Department of Education and Training

DATE 01 November, 2018

Victorian College for the Deaf 597 St Kilda Road

Melbourne 3004

Phone: 9510 1706

Fax: 9529 4472

Email: victorian.ds@edumail.vic.gov.au

CALENDAR EVENTS Dear Parents and Guardians,

Curriculum Day Monday 5th November

On November 5 VCD will have a curriculum day. This means no students come to school on this day. Teachers will use this day for assessment and reporting and engaging in the school review.

Athletics Day at VCD

Last week we had our athletics carnival on the front oval at Wesley College. The weather was perfect and the whole school participated from beginning to end. The day began with Punt House (Red) and High House (Green) chanting at each other in healthy rivalry. The day ended with High House the victors for 2018. There were many stand out individual performances of athleticism and true grit. We were thrilled to have some parents come to join in the cheer. Congratulations to all! Special thank you to our Wesley College neighbours for enabling us to use their facilities and to Karyn our incredible PE teacher for planning a highly successful day.

Good luck to our primary students today as they meet other deaf students across the state at the annual event, Primary Deaf Sports.

Marg Tope

Acting Principal

Thursday 1st November

Primary Deaf Sports

All Day

Monday 5th November

Curriculum Day at VCD

Students stay home

Tuesday 6th November

Melbourne Cup

Public Holiday

Thursday 8th November

Year 12 Graduation

Friday 9th November

Last day for Year 12s

Saturday 10 November

Deaf Expo

10:00am - 4:00pm

Melbourne Town Hall

Monday 12th November-Friday 16th November

Head start week

Year 10s to Year 11

Year 11s to Year 12

Friday 16th November

Last day for Year 11s

Monday 19th November

Year 10s begin Year 11

Our School Values

LEARNING

RESILIENCE

RESPECT

RESPONSIBILITY

PRIDE

2

Primary News

Bi-Lingual Classes

Every week, the Primary classes attend a Bilingual class with Marnie Kerridge. We focus on de-veloping thinking skills in English and Auslan.

Recently we have been focusing on the words think, know, guess and wonder. We are devel-oping our thinking skills by using counters and looking at photos and working out what we know, what we think might be happening, having a guess and wondering about the pictures.

The students are becoming more sophisticated in their critical thinking skills and use of lan-guage.

3

Middle Years News

MIDDLE YEARS 3

MY3 has had a very eventful start to Term 4!

We went on an excursion to CERES, as we are doing a unit on Sustainability,

We had an incursion with Olivia Beasley where she talked about her role in the Victorian Government . It was very insightful as we are doing a unit on debating this term where we will have a formal debate be inviting parents to come and watch.

MY3 showed fantastic sportsmanship during our Athletics Day, along with the whole school.

MY3 has worked really hard over the year to assemble the wonderful Halloween display that was showcased last weekend

I am very proud of them all!

Jessica

MY3 Home-group teacher.

4

Middle Years News

MIDDLE YEARS 5

Below is an article written by one of the MY5 students about his class excursion to CERES.

*****

On last Wednesday 10th October I arrived to school in the morning and I was waited for other stu-

dents to arrive school. Later on, they arrived at school, we left school at 9am and we has a hire bus to drive to the CERES. (Community Environment Park) When we arrived there and we just chilled around and eat some foods because we waited for interpreters and staff to come and show us tours around the CERES.

Finally, the staff and interpreters arrived it, a staff name is Kate and the interpreter’s names is Karen and Sarah.

We got 4 fun activities for sustainability recycled timeline, rubbish sort, maker paper and repur-pose T-shirts.

I like repurpose t-shirts activity because it fun to cut the shirt and make a sustainability bag.

Written by Mohammad Elhawli

Class MY5

Artwork by Pearl.

5

Middle Years News

MIDDLE YEARS 5

Students from MY5 also created a crossword puzzle—test your skills and see if you can solve it!

*****

6

Senior News

VCAL Literacy

William Carmody, a senior student undertaking VCAL literacy studies, recently read an article by the Disability Advocate, Stella Young. The article inspired William to write his own article, which was submitted as part of his assessment. The piece written by William is sure to resonate with others, and is included below.

***********’ “A few things that Deaf young people would like the rest of us to get their heads around”

“Oh, can you drive when you’re deaf?” This line is actually annoying and aggressive to me as nearly all new hearing people I’ve met ask me this. Obviously we can drive just like you guys! I may have lost my hearing but I didn’t lose my vision. I can still drive using my vision, we actually don’t need to use our hearing while driving.

“Oh you’re deaf? I’m so sorry, please praise the lord and god help this poor deaf kid”. This is the reason why I don’t get along well with Christian people or any religion as they believe that deaf is disease and god is “able” to cure our deafness. It’s not true at all. I’m just born with deaf-ness and there’s absolutely nothing to cure. People should just treat us normally just like how you treat others.

“Could you help me? Oh never mind”. Whenever I’m out in the city, parties or anywhere I’m heading to, most people come up to me and ask me for help for directions or locations. I actually know where they want to go but I can’t just speak to them to tell them the directions so until I tell them that I’m deaf, they are like, “oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know, don’t worry about it” and walk away. It hurts me a little bit as I would like to help others out. They shouldn’t let my deafness stop me from helping them.

*covers mouth* “Can you hear me?” Every single time when hearing people want to much up with us because they think they’re cool lads, they covered their mouth and speak to us to see if we can understand. Hell no we don’t understand you if you put your hand up to cover your mouth. We may able to understand you by reading your lips when you’re talking, if you’re speak-ing clearly.

“Is this your child? I feel sorry for this child”. One day, I went shopping with my girlfriend and my little brother. One old lady came to us when she caught my girlfriend signing to me and she asked me if my little brother was my child so I asked her “why” with using the mime. Her re-sponse was “I truly feel sorry for this child, no child should have deaf parents.” She wrote it on paper, it got me mad and I told her to back off then we walked away. There’s nothing to feel sorry for children who have deaf parents, children who have deaf parents still have access to any-where like everyone else who has hearing parents.

“Hey! I know some sign language! It is, “a, b, c, d”, “how are you”. It’s really good to know that you know sign language but I don’t need people to come up to me at the shops or whatsoev-er and saying that they can sign a little bit. You’re wasting my time waiting for you to show me your signing skills. All I want is to shop in peace or chill out there.

We love our deafness, I was born profoundly deaf and have been strongly deaf my whole life. I have nothing to be ashamed over my deafness as I’m proud myself as a deaf person. I’ve achieved so many things and opportunities in life just like you guys. Also I’m not the only deaf person here, there’s over 432 million who have hearing loss on this earth and most of them are successful. Deafness may give us barriers because hearing people are seeing the wrong per-spective over deaf people but we won’t let it stop us, we will always break through no matter how difficult or easy it is.

7

Senior News ….con

VCAL Literacy ….con

Technology gives us so many opportunities for deaf people. IPads, iPhones, Androids and many other devices have helped us all a lot to achieve our goals for our future as technology can provide everything that we need. If it wasn’t for technology, life would still be hard for us, like how it used to be when deafness diseases first spread in early B.C. to 1900’s until the technolo-gy was invented. Also there’s a few other technologies invented specifically for us such as hear-ing aids and cochlear implants. They were invented to help us to hear, it’s a good technology but yet I still don’t wear or use them as I’d prefer to stay profoundly deaf.

Sorry but no, we are not ignoring you. We understand that you may think we’re ignoring you because you didn’t know that we are deaf. Please don’t assume that we are being a snob then give us the glare / bitchy look when you go pass us just because we are “ignoring” you.

8

Senior News ….con

Graduation

Our year 12 students are now preparing to finish their school years.

Audrey, one of our year 12 students, has been responsible for the preparation of the graduation ceremony, which will be held on November 8.

Senior year students have extended invitations to their families to attend and are looking forward to the Hollywood themed event.

Audrey’s invitation have impressed everyone.

9

VCD Programmes and Events

Bike Program

Students from MY1/2 had a wonderful time learning new bike skills in Term 4. Correct side, turn-ing, stopping, safety & bike maintenance were just a few of the topics covered

10

VCD Programmes and Events

Teeth on Wheels

Exciting news! Teeth on Wheels will be returning to our school for the children’s 6 monthly dental visit’s.

To make filling out the consent form easier you can now complete your Child’s consent form online by following the link below.

It only takes 5 minutes to complete and by reducing the amount of paper being used, we will be helping the team out by being more environmentally friendly.

https://teethonwheels.com.au/consent-eform

The date of the children’s dental visit will be on Monday the 10th

of December 2018, so please ensure if you didn’t complete a form at the start of the year to have this completed ASAP!

If you have any questions regarding the consent form or your child’s dental appointment please don’t hesitate to contact the Teeth on Wheels team on (03) 9338 1191.

FJ Rose Oration

The FJ Rose Oration was established at VCD to celebrate the achievements of Deaf people and so that students and our school community could learn from them. We have seen a variety of amazing Deaf speakers from those who work in Scouts, to Deaflympic swimmers and those who work with third world countries. This year Joanne Heyman from the or-ganisation Hear No Evil, is joining us to talk about her work with deaf dogs. She is part of the Victorian branch that res-cues, habilitates and trains Deaf dogs, ready for adoption. She may bring her Deaf dog, Willow.

The FJ Rose Oration is open for parents and the school community to watch. It will be held in the auditorium on Tues-day 13

th November from 1:45pm to 2:45pm.

Look forward to seeing you there.

11

Community Information

Expression Australia Deaf Christmas Rally

Expression Australia (formerly VicDeaf) will host its annual Christmas rally on Saturday Decem-ber 1

st from 2pm to 8pm at Fawkner Park, South Yarra. All welcome!

DIBF Asia-Pacific Cup

Reminder! DIBF Asia-Pacific Cup is on next month on the 20th to 25

th November! Come and

watch club basketball with Deaf teams from the Asia-pacific region, including Australia, play it out for trophy honours. Melbourne City won last time. Will we win again! Check their Facebook page for fixture and match details – DIBF Asia-Pacific.