Dean of Students | Mr Damien Cuddihy

Further to Dr Carroll’s report, I have asked staff to focus on the following areas with students during Pastoral Care groups in the mornings. A number of students are still quite relaxed about personal hygiene and haven’t quite grasped the seriousness of the situation. Please assist the College by reinforcing the following with your sons at home: 

• Students are to follow social distancing practices, where possible, around the College, particularly when in the yard at morning tea and lunchtimes. There should only be four students sitting at a table at any one time and unnecessary contact should be avoided. 
• Students need to use water bottles to drink water at school. We want to stop the direct use of bubblers during the day for drinking by the mouth. Students will instead need to refill water bottles throughout the day. 
• Toilets will be checked each day to ensure soap dispensers are refilled. If students notice that a soap dispenser is empty, then they need to make a teacher immediately aware immediately so this can be refilled.
• Boys are encouraged to bring personal hand sanitiser to school and cough into the elbow corner.

Also, the tuckshop will be simplifying the menu in the coming days to sell covered and pre-packaged food only to help minimise the risk of spreading germs. 

The College has temporarily employed a second nurse to assist in Sick Bay to support our health care staff in the coming weeks. We have identified isolation rooms at the College and checked that our cleaners have the capacity to properly clean areas should it be required. The health care staff will continually assess the students presenting to Sick Bay for flu like symptoms and then isolate and contact parents/caregivers when needed. 

Every week at Terrace, many staff work with students and parents to support boys' wellbeing. Working with adolescent boys is not always smooth sailing, which gives us many opportunities to help them grow. This important philosophical position underpins our work. Some students are feeling quite anxious about the impact that COVID-19 is having on communities at the moment. I mentioned this last week, but again I refer parents to the SchoolTV link on the College website, College App and Facebook to listen to Dr Michael Carr-Gregg’s insight into supporting youth during this time. 

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the Terrace co-curricular community. The 2020 Head of the River was an outstanding display of the character that exists within the shed. I am always impressed with the energy that this community has for each other. The boys, the coaches and the parents. I was particularly impressed with the Open crews. The genuine interest they had in each other’s performances was heartening and not often seen in schoolboy sport. Our Senior A Debating team finished second.  The Volleyball and Cricketing communities have also performed exceptionally well, with both premier teams finishing on top of the ladder when the competition was suspended. All these teams have worked exceptionally hard to arrive at that point in the season and deserve recognition for those achievements. I believe this is only ever possible through a genuine display of teamwork on all fronts.