• Community Farewell for Anne Hastings, Sunday 26 November, 5:30 pm
• Dani Klein – Parenting during the HSC, a Presentation, Monday 27 November, 7 pm

Quote of the week 

‘Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.’ [Martin Luther]

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Shabbat Shalom