English

Ms Lisa Mack Head of English

There has been a hive of activity again this year in the English department. We were thrilled to offer students many rich learning experiences outside the everyday classroom. For example, we invited students ranging from Years 7-12 from English, Drama and Literature, to two performances at the Heath Ledger Theatre. In Term 1, the play ONEFIVEZEROSEVEN addressed the important issue of youth identity in Australia. We also experienced the powerful text by Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire. Many students commented on the captivating performance of the leading actor, the iconic Sigrid Thornton.

We are prepared and eager to start the national curriculum next year for Year 11 ATAR and general courses. These new ventures give us the opportunity to reflect on the successes and challenges of our current courses in order to improve the scope and sequence of our Years 10-12 learning outcomes. Furthermore, with the new timetable structure, we are excited to announce our new elective offerings: Creative Expression; English Enhancement; Investigative Journalism and Debating and Public Speaking. Lastly, with the demands of the OLNA testing in Year 10, we look forward to forging closer collaborative ties with the Learning Enrichment Centre to ensure students achieve the literacy levels conducive with each of their preferred career paths.

We were pleased to host the prestigious English Teachers’ Association of Western Australia’s annual state conference in Term 2. This gave our entire department the opportunity to glean expertise from international and national educators in our field. We were also proud to boast some of the many benefits we experience teaching English here at Trinity College.

Middle School English continues to be a dynamic and rigorous field here at the school. In 2014 a conscious effort was made to foster a strong sense of creativity within the boys. Building on the Br Gerry Faulkner Creative Writing Competition and visiting authors program, we invited two young Western Australian authors into our classrooms. Luke Jessop and Garrett Streater, writing under the pseudonym of GL Lathian, inspired the boys with their experiences of writing collaboratively and self-publishing the first in what will be a trilogy of fantasy novels. In response, the boys produced their own creative writing, which our visiting authors judged, offering signed copies of their debut novel as prizes. In addition, our Year 7 students explored the nature of storytelling in an entertaining and innovating workshop with guest speaker and professional storyteller, Andy Wright. This lively experience encouraged boys to develop their narrative and dramatic speaking skills and resulted in some truly outstanding and original tales delivered, with panache to their admiring audiences.

This year we expanded our involvement with the Fremantle Literature Centre, funding 15 boys across Years 8-10 to attend a four-day program collaborating with published authors and students from other schools to develop their own creative writing skills. Again, this highly popular program was a great success and we look forward to its continuation next year.

Analysis of NAPLAN statistics reveals the positive impact our Middle School English teachers are having. Whilst not a complete measure of the value of a Trinity College education, such results do provide food for thought. In 2014, at Year 7 level, 90% of our students are above minimum national standards in writing and 86% are above minimum national standards in reading. At Year 9, this rises to 96% above minimum national standards in writing and 92% for reading. Impressively, approximately 30% of our students are significantly above these standards, ranking in the top tier of students nationally.

It is with heavy heart that we farewell one of our English staff this year. Ms Michelle Daly, who started with us this year, has obtained a promotional position in the Campus Ministry at Bunbury Catholic College. We wish the very best for her personal and career successes in 2015. Ms Daly’s generosity of spirit and expertise in our field has been an invaluable addition to our department and we will greatly miss her contribution. I would like to thank Mr Adam Kealley for his continued and tireless support as my Assistant Head of Learning Area. He has obtained a promotional position for 2015 and will be heading the Teaching and Learning objectives of our College. I have no doubt we will all benefit greatly from his contagious enthusiasm and formidable insight in this area. In his place, we welcome Mrs Rosa West who brings 20 years of experience to the position and has a mighty passion for our subject areas.

In conclusion, I could not run the English, Drama and LOTE departments without the continued provision of the assiduous English staff and subsequent course coordinators. It is such a joy to work alongside like-minded teachers who have a conscientious approach to each student’s progress and the smooth running and productivity of our large department. We all look forward to doing it again in 2015.

Ms Lisa Mack Head of English

Year 8 students hear about Aboriginal culture from Ms Donella Brown before reading the book Jandamarra

Our Head Prefect, Brayden Keizer (12.1) has been a formidable Literature student this year, earning for himself the top award, the Peter Henfry Memorial Prize. Below is one of his creative submissions for the year, of which he was awarded the Br Gerry Faulkner Literary Competition in the senior short story category. Going a Long Way Walking

It was on these frigid wintry days of August whilst I shivered and cursed the cold that I yearned most for the comforts of the hospital bed I direly needed but seldom had afforded to me. Mother and I traverse the park en route with only eucalypts and songbirds for company, warmth receding from the day like low tide returning to Mother Sea. I swig the drink I’ve been nursing and herald the fire as it creeps to my heart and sets a candle there. Kookaburras chirp and croon in the branches, laughing, whilst Mother pushes and I sit, stooped and silent.

I feel it building again – the aching in my joints and the knives of ice down my spine, so I look at Mother and tell her with my eyes that it is time to hasten. She nods, veneering a smile that quickly becomes painful.

My vision begins to blur and my mind drifts whilst she pushes the chair, my wheels making the familiar and relentless click-clack-click on the pavement. SCREECH breaks the ‘metronomy’, the horrid squeal of rubber on bitumen and the noxious spray of petroleum. The bus doors open and a ramp extends from above – together we steel ourselves and cross the frontier, settling haphazardly aboard the bus to virulent stares and disdain. Mother sits beside me, at the bottom, affixing her gaze to the blackened floor as she rocks my chair back, forward, back with her foot, humming an ancient lullaby.

“You have to buy a ticket,” barks the driver, but Mother pretends not to understand. She knows that our little coin from July’s Susso vanished long ago on my treatment.

I try to speak through the suffocation of my brace but only surface a muffle, so she replies, stiltedly, saying “no money” as she mimes turning out her pockets – frowning in search for sympathy but finding disapproval instead.

The driver reneges and the bus splutters to life – those sitting higher glare down, muttering to each other.

I drink again, and though it numbs the pain that is rising I still grimace from the burning of its uneasy kiss. With a snake’s hiss the men closest (one apish and one more feline) whisper to each other, perhaps presuming that because my legs don’t work my ears don’t either.

“Fair dinkum, now there’s a sorry sight!” says the hairy one, accusingly and devoid of commiseration. Familiar anger rises to my throat, but I can’t utter the words.

“What is?” replies the other, knowing the answer.

“Those freeloadin’ good-for-nothins… leeching off honest Australians like you me. Who else but the bloody taxpayer!” he agrees.

The ape points a swollen finger at the Digger’s Denaturant and wine cask I’m cradling. “…And then she’ll blow her ill-gottens on metho and Coolabah, no less!”

They chuckle.

“Too right, too right … you’d think we’d never given them anything, abusing what they never even deserved how they do! I’ll tell you this, I’m a firm believer that if you give those types the basic tools for civilisation then you’re at least halfway to civilisin’ ‘em.”

The conversation is spiralling, fast becoming a public sermon.

“Since day one! Settlement…1878! They’ve wanted it all, both ways, and with sugar on top!”

“Oh God knows we’ve tried… bring ‘em to the cities and they starve us, leave ‘em in the bush and they starve themselves!”

The cat flits his eyes around the bus and, plastering a wry smile on his face, projects his voice so that all can hear. “Me? I don’t care where they are, so long as they’re not here!”

A hush falls. Silence. Mother’s rugged elegance has gone; resilience transformed to rage. She launches to her feet. Her eyes are shooting spears. “It’s not our fault!” she commands, dignified. The men laugh despite her.

“You killed the Dreamtime… You killed the Corroboree, the dancing and the laughing,” she laments, sobbing now. The bus grinds to a halt. A commotion behind. The driver exits his compartment and stands; his pinkish snout is raised in contempt while he walks, deliberately, his boots booming and banging.

“Get out!” cries the driver, without warning. “Out of the bus!” he repeats, his eyebrows arched aggressively. Passengers circle us, expectantly, with fickle vultures’ eyes. Throaty and wavering through the tubes in my throat I find a voice at last. “We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering campfires… We are here!” I whimper. “…We were always here”.

No one hears me. My mouth is not moving. I am shouting and thrashing my arms maniacally – but I do not stir in my chair. I do not pierce the deafening lull.

My arms restrained and my head bowed; I’m steered down the chasm from bus to pavement and light to dark. We must go the long way, walking. The bus doors swoosh shut.

Finality.

My wheels bang pavement, the outside chill returns. We are going, and I curse the terrible twisted night.

We were nature and the past, all the old ways, but now we are sparse and scattered. The white darkness envelops, the wind blows a titillating embrace, and Mother wails a sad tribal song:

“Woe, woe, woe.

My girl and baby.

Going a long way walking,

Hungry, pity, hungry.”

The bus rumbles off and away, drowning out the melody. The night birds warble as ever they have done; the Earth starts singing for the return of the Sun. The Moonlight dances as it has for all time.

But we are silent.

Brayden Keizer (12.1)