Lucis Magazine, June 2016

Winter Edition 2016

The Magazine of the MLC School Family incorporating Collegiate

Image Credit: Max Dupain ‘The Violinist’, MLC School, 1971

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The editorial team has compiled the information in Lucis and Collegiate from various sources. While every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information published, MLC School reserves the right to alter dates and programs as necessary.

CONTENTS

04

Celebrating 130 Years Walking in the Light for 130 Years

07

Profile Louise Robert-Smith

08

2015 Academic Results Outstanding Achievements for the Class of 2015

10

2016 School Captains Thinking Big and Being Flexible

12

Service Experiences Enlightenment

14

Powerful Learning In Person with the PM

15

Pursuing Excellence English at MLC School

16

2015 Academic Results Post School Destinations

17

School Tours Tour Dates and Scholarship Information

18

Building Update Café 1886 Opens

20

Profile ‘Art Washes Away from the Soul the Dust of Everyday Life’

21

Profile Science of MLC School

22

Events Celebrating 130 Years of MLC School

24

Fearless Thinking Full STEAM Ahead

26

Profile The Lessons of History

28

Old Girl Profile Making Sense of the World One Word at a Time

30

Vale

OUR VALUES Pursue excellence Demonstrate integrity Celebrate diversity Embrace world citizenship Live with humility

FROM THE PRINCIPAL Welcome to the Winter 2016 edition of Lucis.

My first semester at MLC School has been a most fulfilling and extraordinary time. It has been a privilege to meet members from all sections of the School community.

From the Pre K girls to the School Captains and through to the Old Girls, including the1956 cohort who enjoyed their reunion recently, all our girls share a remarkable set of values and personal qualities that I feel are the hallmark of MLC School. Academic ambition, compassion and service to others are always present, and it has been very rewarding meeting so many wonderful women and girls who express these qualities in their daily lives to such a high degree.

In our first semester together I have loved getting to know our dedicated staff. It has been such a pleasure to work with teachers, operational staff and our School leadership team to continue to improve the operational excellence and teaching programs of this unique and marvellous school. I am very grateful for their support and friendship over the last six months.

PHOTOGRAPHERS Nicole Anderson Scott Cameron Eliott Toms

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The large number of co-curricular events have provided an excellent opportunity to meet the many kind, friendly and committed parents who are so supportive of the School and their daughters. I should make particular mention of the P&F Committee and Parent Ambassadors, who all work hard on behalf of the girls and the School. We are all very grateful for their support and enthusiasm.

It has been a particular pleasure to be part of the 130th celebrations of MLC School and to take a role in celebrating 130 years of its remarkable education.

Finally, my heartfelt thanks to our School Council for their unflinching dedication to the School and for their advice and faith in me as your Principal.

Louise Robert-Smith Principal

SOCIAL MEDIA

FEARLESS THINKING

WALKING IN THE LIGHT FOR 130 YEARS 1887

Founding Principal Rev. Prescott was integral in the establishment of the Trinity College (London) music examinations in Australia – the first board set up in Australia to examine candidates in Music. MLC School students were examined and passed in the Trinity exam’s first year of operation, a year after MLC School had been established.

1981

1956

1924

In the second year of the School’s existence a gymnastics teacher was appointed and in 1890 a fully equipped gymnasium was built.

MLC School was ahead of its time in the emphasis it placed on science. The push for this came from Headmistress Miss Mabel Sutton, MBE who opened the School’s first science laboratory in 1924 and added physics and chemistry to the curriculum. MLC School was the first girls’ school in the state to present candidates for the Leaving Certificate in physics. (Even up to the 1950s, MLC School alumnae were often the only women in science and medicine university degrees who had been taught Physics at school.)

1891

First school in NSW to construct a purpose-built kindergarten. The kindergarten concept was in its infancy in Australia. Founding Principal Rev. Prescott firmly believed in the education of very young children and persuaded the College Council to establish a coeducational kindergarten.

1921

1906

From 1924 to 1947 Miss Dorothy Law, English Mistress, was an integral part of the School. Miss Law developed in all her students a love of literature and was instrumental in the development of the School’s strong drama traditions.

First school in NSW to hold an athletics carnival for girls. MLC School Principal, Rev. Rodd was ‘horrified at first’ but came around to the idea and within a fortnight the teachers and girls had organised the event.

1921

1926

1924

Old Girl Elaine Shorter (1921) Dux, Senior Prefect and winner of OGU Prize, becomes the School’s first Barrister.

The First Girls’ Secondary Schools Sports Meeting was held on 15 Oct 1921 at Sydney Grammar School’s Ground, Rushcutter’s Bay. The schools who competed were: Ascham, Church of England Girls’ Grammar, Methodist Ladies College, Woodcourt, Meriden, Normanhurst, St. Gabriel’s, St. Catherine’s, and Claremont. The Senior and Junior championships were all won by MLC School.

1928

Old Girl Dr Phyllis Anderson (1919) was one of the founders of the Medical Women’s Society of NSW.

1930

From 1930 to 1946 Mr Lindley Evans, ABC’s ‘Mr Melody Man’ and Dame Nellie Melba’s accompanist, was a

1924 4

part time teacher at MLC School.

His appointment reflected the prime importance placed on music in the curriculum. The arrival of Mr Evans meant an immediate improvement in the standards achieved by the senior choir. Within a year they had won the Dempster Shield competition.

1957

1945 Old Girl Annie Wyatt OBE (Evans, 1904) founded the Australian National Trust movement in 1945 ‘to raise community consciousness of the widespread destruction of the built and natural heritage in Sydney’.

1956

1930s

Internationally renowned photographer Old Girl Olive Cotton (1929) was the pioneer of modernist photographer in the 1930s and 1940s. She was married to, and worked with, Max Dupain. She exhibited her own memorable works such as ‘Tea Cup Ballet’ (1935) during this time.

1964

Old Girl Lorraine Crapp (1955) wins two Olympic gold medals and a silver medal for swimming at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. She goes on to win a silver medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Throughout her swimming career, Lorraine broke 16 individual world records and 7 team world records.

In 1985–1986 her retrospective exhibition ‘Olive Cotton Photographs 1924-1984’ opened at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney and toured through numerous Australian Galleries.

1957

1935

MLC School’s tennis coach from 1960 and into the 1970s was Miss Thelma Coyne Long, international tennis super-star and wartime hero.

MLC School Senior Prefect and winner of the Old Girls’ Prize, Dr Joyce Vickery attained her doctorate in Botany at the University of Sydney and went on to become a leading Plant Taxonomist, Forensic Botanist, Conservationist and campaigner for women’s rights.

Dr Vickery was the first woman research officer employed by the NSW Herbarium in 1935. When she was offered this post she refused the lowered salary that was on offer for women, insisting on being paid according to her qualifications.

Dr Vickery was a pioneer in forensic botany. It was Dr Vickery who identified the scraps of plants and soil at crime scenes that were later used as evidence in the courts. (Most famously she testified in the Graeme Thorne kidnapping/murder case of 1960.)

Following her death, the Linnean Society of NSW named its research fund ‘The Joyce W. Vickery Scientific Research Fund’ in honour of her work.

1939

Old Girl Dr Freida Ruth Heighway (1924) was the first Australian woman

Old Girl Hazel de Berg MBE (Holland, 1931) pioneered the oral history tradition in Australia.

1960

to receive a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) in 1939 and the first woman admitted to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

1943

In 1943 Old Girl and Dux of 1933, Dr Thelma Herring, became the first female staff member of the English Department at the University of Sydney where she remained as a highly regarded senior lecturer and publisher for 32 years until her retirement in 1975.

The Hon Michael Kirby, while delivering the Introduction of the Professorial Lecture in 2011, said that Thelma Herring was a great teacher, that her students sought out the inspiration she plainly felt and was determined to convey.

Kirby concludes that ‘Thelma Herring was greatly loved by me and by my brothers, although we never told her so. Now, tonight, I try to repay my debt to her’ and acknowledged the long overdue creation of the Chair of Poetry and Poetics dedicated to Thelma Herring.

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Miss Long was an Australian tennis star whose career spanned more than two decades from 1936 to 1958 and included 19 Grand Slam titles. She is the only player (man or woman) to have won 12 Australian doubles titles.

During WWII, Miss Long attained the rank of Captain in the Australian Women’s Army Service and was awarded both the Australian War Medal and Australian Service Medal for 1939 –1945.

After her tennis-playing career ended, Miss Long qualified as a teaching professional and began working as a tennis coach at MLC School in 1960. She also became a trailblazer for women’s tennis – she was a driving force for the ITF to establish the Federation Cup in 1963.

Tributes to Miss Long’s life were published by the NY Times, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the International Tennis Federation and in local media.

1964

Old Girl Dr Janet E Harker (1943) was the first female recipient of the World Zoological Gold Scientific Medal.

1965

1946 Senior Prefect and Dux, Alrene Sykes, was a pioneer in the study of Australian drama, and from the mid 1960s a noted expert in the field, publishing on the works of Alan Seymour, Douglas Stewart, Jack Hibberd, Louis Nowra, Patrick White, David Williamson, and David Ireland.

She had a gift for spotting new talent.

Her instant recognition of the significance to the Australian tradition of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and her early sponsorship of the writing of Steven Sewell in Three Political Plays (1980) exemplify this.

1971

Max Dupain, on assignment for the Department of Trade, visits MLC School and takes a number of photographs.

Dupain’s striking capture of the silhouette of a young violinist rehearsing at the School was used by the Department of Trade to promote Australia’s education system.

1984

2000

MLC School introduced computer courses for Year 7 (compulsory) and Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11 (elective). Computer courses were subsequently made compulsory in all NSW schools from 1992.

Old Girl Dr Liz Dennis (1960) won the inaugural Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

1986

Old Girl Alison Turtle (1955) was a staff member of the Department of Psychology, University of Sydney from 1968 until her retirement in 1999, and remained an active Honorary member of staff until her death in 2006.

Old Girl Dr Susan Beal, AM (Ross, 1951), a pioneer investigator into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), showed that the rate of death was highest among babies who slept face-down. She is credited with being the first person in the world to argue publicly against babies sleeping on their stomachs. The incidence of SIDS has now halved in the countries (including Australia) that heeded her advice.

1989

MLC School student Vivien Chen topped the NSW HSC.

1990s

External computer groups including The NSW Computer Education Group came to the MLC School labs to run workshops for teachers across Sydney.

1999

2006

Alison had an abiding interest in the history of Psychology and played a crucial role in collecting and maintaining a collection of 19th and 20th century psychological artifacts. At her death in 2006, this collection was put on display in the School of Psychology in the Alison Turtle Museum.

2014

The Sydney Morning Herald named Old Girl Fiona McFarlane (1995) as one of four Best Young Australian Novelists, her debut novel The Night Places winning a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

The 2014 ABC Television six-part series ‘Anzac Girls’, based on true stories of Australian and New Zealand nurses serving at Gallipoli and the Western Front during World War I, features Old Girl Elsie Cook (Sheppard, 1907).

2015 1982

1982 First school in NSW to conduct a computer class; each student in 5W had a computer made available to her. First they learned to touch-type then they ran a company called Freckles using primitive software and were featured in the TV current affairs program 60 Minutes. MLC School teacher Colin Woodley was reported as saying ‘I think it will have a very significant impact on the way people learn in future’.

Top International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Australia (seven students achieved a prefect score out of 81 perfect scores worldwide).

1999

Old Girl Dr Hsu-Ming Teo (1987) won the prestigious Australian Vogel Literary Award, the richest prize for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35. The novel, Love and Vertigo, which was subsequently published by Allen & Unwin, draws from Hsu-Ming’s Chinese heritage but is more universal in its examination of family relationships and power plays.

2016

Sarah Sung (2015) joins Lisa Sung (2014) and Rachel Siu (2015) at Juilliard.

According to the admissions staff at The Juilliard School no other school in the world has had three alumni at Juilliard at the one time.

2014 6

PROFILE

LOUISE ROBERT-SMITH ‘MLC School is an exciting place to be and I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t want the opportunity to come and teach or work here. It is one of those schools’.

It was Louise Robert-Smith’s mother who planted the seeds for her daughter’s success. ‘She would tell my sister and me that while she loved her children with a passion, the maternal role did not sustain her,’ Louise says. ‘She encouraged us to find something that was ours, something that would provide us with an identity. The message was to be someone’.

Louise started at Pennant Hills High School and never looked back. ‘I loved the contact with young people and the intellectual stimulation. The sky was the limit as a teacher. You could do what you liked in terms of innovating in the classroom. Every teacher is a powerful force in their own way’.

However, ‘teacher’ was not an identity that at first appealed. ‘I wanted to be a pharmacist,’ Louise reflects. ‘I was taken by the idea of working with Bunsen burners and mixing potions but when I started a holiday job in a in a pharmacy after my final exams, I was surprised to discover it was much less creative than I had imagined. I thought, “I can’t do this!” and hurriedly transferred to an Arts Degree’.

She was made Head of Languages at North Sydney Girls High School and later was appointed Deputy Principal at Willoughby Girls High School.

‘Unfortunately I discovered that the Deputy role was less interesting than being a Head of Department. It involved a lot of administrative work and I felt as if I had put my hand up for promotion and found myself in charge of the ‘drains and dunnies’. I thought, “I’ve got to get out of here and the only way is up!”’

Louise was awarded a government scholarship to study Languages teaching.

To give herself an edge, she specialised in Indonesian, which meant simultaneously taking on a new language and learning how to teach. She joined Australia’s first intake of Indonesian teacher trainees and together they became staunch Indonesiaphiles, dressing in batik skirts and cooking satay sticks by the kilo to cement their students’ love of the language. ‘We were all non-background speakers and clung together for support, becoming life-long friends,’ she says. ‘We would meet in each other’s houses to create teaching materials to make up for the lack of textbooks and ran Indonesian camps for the Modern Languages Teachers’ Association. We were on a mission to promote our subject and it was very exciting’.

The role of Principal of North Sydney Girls High School soon became available and Louise was selected. ‘At that point I was in heaven. I was there for nine years and did not think things could get any better.

It was a surprise when I was headhunted for the Ascham role but I was coming to the end of my tenure in the public system and I knew I wasn’t ready to give up work so I decided to move into the independent sector. The difference between the two is less significant than you might imagine.

Schools are schools, girls are girls and the parents are very similar despite any socio economic differences that might exist. The big contrast in fact, was that in the public system you might be employed by a huge government bureaucracy but perhaps counter intuitively, they actually let you run your own race if things were going well. At a private school you are 7

accountable to the board and while that is not a bad thing as boards are dedicated and hardworking, it was a much tighter coupling than I had expected’.

‘When I was approached to come to MLC School I was interested because it has been a beacon in girls’ education for a long time and has a wonderful reputation for innovation. Your principals, all of them, have contributed to that enormously’.

Louise says her time her time will be spent supporting staff and by looking closely at what is happening in the classroom. There is great teaching going on here and the best results come from building on that with focused, practical strategies for sitting exams and tracking student performance. I think I can make a contribution in helping the girls into a position where they can access the next phase of their education and get into the courses they want’.

‘I am delighted to be here. MLC School is an exciting place to be and I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t want the opportunity to come and teach or work here. It is one of those schools’.

2015 ACADEMIC RESULTS

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS FOR THE CLASS OF 2015 SEVEN IB students and ONE HSC student achieved a perfect ATAR of 99.95.

In 2015 MLC School has the highest IB results in Australia.

12% of all 2015 Year 12 students achieved an ATAR over 99.

32% of all Year 12 students achieved an ATAR over 95.

52% of all Year 12 students achieved an ATAR over 90.

Median ATAR (middle score) for the HSC cohort was 84.05.

We applaud and celebrate the achievements of every young woman at MLC School, especially those of the 2015 Year 12 cohort.

Using the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) as a measure, we can combine the results of the HSC and the IB to summarise the whole cohort’s performance in 2015.

88 students studied for the HSC and 50 for the IB. * The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, or ATAR, is a percentile awarded to students for application into undergraduate university programs upon completion of Year 12 in all Australian States except Queensland. The maximum rank attainable is 99.95.

HSC Highlights • There were 115 instances of a student being awarded a Band 6 or Band E4, the highest bands possible • The highest ATAR achieved by an HSC student was 99.95 • A total of 55 students (60% of the cohort) joined the Distinguished Achievers list for those who received a result in the highest band possible for one or more courses • Median ATAR (middle score) for the HSC cohort was 84.05 • 100% of HSC Music 2 students achieved a Band 6 (NSW state average is 37%) • 77% of HSC Drama students achieved a Band 6 (NSW state average is 14%) • 71% of Textiles and Design students achieved a Band 6 (NSW state average 15%) • 56% of HSC Art achieved a Band 6 (NSW state average is 13%) • 55% of English Extension 1 students achieved a Band E4 (NSW average 35%) 8

2015 ACADEMIC RESULTS

ATARs OVER 99

HSC Individual Highlights • Victoria Xu achieved an ATAR of 99.95 (the highest possible in the HSC) and has been awarded the UNSW Co-Op Scholarship in Electrical Engineering • Three students were placed on the HSC All Rounders list, for those who achieve Band 6 in 10 units of studies: Leona Cohen, Joanna Nam and Victoria Xu • Five students were listed in the Top Achievers in Course: Victoria Xu, Ivy Nguyen, Grace Mieko Wang, Kate Quinn, Charlotte Patterson

Victoria Xu

99.95

Maia Alfonzetti

99.95

Nina Dillon Britton

99.95

Lucinda Hughes

99.95

Ivy Jiang

99.95

Victoria Tong

99.95

Jessica Luo

99.95

Latifa Tasipale

99.95

Emily Bailey-Hughes

99.85

Tarisha Gunaratnam

99.75

Taylor Jones

99.75

Georgia Wilde

99.75

Mia Jessurun

99.45

Hyehee Shin

99.45

Lily Stewart

99.45

Keertana Avalur Venkateshwar

99.45

IB Highlights

• Leona Cohen was selected for the ENCORE concert at the Sydney Opera House in February for her composition

• Seven MLC School students achieved a perfect score of 45 (99.95 ATAR) and one student achieved 44, placing MLC School in the top echelon of IB schools internationally and making MLC School the top IB school in Australia

• Brittany O’Hare was selected for ARTEXPRESS out of five shortlisted MLC School students • Matilda Kopff and Emma Cross were selected for ONSTAGE for Individual Performance with three other students nominated: Tilda Cook, Emma Tucker and Kate Quinn. Five students were also nominated in the group category: Emma Cross, Emma Tucker, Samantha Anderson, Jessica Zhang and Jessie Field

• The average score among Australian IB students was 34.45 – at MLC School it was 38.10 • The average score (HSC equivalent ATAR) for the MLC School IB cohort was 39 (equivalent to an ATAR of 97.55) • Of the 50 students who sat for the IB at MLC School, 33 (66%) achieved an ATAR of 95 or higher

• Matilda Kopff was selected for TEXTSTYLE, a display of the Top 40 works from NSW HSC Textiles and Design students 9

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2016 SCHOOL CAPTAINS

THINKING BIG AND BEING FLEXIBLE Victoria Lee and Carissa Long have been leading the students of MLC School since the second half of 2015. Vicky and Carissa spoke to Lucis about change, challenges and connections.

What have you learned and what have you achieved so far?

Vicky: One of the biggest things has been the importance of establishing a sense of community through being approachable and empathic.

We’ve developed more practical skills that will be useful for life after school – most notably time management and being adaptable to changes in schedules. We’ve also learned to prioritise and reach out for help when needed.

One of our main goals has been to re-establish and build the sense of community and school pride amongst the girls. We’re constantly looking to receive feedback and ideas. I’ve learned so much from the other student leaders who all have unique leadership qualities that I hope to develop myself.

Carissa: The importance of cohesive teamwork and communication has been highlighted to me as something that is so important in effective leadership. I’ve learned that including everyone who can assist or will be affected is vital in creating a positive outcome.

I hope we’ve achieved a greater rapport with the student body, where they have confidence in our ability to represent them, and are trusting that we have their best interests at heart.

Have there been any challenges?

Vicky: One of the challenges has been adjusting to the recent changes in the

school, particularly as there have been many different opinions and perspectives.

At times, it was quite difficult and confusing to know what my position was as a student leader and what my responsibilities were. However, I think it has been one of the most valuable learning experiences not only for the whole school body but I think particularly as captains, as we’ve learned how to cope with and learn from the expectations of others while also encouraging meaningful and constructive negotiation and discussion.

Carissa: Trying to foster and encourage the enjoyment of being at school without tokenism, whilst actually implementing our ideas is a challenge due to time restrictions. Maintaining cross-year group connections is an important challenge to continually monitor and address.

‘Consider each week or even each day as a new challenge’ What advice do you have for the students who will follow you?

Vicky: Planning big with your leadership team is extremely valuable, particularly for generating and refining ideas. However, once you have a long list of goals, it’s 11

important to prioritise and focus on just a few goals that you want to achieve.

Don’t try to tackle huge tasks or events weeks in advance, but consider each week or even each day as a new challenge and hopefully things will be a little less overwhelming.

Carissa: Have perspective, be ambitious and don’t be dissuaded by criticism (particularly from your own peers) – it’s the best way to build resilience and to continually improve on what you’re working on, be it personal or on a larger scale.

When you look back on your MLC School years what do you think your fondest memories will be?

Vicky: Definitely time spent with my friends and all the other girls at school – including misadventures of my cabin during Broken Hill, my tennis team which lost every single Saturday match from Year 7 to Year 9, and, at Year 12 camp, walking up Mt Kosciuszko in the rain.

Being able to reflect and laugh about those moments with my friends afterwards is always so funny.

Carissa: Undoubtedly, it will be the people – having attended MLC School for 13 years, I’ve formed relationships with some incredible girls and staff that I will value long after I’ve left.

SERVICE EXPERIENCES

ENLIGHTENMENT MLC School’s continuum of immersive learning experiences.

At MLC School Service Learning takes place in the city, in the outback, in other schools and even overseas. There is something for everyone. The rich tradition known as Enlightenment has evolved into a program unique to any school in NSW. It begins with creative fundraising for charities in the Junior School and culminates in the global work of Year 10 in Thailand.

The integrated program incorporates activities and locations chosen to suit the emotional development of each age group and encourages each student in her ability to develop compassion and a commitment to serving others. Much planning and refinement has taken place over many

years; numerous teachers are involved; students learn resilience, important life-long skills and new ways of being in the world.

Reaching out into the wider community in Term 1, Junior School students raised funds for Make a Wish Foundation, dressed as superheroes for a day. They have decided that all kids battling serious illness are superheroes.

Each year, Year 6 looks at where girls fit in the world through the Down the Rabbit Hole immersion program. The Illumination Program of a Week in Shakespeare’s World is something that Year 7 students seem to remember with joy long into the future.

Year 8 students experience a cultural and academic city-based project to connect with their wider community. Year 9 transformative adventure is a wilderness and service experience in Broken Hill. A strong reciprocal relationship now exists between MLC School and Broken Hill High School. In Year 10 the cohort travelled to Chiang Mai in Thailand for the second year in a row, its success establishing a new tradition.

The experiences of the Year 10 students are the culmination of this powerful learning continuum. The students made a difference to the lives of rural children in a developing region by being part of this life changing immersive experience.

Working by hand in Ban Mae Mae village in Thailand, the Year 10 cohort constructed a wall and a road for an impoverished orphanage and school – the same place where the 2015 Year 10 class had built a playground and open recreation room.

For the wall the students retrieved stones from the river bed which they used with cement they mixed themselves. They also mixed concrete for a new road from the school gate to a small river ford.

The Year 10 cohort also experienced teaching the children of the school, living in a tree house, watering elephants, organic farming, jungle cooking, Muay Tahi (boxing), making and releasing lanterns, a ropes course, the fried grasshopper challenge, visits to Wats, conversing with Monks, powering a blender through riding a bike, night markets, Thai dancing, costume, music making, massage instruction and art.

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SERVICE EXPERIENCES

Head of Year 10 Ms Lynne Slarke saw immense personal growth in the students. ‘Chiang Mai allowed each girl to see the world and her place in it from a different angle’, she said.

‘An understanding of what it means to be an ethical global citizen provided each of them with a firm foundation as they continue to develop social responsibility in their senior school years.’

On the students’ return to Sydney, their parents commentated, ‘You’ve given our daughters a perspective on themselves, their lives, friends and the world that was only possible because you cared enough…they’ve grown so much’.

kind and friendly…I think she was very fortunate to be part of such a wonderful learning experience’.

‘Our vision was to accomplish something great and something challenging by working together’, Director of Senior Communication and IB Diploma Programme Coordinator, Mrs Anne Layman said.

‘I don’t think we can accurately measure the value of this immediately.

That will take years to come. The students proved themselves time and again, they rose to the occasion and were so polite. The staff found it invigorating and the relationships we were able to build with the students are priceless.’

One daughter ‘was challenged both physically (the concrete road!) and emotionally… She needed to be open minded, cooperative,

Brittany Childs undertook her Year 10 Enlightenment immersion program in Sydney, working with children with autism at Aspect School.

‘We could never have imagined the impact it would have on us all’, Brittany said.

Brittany described her breakthrough experience: ‘He is five years old and I helped him down a slide. You may ask what fiveyear-old wouldn’t want to go down a slide. However, for him and particularly for me this was extremely special.

‘It was my first day. He looked at me, grabbed my hand and led me up the ramp to the slide. When we got to the top he looked at the slide and looked confused and scared. He began to hit himself on the forehead. I tried to comfort him, then he looked directly

at me and started to cry. I could see that he was frustrated and it seemed he wanted to go down the slide but didn’t know how to make himself brave enough or confident enough to do this. Then, he hugged me. He hugged me and it was a real hug. He held into me so tight and I hugged him back. At the time I wasn’t sure about everything that was going on, although while he was hugging me, something clicked, and I knew that what we were doing was important.

He was trusting me and I had to be there for him. I could help him.

‘I comforted him and told him that it was going to be alright, I didn’t know how much of what I was saying was actually being comprehended, but eventually he sat on my lap and went down the slide with me. He even led me back to the slide to do it once more. The teachers told me that he

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had never gone down the slide. He had seen something in me to ask me for the strength to do something he wanted to do. He could see something in me before I knew that I had the strength to help. I had helped him achieve something so small, yet so great for him, but he didn’t know how much he had changed something within me. He helped me discover the difference I can make. This was life changing.

‘It wasn’t until we were immersed in Aspect School that we started to get a true understanding of the challenges some people face. We made a difference. It changed how we view every aspect of our lives now.’

POWERFUL LEARNING

IN PERSON WITH THE PM MLC School student journalists gained face-to-face time with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull MP, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten MP and Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale ahead of the Federal Election.

In the first edition of a new publication, The Crinkling News, student journalists from MLC School made their journalism debut. Diya Mehta (Year 9) and Madeleine Murphy (Year 9) travelled to Canberra where they interviewed Prime Minister Mr Malcolm Turnbull, Opposition Leader Mr Bill Shorten and Leader of the Greens Mr Richard Di Natale. The resulting articles covered bullying, mental health, sustainable energy and policies for children.

The close friends profited immensely from their experience and have a career in journalism firmly in their sights when they leave school.

‘It was an amazing opportunity’, Diya said.‘It was mind blowing. I couldn’t really believe it. When I found out I was going to meet the Prime Minister it was hard to

wrap my head around it. Then I had about 30 minutes with him in his office’.

further piece, on teenage mental health, which they hope will be published.

Madeleine and Diya were ‘trying to cater to what young to middle teenagers would want to read’, when they formulated the questions they would ask.

‘We organise a writing club at school with our friends’, Diya said.

Madeleine experienced quite a contrast in her two interviews. Mr Shorten ‘was really serious and solemn but he got into it towards the end.

‘Mr Di Natale was a bit of a joker. He liked to laugh and cracked some jokes as well.

He thought it would be funny at the end if I sat in his chair and pretended to be a politician while everyone else took photos.

I liked doing that.’

Both students want to encourage other students to contribute to The Crinkling News. Diya and Madeleine have written a

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‘Lots of people want to write but don’t have the opportunity to get their work published – they would have jumped at what we got to do.’

‘It was mindblowing. I couldn’t really believe it.

It was hard to wrap my head around it.’

VICTORIA TO CUT DOWN

PURSUING EXCELLENCE

ENGLISH AT MLC SCHOOL Challenging students to think outside the human condition.

According to Buddha, ‘a family is a place where minds come in contact with one another’.

The minds of the MLC School English Department have 236 years of teaching experience between them, more than 18 degrees and 18 diplomas or certificates from universities in Australia and abroad (many with first class honours), and they are not stopping there.

Ms Lynne Slarke is ‘always doing something interesting at university’ according to Head of Learning and Curriculum Mr Benjamen Haeusler and Ms Christine Choi is currently doing a Masters in Creative Writing.

There are 14 English teachers and they teach every single student of the Senior School.

They – Ms Rachel Alice, Mrs Lynn Calluaud, Ms Christine Choi, Ms Carmel Cordaro, Ms Gemma Goldberger, Mr Benjamen Haeusler, Mrs Libby King, Ms Hanna Lucas, Ms Deborah Moir, Ms Fiona Pow, Ms Lynne Slarke, Mrs Irene Swain and Ms Jane Wang – teach courses from English as a Second Language (ESL) to HSC Extension 2 and IB High Level and everything in between.

Collaborative, diverse and looking after their extended family of 880 students, the English teachers are passionate about literature and language. They teach the expected critical analysis and creative writing as well as the unexpected — such as a hip hop and rap interpretation of Shakespeare.

‘The rap and hip hop project for Year 9s is an interdisciplinary link with the Music and PDHPE Departments’, Mr Haeusler says.

Similar authentic experiences arranged by the English Department for other years include workshops with poets, a week in Shakespeare’s world, and lectures from Sydney University professors.

‘We do this to make the lessons more real, interesting and engaging’, Mr Haeusler says.

The teaching of English has evolved remarkably since MLC School’s beginning in the 1880s, largely due to new textual forms and mediums. This has forced the study of literature to widen.

‘The study of English originally focused on the mechanics of the English language and what we would regard as the “classics” of the English canon’, according to Mr Haeusler.

‘These days, this is no longer the case.

Whilst there is a swing back towards students studying functional grammar and literacy, they are now encouraged to think critically about the texts they are presented with on a daily basis.

‘Whether it is an avant-garde arthouse film, the latest pop song, a new Broadway musical or a Pulitzer prize winning novel, students are encouraged to see all these texts as equal; each composer and writer has a fresh perspective to offer their audience. Nowadays, at its core, the study of English is about challenging students to think about the human condition, open their eyes to other worlds and subsequently broaden their own individual worldview.’

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The English teachers have two major goals for 2016: to increase the support structures for new students with special needs to boost their results and to ‘get into each other’s lessons a bit more’.

Improving the nurturing of ESL students is taking the form of differentiated teaching methods. Visiting each other’s classrooms will enhance their team teaching efforts and allow peer critical analysis and improvement of teaching practice.

Reinvigorating Homework Club with extra sessions before and after school is also keeping the English teachers busy.

When they’re not teaching they’re reading novels, stories, poetry and nonfiction by Tolkein, Elena Ferranti, Aristotle, Wilkie Collins, Alain de Botton, Stan Grant and others.

Mr Haeusler says the teachers of the English Department are just like a family because ‘someone is always bringing in food to share and we sit around at lunchtime talking about anything from literature to the latest television series.’

‘Challenging students to think about the human condition, open their eyes to other worlds and subsequently broaden their own individual worldview.’

2015 ACADEMIC RESULTS

POST SCHOOL DESTINATIONS Trends in destinations for 2015 leavers.

As well as accepting offers from prestigious local universities, a number of the Class of 2015 have successfully received offers from regional, interstate and overseas universities and are heading off to study at Columbia University, Harvard University, The Juilliard School, Durham University, University of Melbourne, Australian National University and Monash University.

Destinations

Number

University of Sydney

39

University of NSW

33

University of Technology Sydney

29

Macquarie University

10

Australian Catholic University

7

The higher education choices made by the Class of 2015 have been more diverse than usual and include many combined or double degrees. There has also been a high take-up of International and Global Studies degrees as well as creative innovation, entrepreneurship and design courses – six students gained positions in the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation degree at the University of Technology. Bucking the national trend away from mathematics/science degrees, over 40% of 2015 MLC School cohort enrolments were in science-based programs.

ANU

7

University of Western Sydney

5

Overseas Universities

4

University of Wollongong

4

Melbourne University

2

Charles Sturt University

1

Monash University

1

La Trobe University

1

Bond University

1

Course

Number

Commerce/Business/Economics

26

Science/Biomedical/Medical

19

Arts

18

Law

17

Health Sciences

16

Communications/Media

11

International/Global Studies

8

Design

7

Education

6

Psychology

6

Creative Innovative Intelligence

6

Architecture

4

Engineering

4

Creative Arts/Music

3

Medicine/Surgery

3

Information Technology

2

Aviation

1

Many of the 2015 cohort have received scholarships including those from Columbia, Harvard, The University of Sydney, University of NSW, Macquarie University, Australian National University, Melbourne University and La Trobe University. Two of these were awarded to Victoria Xu who won the Co-op Scholarship for Electrical Engineering and the Scientia Scholarship at UNSW against an all male field.

Lucinda Hughes is now a student at Columbia University in New York.

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SCHOOL TOURS

SCHOLARSHIPS

CHOOSING MLC SCHOOL

There are a range of scholarships available at MLC School, including scholarships for new students, continuing students, all rounders, music students, Aboriginal students and daughters of Old Girls.

Some of our scholarships are means tested. For all scholarships at Year 7 level and above, candidates must sit an entrance examination held at the School. Short listed candidates are later invited to a Scholarship Activity Day at which girls will have an interview, a tour of the School and take part in a variety of activities with other shortlisted candidates.

The entrance examination is held early in Term 1 with the Scholarship Activity Day held later in the term.

Scholarship offers are made to successful candidates by the end of Term 1.

At MLC School we take very seriously the trust that parents place in us; the responsibility we owe to provide an outstanding education for your daughters.

Whether your daughter is newly born or well on her way in her school journey, you have already tuned in to what makes her tick.

It is our role to lead, to encourage all our students to learn about themselves through the recognised approach we take to educating girls, while never forgetting that each girl is unique with different needs.

For information about Scholarships and the application process please contact the enrolments office on scholarships@mlcsyd.nsw.edu.au.

Reading and hearing about MLC School takes second place to a visit. By joining us on a tour you can see, feel and experience our culture. Our culture is what makes us different. We invite you to experience it in person.

To be considered for the Gawalgalyung Junior School Scholarship no test is required. Candidates are invited to spend the morning in the Junior School and there will also be an interview for parents.

Tour Dates Senior School Term 3 Thursday 8 September 2016 Term 4 Thursday 10 November 2016

Junior School Term 3 Tuesday 6 September 2016 Term 4 Tuesday 1 November 2016 To join one of our regular tours contact our Enrolments Manager on 02 8741 3165 or email enrol@mlcsyd.nsw.edu.au

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BUILDING UPDATE

CAFÉ 1886 OPENS A new facility for the whole School community.

Café 1886 opened at the start of Term 2. On the first day of term the staff were all smiles behind counters and cash registers and the students called it ‘cool’, ‘amazing’ and ‘modern’.

All the offerings are made on site, including muffins, cookies and slices. Hot and cold breakfast and lunch options include bircher muesli, sushi, sandwiches, toasties, fresh and dried fruits, burgers, roast dinners and ‘meal of the day’. There are vegetarian meals and gluten-free goodies, and, of course, hot chocolate and coffee.

The students gave the whole experience a ‘thumbs up’, enjoying the design of the physical space as well as the vast array of food options.

Greg McGirr, MLC School Facilities Manager, says Café 1886 is ‘the fourth life for this space’. First it was the site

of Cartreff, purchased by the School in 1936 and renamed Sutton House. It was then the Wearne Library undercroft, followed by the IT Helpdesk and offices.

Now it’s a large, sunlit area for sharing conversations and healthy food in a casual atmosphere.

grown-up.’ ‘It’s cool how it’s got all the charge points for laptops’, said another.

Greg Moore, Operations Manager for Cater Care’s NSW schools, said he was delighted with the first day’s operations.

‘It was very busy and the students seem to love it,’ he said.

The warm, inviting, multifunctional café also has WiFi, power points and charging stations. The preparation areas are open plan and the mechanical services are exposed in the high ceiling – a modern industrial and didactic aesthetic.

‘The “grab and go” area worked really, really well. Students help themselves to items from the fridges and can get out the door fast’.

Contemporary materials used in the construction include marble, stainless steel, timber, glass, polished concrete and mosaic tiles all built around the original structural columns of the Independent Learning Centre.

Café 1886 ‘doesn’t look like a school cafe’, said one student. ‘It feels 18

The café provides catering staff with state-of-the-art appliances. Hospitality students benefit from an authentic experience for their mandatory work placement here on the school campus.

Café 1886 is open for the MLC School community every week day from 7am to 3pm.

Cartreff renamed Sutton House (1936)

Wearne Library from 1983–1997

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PROFILE

‘ART WASHES AWAY FROM THE SOUL THE DUST OF EVERYDAY LIFE’ – PABLO PICASSO

Introducing the Head of Learning and Curriculum, Visual Art. In the middle of a 25-year stint living and teaching everywhere except Australia, Angeline Mariasoosay returned to Sydney for an International Baccalaureate conference. She flew in from the Netherlands for the conference which was hosted by MLC School. It was 2004.

‘When I walked in to the doors of MLC School for the conference two students were there to greet me’, she says.

‘Today’s students are such a complex generation – every lesson needs to have something out of the ordinary.’

‘Because of the way they greeted me and because of the way the teachers spoke to me, I realised this was the school I wanted to be at if I were to come back to work in Australia.’

Twelve years later Angeline’s dream of working at MLC School came true.

She is now the Head of Learning and Curriculum–Visual Arts and has brought the students her wealth of experience and passion for education.

Originally from Malaysia, Angeline studied at COFA (University of NSW School of Art and Design) and began a career as a filmmaker and photographer. She moved on to an international teaching career, first in Japan, as an English teacher. Teaching Visual Arts and introducing courses in digital media followed in Singapore, Rotterdam, Malaysia and Curacao.

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But Australia was beckoning and MLC School has met Angeline’s high expectations. ‘I love what I do,’ she says.

‘Teaching here is so much more than I expected in this chapter of my life.

‘We’re bringing new ways of teaching into the classroom. I have taught Art in its many forms but my affection goes to digital media – I love working with new technology. Technology is part of today’s generation and as a teacher I can help students to use it responsibly in their art making as well as for feedback.’

Angeline is also a firm believer in collaborating, especially when it comes to STEAM,‘I like to look at curriculum innovation, learning innovation, teaching innovation because today’s students are such a complex generation – every lesson needs to have something out of the ordinary’.

Angeline teaches IB and HSC Art to Year 11 and Year 12 and a Year 8 Art class. Away from work she spends her time with her daughter who ‘thrills me to no end – she says the funniest things’.

Angeline’s passion and optimism is felt by her students who describe her as ‘motivating, kind and passionate. She’s always there for her students’.

PROFILE

SCIENCE OF MLC SCHOOL Introducing Tom Riley, Assistant Head of Learning and Curriculum–Science.

New Assistant Head of Learning and Curriculum–Science Thomas Riley cut his teeth teaching Biology to boys at The King’s School but is now enjoying the change of pace of teaching girls at MLC School. As well as working with the strong collaborative ethic of the older students he also has more time to focus on developing academic programs and to uncover new ideas for teaching and learning.

‘It’s radically different teaching girls, and also different age groups require different approaches. It makes you open up another side of your teaching. MLC School students are strong, independent women and that’s so important.’

‘At King’s I coached rugby and cricket but at MLC School all my energy now goes into teaching and learning science, particularly biology,’ he says.

‘I love the long periods here,’ he says.

It’s fantastic for science teaching. There’s no rush to get through material and you

can demonstrate something practical in every single lesson. There’s more learning time, including student-led discussion.’

Tom trained at The University of Sydney where he gained a Bachelor of Applied Science and and at Macquarie University where he gained his Graduate Diploma of Education. He teaches one Year 10 and two Year 8 Science classes, as well as Year 12 Biology. He uses playground supervision time to get to know other students, making an effort to talk to as many of them as possible.

He is also enjoying working with student members of the school science club – Nucleus – drawing attention to the everyday science all around them and communicating science to a wider audience.

‘What’s important in teaching girls is helping them discover opportunities in science after they finish school. I want to draw the links between what they’re doing in the classroom and what they’re

going to do in the future. There are so many different strands of science and there are so many areas where science is applicable.

‘What’s important in teaching girls is helping them discover opportunities in science after they finish school.’

‘At the moment in Nucleus we’re looking at the secret science of MLC School.

We are investigating the science in the workings of the swimming pool. There’s Chemistry in the balance of PH and salinity in the water. There’s Physics in calculating the volume of water in the pool. In Café 1886 there’s the question of microbiology in the food safety regulations and in the gym there are biomechanics.’

Outside of school Tom loves cooking and travelling and his Saturday morning running/breakfast club. He also travels to Uganda each year to help at an educational charity founded by his parents, a Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress in the UK.

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EVENTS

CELEBRATING 130 YEARS OF MLC SCHOOL Special celebrations for everyone in the MLC School community.

Events

On 4 May 2016 all members of the MLC School community, from the youngest Pre-Kindergartener to the longest-standing Old Girl and everyone in between, marked the school’s 130th anniversary.

Other celebratory events this year include:

Old Girls returned to school for breakfast with the Principal, Mrs Louise Robert-Smith, and a special Chapel service followed by morning tea with the School Captains and the Middle Years Leaders. Meanwhile, Junior School grandparents were treated to special activities with their granddaughters.

Black Tie Dinner Saturday 4 June

International Night Friday 4 November

The students marked the day with a colourful assembly including a spirited round of ‘Happy Birthday’ and MLC School gave each of them two gifts: ‘one thing to keep forever and one thing to consume immediately,’ (an anniversary badge and a special cupcake). Both gifts met with mighty approval!

Speech Night at State Theatre, Sydney Tuesday 6 December, 7pm

For parents there were showcase classroom lessons, a spectacular display of Taiko drumming and lunch in the newly opened Café 1886. The day concluded with staff drinks for the teachers after school.

On 4 June, parents, staff, Old Girls, Council Chairs and Principals past and present gathered to cerebrate MLC School at the Sofitel Wentworth. A wonderful night long to be remembered!

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FEARLESS THINKING

FULL STEAM AHEAD STEAM activities at MLC School have expanded into TED Talks and the Maker Movement.

TEDxMLCSchool The power of TED Talks to inspire, provoke and innovate is well documented.

MLC School joined the global movement in staging a student-led forum – the inaugural TEDxMLCSchool event – celebrating young people’s voices. Students from other schools, State and Independent, joined MLC girls to give short, powerful talks on issues of importance to them.

Following the world wide TEDx protocols, the 19 participants had successfully pitched their ideas ahead of the day.

Subsequent presentations covered

diverse, unrelated ideas including volunteering, sneaker culture, life with a hearing impairment, Shakespeare’s relevance today, wondering and internet activism. The 17 carefully prepared talks and two performances (one music, one dance) were each given by a single student and videoed by MLC School for ted.com to broadcast to the world.

Following the TED Talks rules, presentations were 18 minutes or less.

Our live audience was limited to 100 participants who devoured the ideas presented and the event was live on 24

Twitter, sparking conversation and debate. Following upload to ted.com the TEDxMLCSchool sessions allow the world to tap into the hypotheses and concerns of Sydney students.

Active voice and community action are notions many schools strive to build into their curriculum programs. MLC School has always stood out for its ability to harness the latest methods to disseminate ideas and teaching and the 2016 TEDx event was no exception.

FEARLESS THINKING

The Maker Movement The Maker Movement: makers, tinkerers, fixers, inventors. At our inaugural Maker Festival on a wintry Sunday they gathered – 30 student group exhibitors from Pre-Kindergarten to Year 12 together with Old Girl entrepreneurs and companies such as Robogals, Girls’ Programming Network, Microsoft and MakerBot. They demonstrated inventions, presented technologies and inspired hundreds of MLC School community members. There was coding, web programming, robotics, drone flying, bee keeping and origami.

The hands-on workshops also included virtual reality games, 3D printing, book illustration and making simple radio transmitters.

At the heart of the day was a panel of four of Australia’s new generation of influential entrepreneurs discussing women in start-ups. Two of these extraordinary young women are MLC School alumnae, ShanShan Wang (2008) of Roam Technologies and Emily Yue (2002) of Expert360. ShanShan’s company is developing a revolutionary lightweight oxygen device for medical use. Emily is co-founder of a company which connects businesses with freelance professionals for project-based work via an online platform.

The panelists gave the audience inspiring insights into how to overcome the inevitable challenges of starting

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businesses which aim to change the ways people live and work.

The event succeeded in giving visitors a new understanding of how things work as well as knowledge of emerging and changing technologies which will improve daily life. It also celebrated the makers of MLC School.

‘ShanShan’s company is developing a revolutionary lightweight oxygen device for medical use.’

PROFILE

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

Wesleyan men, a tellurion and MLC School’s Archivist.

Ms Barbara Hoffman is passionate about school stories and women’s history but came to be an archivist via an unusual route. After studying science at the University of NSW, Barbara worked in environmental science and then in medical research. This work included laying out scientific reports – so she mastered early graphic design software.

The graphic design work led to her move into the world of advertising, ultimately managing a studio.

But she was not entirely happy doing the ‘devil’s work’ as she calls it and thought long and hard about what really inspired her. She came to the realisation that a career in archives would be her thing. She enrolled in a postgraduate course, joined the Australian Society of Archivists and has been MLC School’s Archivist for the past three years.

‘I’m very happy here and in an enviable position of working at something I really love’, she says.

Barbara is the go-to person for any question about MLC School’s history. It’s all in a day’s work for her to promote the history and heritage of MLC School.

She does this through oral history projects, alumni programs, temporary and permanent displays.

She feels the school culture has remained fundamentally unchanged over 130 years.

‘Ever since the first newspaper ad calling for enrolments of girls to prepare them for university entry we’ve had a number of firsts in women’s education’, she told Lucis.

‘I’m very happy here and in an enviable position of working at something I really love’.

‘From the start there was a strong feminist flavour and a focus on co-curricular activities. Academic achievement has always been prized, of course, but so too have prowess in Sport and Music. Excellence in Drama and Dance followed in later years. Educating the whole girl has been the outcome for generations of MLC School students’.

The most interesting part of Barbara’s job is when she interacts with Old Girls or their family members who ring up out of the blue. She loves the detective work of uncovering facts about former students, 26

facts known to their classmates but sometimes unknown to family members.

In one case Barbara was able to inform the children of an Old Girl of the names of their grandparents – their mother’s sudden death in childbirth and the subsequent separation of siblings meant so much family information was missing.

An MLC School enrolment card and the memories of class mates filled in some gaps and brought joy to the descendants.

Barbara works surrounded by MLC School records, photos, Minute books, school magazines and old uniforms stored in cupboards and a compactus unit. ‘After three years I still haven’t gone through everything’, she says. Sitting down with the doors closed cataloguing is only possible in school holidays.

Barbara’s favourite piece of MLC School history? The school’s oldest document: the Minutes of a meeting on 4 May 1883 of a ‘bunch of Wesleyan men’ discussing the establishment of a school for their daughters because the University of Sydney had just opened its doors to admit women to undergraduate study. This document provided the date of 4 May as the date for MLC School’s 130th anniversary celebration.

PROFILE

A fascinating artefact held in the school archives collection is the tellurion – an early teaching aid used in science lessons. Found in pieces, it had been catalogued as a ‘sundial’. After the jigsaw puzzle of gears, pinions and shafts were reassembled it was found to be a rare treasure – a Parkes and Hadley ‘patent orrery’ or tellurion.

Orreries and tellurions date back to the Ancient Greeks and were built by astronomers to demonstrate the movement of the entire solar system or of just the Sun, Earth and Moon. In MLC School’s tellurion a wick and oil is needed for operation. Students would crank the handle and the shadows cast by the lamp light, ‘the sun’, demonstrated the Earth’s and Moon’s orbits.

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OLD GIL PROFILE

MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD, ONE WORD AT A TIME Novelist Fiona McFarlane attended MLC School from 1990 to 1995 where she was a gifted debater and founded a student newspaper. She went on to become a University Medalist in English Literature at the University of Sydney and gained her PhD and writing fellowships from Cambridge. After winning the NSW Premier’s Prize for The Night Guest, Fiona was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist for 2014.

She was Guest of Honour at the Prefects’ Award Service in Potts Hall on 8 April 2016.

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OLD GIRL PROFILE

‘MLC School is so good at that – at complementing the academic with the creative’.

Dr Fiona McFarlane knew as an MLC School student in the 1990s that she wanted to make her future as a writer.

Buttressed by influential teachers and her dearest friend Emma Jones, (see Lucis 2010 for a profile of Emma Jones) now a celebrated poet and her continuing ‘one-person cheer squad’ since they were both 12, she credits MLC School for making ‘a big difference to the paths that my mind took’.

She had grown up in a home full of books and began her writing life at school with epic poems and ‘hard-hitting’ student journalism for the student paper, The Edge, she and her friends started in the MLC School tower. ‘It was very funny in terms of what we were writing about and the way we wrote it’, Fiona said.

Fiona’s second book, The High Places, was published in February and contains short stories of ‘extraordinary ordinariness’ and great beauty. Her first book, a novel – The Night Guest – achieved the ‘surreal’ honour of being chosen as a finalist for the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary award.

She says modestly, ‘nobody really knows what’s going to happen with a first novel and certainly everything that happened exceeded all my expectations’.

At school, Fiona and Emma were ‘two people in one year who both wanted to make lives as writers and not really knowing at 12 years old how difficult that can be’.

What attracted Fiona to MLC School was the emphasis on the creative arts such as Music and Drama alongside academic excellence. ‘MLC School was so good at that – at complementing the academic with the creative’. Fiona was delighted to be asked back to MLC School this year to speak at the important Prefects’ Award Service, having pursued a ‘less conventional career’.

‘What’s nice is to be back having achieved this unlikely thing’, she said.

Fiona is currently reading mid-twentieth century novelists Mena Calthorpe and Dorothy Hewitt who both wrote about women and work. And she’s mid-way through writing the first draft of her second novel, a ‘period novel with lots of characters, unlike The Night Guest which has about two and half’.

‘Your high school years are so formative As she told the prefects and their parents in terms of the books you’re reading and the ideas you’re encountering’. Many of at this year’s Prefects’ Award Service, ‘careers of great pleasure and satisfaction those ideas came from Fiona’s influential Fiona said to the Prefects, ‘we need teachers Mrs Hawkins in Ancient History can come out of admitting your earnest the encouragement of our peers, the and Ms Lindsay and Mrs Jadeja in English. knowledge that other people are love for things that other people might consider boring: in my case, words, and trying to do the same difficult thing…

Fiona’s ‘continued great love for Ancient how we might use them to create beauty, Rome’ was down to Mrs Hawkins who Congratulations on the extraordinary meaning and change. Every writer is, in ordinariness of being an MLC School also taught students about the great the end, trying to do the same thing: make English poets including Philip Larkin Prefect. Now go out and make sense of sense of the world, one word at a time’ the world – together’.

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VALE

VALE The MLC School Community was saddenend to hear of deaths of some of our Old Girls.

Margaret Betteridge (Broughton, 1937)

for new Parliament House. Margaret was especially proud of this.

Margaret Broughton grew up in Epping where she attended a private home school with her friends and neighbours, sisters Joan Beck (1935) and Marjorie Beck (1938). These three great friends (‘sisters’) went on to enrol at MLC School together.

In 1989 she made a big move and settled in Buderim, on the Sunshine Coast to be closer to her two sons and family.

Throughout her schooling Margaret was close with Joan and Marjorie Beck, as well as June Greenhalgh (Oberg, 1940), Judy Stuart (Meyer, 1937) and Alice Tribe (Dey, 1932) (Alice, a few years Margaret’s senior, escorted her to school on the train when she was a new student). They all remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Margaret had two sons who she adored, Neville in 1944 and Hugh in 1947.

Unfortunately her marriage dissolved in 1950 after which Margaret was faced with the prejudice of the time towards divorced women. But support from family and real friends saw her triumph over those hard times and she went on to study and re-educate herself many times. In 1965 she had sat the leaving certificate again and then studied teaching. So, in her late 40s Margaret found herself teaching early childhood classes.

From her school days onward, Margaret’s spare time revolved around her interest in hand crafts and embroidery. She and her great MLC School friend, Marjorie Beck, were members of the Embroiders Guild of NSW and both were successful in being selected to work on the embroidery

In her quiet and unassuming manner, she never mentioned her involvement in the Parliament House Embroidery to anyone when she moved to Queensland and joined other similar craft groups, not wanting to offend anyone with her capability and extensive experience.

For 24 years Margaret was a regular worshipper at St Mark’s Anglican Church at Buderim (where her funeral was held) and a devotee of cappuccinos whenever possible!

Margaret was a loving supporter of her sons, grandchildren, great- and greatgreat-grandchildren and their families, who were with her when she passed away on 12 December 2014.

Judith Scott (Bowering, 1950) We have received news of the sad passing of Judith Scott (Bowering, 1950) in 2016.

Beatrice (Betty) Bathgate (Black, 1951) Beatrice (Betty to her MLC School friends) passed away peacefully on 17 January 2016. Beatrice’s husband Bruce says that her fond memories of her time at MLC School stayed with her until the very end.

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A Boarder from Forbes, Beatrice entered eagerly and readily into MLC School life and proudly told of being the 16 Years Age Champion in the 100-yard race at the School Carnival and representing the School at the All Schools Athletics Carnival.

Beatrice completed her Leaving Certificate in 1951. After school, she pursued a teaching career, graduating from Bathurst Teachers’ College in 1953 and became an accomplished infants and primary teacher who really loved her profession and contact with young children.

Beatrice travelled widely and taught overseas for several years. She and a fellow MLC School friend had the ‘distinction’ of being arrested in the USA for hitch-hiking. They were admonished and released with no conviction (other than to continue the inexpensive means of transport).

After her travels, Beatrice married Bruce in 1965 and settled in Double Bay. This union produced three sons and 10 grandchildren. Her life was full when she was surrounded by her adoring and adored family. Beatrice regularly attended the Sapphires Luncheons, until her health precluded this enjoyment.

The influence of MLC School on her life and her pride in the school is carried on through two of her granddaughters, Charlotte and Hannah, who are current students at MLC School.

VALE

Lynette McClintock (Armour, 1956) Lynette’s son Peter has written to tell us of the sad passing of his mother Lynette McClintock (Armour, 1956) on 23 December 2015.

Jane Sherrard (Ross, 1959) Jane’s husband Owen wrote to us to let us know, with much sadness, that his wife Jane Sherrard (Ross, 1959) passed away on 17 November 2015. Jane was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008 and bravely lived with her illness for seven and a half years until it finally proved fatal.

Jane attended MLC School from Kindergarten right up to the Leaving Certificate. She greatly enjoyed her time at the School and maintained close contact with quite a few of her friends from her school days. Jane is survived by her sisters, MLC School Old Girls Susan Beal (Ross, 1951) and Sandra Bates (Ross, 1955).

Jane and Owen were married for 51 years and were blessed with four children, a daughter and three sons. Jane was also a loving grandmother to 11 grandchildren.

Prior to her marriage, Jane was a nurse at Sydney Children’s Hospital and later studied Arts at the University of Sydney. After raising her family, she took up a career in teaching speech and communication and taught at Arden Anglican School for 22 years. After retiring from classroom teaching, Jane spent about 10 years teaching swimming, a sport she excelled at during her MLC School days. She also volunteered as a teacher of English as a Second Language.

Elizabeth Gill (Hartford, 1962) Emma Gill has written to us to let us know that after five strong and courageous years of dealing with secondary breast cancer, her dear mother Elizabeth Gill (Hartford, 1962) passed away on 4 May 2015. Elizabeth was a second generation and very proud MLC School Old Girl.

Elizabeth’s mother Marjorie Amelia Hartford (Greenwell, 1929) was an MLC School Boarder from a very young age.

Elizabeth was keen for her daughter to attend the School but they lived too far away to make it practicable.

While at school, Elizabeth met Anne Gill (1962) and Rosalind Dobbie (Gill, 1965) 31

through whom she met their brother John. Elizabeth and John married soon afterwards.

Elizabeth was much beloved by her family and MLC School friends and is greatly missed.

Susan Blackwood (Shaw, 1973) Susan’s daughter Melissa has written to tell us of the passing of her mother, Susan Blackwood (Shaw, 1973) in May 2015.

Mrs Phyllis Mostyn Janet Dare (Mostyn, 1962) has called to tell us that her mother Phyllis passed away on 27 February 2016. Phyllis Mostyn taught primary school at MLC School from the mid-1950s to the mid1960s in Abbeythorpe House which once stood on the site of the Aquatic Centre.

At her death, Phyllis was just 42 days short of her 105th birthday.

Rowley Street Burwood NSW 2134 Tel 61 2 9747 1266 Fax 61 2 9745 3254 www.mlcsyd.nsw.edu.au Follow MLC School on Facebook The Uniting Church in Australia CRICOS No. 02328D A UNITING CHURCH DAY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, PRE-KINDERGARTEN TO YEAR 12