Brandon Freire and Matur Maluach gained selection in the Australian Schoolboys Basketball team at the completion of the School Sport Australian Basketball Championships held in Canberra last week.

With NSW fielding two teams, Brandon and Matur played for the NSW Invitational team and Jaidyn Goodwin and Reed Nottage gained selection in the NSW 1sts team.

At weeks end the undefeated NSW 1sts played the NSW Invitational team for the gold medal. In a fiery contest NSW Invitational held their composure to come out victors and gain not only the Gold Medal but “bragging rights” for future years. For the record book the results were NSW Invitational 74 def. NSW1 58.

Congratulations to the boys on their achievements. 

It’s not everyday that a Wallaby player guest speaks at our assembly. Rarer still, is for that international sportsman to be an Old Boy who, at the current peak of his career, has something to say about overcoming negativity and finding the courage to dig deep and keep going.

Allan Alaalatoa (ON 2011) returned to the Centenary Hall stage last Wednesday for the Winter Sports Assembly. Reminiscing about his time at Newington, Allan says that Newington is the place “where I learnt a lot about myself and more so about how I can take on life post school”.

Allan came to Newington in Year 9 and says he was ‘that kid’ who took his schooling and life for granted; “who always chose the easy option and didn’t want to work hard”, he said.

“My first few weeks at Newington, I hated it, I was never used to wearing uniform, or handing in assignments on time, or even completing my homework. It was a huge change which at the time I disliked but not knowing how it would all change my life around”.

Allan remembers being asked by Mr Brad Gill to train with the First XV after a PE session where a beep test that Allan felt was his worst ever, showed his potential.

“To this day I remember my PE teacher, the one who happened to be the coach who came to me and said ‘Kid I see you have so much talent, but that’s only going to get you so far. You need to be able to work hard and have the ability to keep striving to be the best, and I am going to teach you that’.

“Coming to Newington changed my mindset at a reasonably young age. When I was 16 I had made the NSW Rep team and handed in my assignments on time and then I was thinking if I can make it here I can go one more. So I pushed on to make the Aussie Schools team and from finishing assignments I sat my HSC, which I never thought I would do”.

As Allan stood on stage speaking to a sea of Black and White boys, at the back on his mind was the Bledisloe Cup game he had to play on Saturday and the mountain of comments he and his teams were facing in the lead up to it. Australia hadn’t won the cup since 2002 and his year in Super Rugby, not one Australian team was able to overcome the all mighty All Blacks.

In response to the negative comments he was receiving, Allan said “Only I can make those comments matter to me if I believe in them”.

“People don’t understand the work we go through; the sacrifices we make to be where we are today and to have this rare opportunity to play this game this weekend. All people see is results. When you are at the top, people are just waiting for you to fall”.

Allan said that in the midst of this kind of scrutiny and judgement, it’s important to know why it is that you do what you do.

“There has to be a purpose to why you want to wake up in the morning and start your day. I’ve learnt that if you have a big enough why you can figure out the how.”

Allan said that for him, his family is his backbone and the reason why he does what he does.

“Because of my ‘why’ I am able to disregard all the noise that is irrelevant and concentrate firmly on the challenge ahead.

“This weekends’ game is a huge challenge and a milestone for me. I grew up watching these games on TV. And now I get the opportunity to put on that jersey and be the person I was watching when I was younger. With challenge comes nerves. You are always going to be nervous facing the biggest challenges of your life. But why are you nervous? It is because you have the fear of failure. You are nervous because you have the fear of doubt in yourself. But why are you fearing failure, when you have done the preparation? When you prepare yourself the best you can for a challenge the only thing that is stopping you from putting it on the field is your mindset.”

Great advice for all our boys, especially those sitting the Year 12 Trials and the Year 11 exams.

On Tuesday, 8 August, Concordia Gallery and the Newington Visual Arts department had the pleasure of officiating Constructed Realities, the Year 12 HSC Visual Arts Body of Works Exhibition.

Constructed Realities presented the work of our graduating Visual Arts students as they questioned the nature of the world around them; interrogated the liminal edges of philosophy; explored the physiological manifestation of pain and reproduced simulacrums of our contemporary aesthetics.

Each work offered a window into the world to come; a world determined and defined by the processes of adapting and existing within a contemporary setting. Whether an investigation into meaning and repetition, the intersection between the global and the personal; a questioning of the present saturation of images and our on-going anesthetisation; or an examination of gender boundaries, these works pushed and pulled at the question of what it means to live, participate and understand.

The HSC boys have been working on these installations, sculptures, performances, books, drawing and videos since Term 4, 2016. The resulting exhibition displays the thoughtfulness and skill with which they have engaged with their projects. Along with their teachers, each student has made manifest a range of timely and insightful critiques on the politics of navigating life.

Drawing on school, home life, television, gaming, art history, cinema, genealogy and pop culture each budding artist has manipulated a unique range of materials and processes to express art and life, as they know it.

Concordia Gallery and the Visual Arts department would like to extend their warmest congratulations to the boys and wish them all the best for their upcoming marking and Art Express stages. We would also like to thank the Creative Arts Association for their fantastic spread of food and drinks, and for helping to make the opening night one to remember.

At the Football End of Season Dinner, the audience of supporters, players, coaches and directors were rewarded with a heartfelt speech given by the 2016 Captain of Football, Old Newingtonian and now year 7 coach Sam Mehmet. Speaking about both his transition from player to coach, and reflecting on the good times he’s had as both, his address is testament to the strength of our Football community.

The past 12 months have been incredible, although it has left me with a deep hole in my heart, a burning desire to play for Newington Football again. Despite Mr Verco telling me to just shave and chuck on a Newington Jersey, I have had to succumb to the sideline this year as a Coach.

This year as a coach I have had the pleasure of taking the Open 8ths team and the 13Cs. In the 13s age group I have taken every team on a Saturday from the 13As down to the Hs; with the added pleasure today of travelling from the Shire to King’s by 7:30 AM. Likewise I have been coaching with the open 5ths to 10ths at training. While I hope that I was able to expand these boys’ knowledge about football, I learnt that they had expanded mine.

I was with boys from teams that I had never engaged with before, not even in my year as Captain last season. I was able to see the smile on Athan Tragotsalos’ (7/JN) face when his 13Hs team scored a goal, coming up to me after the game saying “We did it Sir, We did it”; ultimately putting a smile on my face. Or the opportunity to coach some of the most genuine and nicest men I’ve met; Tom Whitnall (11/PR), Danny Kalis (12/LE), Eden Ding (11/MA), Yusuf Ali (12/KL), Sebastian Jackson (11/ME); even at times Jeremiah Diskoros (11/MA)“Mehmet cuz, what’d yous get up to on the weekend.” You see, these are the boys that are the backbone of the Football Program; they never get their name mentioned on SPACES or at Assembly, but each week I see them putting in their hard work no matter what team they are in.

I’ve often been asked the question; “If you don’t make it professionally Mehm after all these years, then what was the point?”

The point is that despite professional football, I can name over 100 situations where football itself and playing football will help you with a life situation – it teaches you discipline, maturity, respect, teamwork. These are all things that Newington embodies and things I’ve learnt on a football pitch.

But after all, yes football may help with these things, but it is also the game that I love. And what is life without passions? Just working away and not enjoying yourself? I encourage each of you to find your passion away from study and work and never let go of these things; passions are the very things that keep us sane and ultimately let us live life itself. Amongst my career and however busy I get, I’ve learnt to always continue and never lose sight of my passions.

For the Year 7s to 11s I hope you continue with the Football Program next season, but specifically for the Year 12s; I hope you all continue to play next year and don’t lose sight of your own passions. Play for your Uni, play for the local club, trial for Reps, whatever level; I urge you guys to continue playing.

This year I was fortunate enough to play at Hakoah U20s with my Striking partner Connor Eldridge (ON 2016) from last season. While it has been an enjoyable season at Hakoah, I never forget Mr Verco’s words from the dressing room in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

“Lads… look around you … make the most of this opportunity playing for the College, alongside your mates, because once you walk out those gates you will never have the same opportunity to play with your best friends like this again.” 

When I look back on my footballing journey at Newington, the thing I will remember most is playing with my mates and being able to come together to share what we love.

Sadly for this year’s Year 12 they have played their last game together, but for the younger boys, every time you wear that Wyvern, treat it likes it’s your last game.

Sam Mehmet (ON 2016)
Football Coach

Newington is committed to continuous improvement. There are many conversations and professional programs at the College which aim to improve teaching and learning. A new program which is available to parents is NEWtalks – a series of presentations from teaching staff on elements of Teaching and Learning.

NEWtalks began with a riveting lecture from the Head of Academic (Teaching and Learning) at Stanmore, Mr Trent Driver, who responded to questions about the “holy grail” of teaching and learning – differentiation – sometimes known as personalised learning. 

Trent was first asked, “What is quality teaching?” His response began with an important reflection that teaching is about developing relationships with all boys in the class and responding to their unique needs. Trent went on to discuss his ideals about personalised assessment, where there is no ceiling to how a student may respond to an assessment. This challenges the high performance learner to delve deeper a subject area. In essence, differentiation is a system which allows for all learners to engage at their level and demonstrate what they know and can do, and be inspired to do better.

Trent’s NEWtalk was the first in a series which will address a range of issues associated with tailoring learning so that it meets the needs of each boy. To come NEWtalks will explore differentiation across departments from Maths and Science to Journalism and High Potential.

View Trent’s talk on ClickView here.

Stay tuned for NEWtalks in the near future.

Mr Vic Branson
Assistant to the Headmaster

Year 9 student Adrian Lo (9/LE), was awarded 1st Prize in the Junior Division of the UNSW School Mathematics Competition on Friday, 8 September. Adrian is in Year 9 at Newington, and at just 13 years of age, is currently completing his HSC in Extension 2 Maths.

The Competition is open to all students in NSW and the ACT, and is devised to measure mathematical insight and ingenuity beyond what is assessed in standard testing. A total of the 679 top maths students in the State participated and of these, only around 60 students receive an award. 

“Unlike syllabus maths where you follow a standard method, the problems in the UNSW Maths Comp require more thinking outside the box,” Adrian said.

“It can take an hour to find the correct approach to a problem. However, once the correct approach is found, the question can be solved in less than 15 minutes.”

Adrian was joined by Thomas Newham (10/MA) and Kenny Chen (11/FL) who placed in the top 60 in the State in the Junior and Senior Divisions respectively.

Head of Maths at Newington, Mr Graeme Phillips said, “This is a tremendous achievement for each of the boys.

“Typically, only the top Mathematics students sit this exam – it is difficult. To gain any award is indeed an achievement.”

The competition has been open each year since 1962, and recently has served as a springboard to joining the Australian team in the International Mathematics Olympiad. Some winners like Adrian have gone on to achieve medals at the contest.

Adrian aims to work towards a career in Maths or Physics, and enjoys the certainty and concision of maths.

“Maths is very concise – you are right or you are wrong. It is very rare to be neither right nor wrong,” he said. “I get an immense satisfaction after solving a really hard problem, as well as when I discover new concepts.”

On Friday, 8 September, our Year 7s bought along their fathers, grandfathers, uncles or other significant men to the annual Year 7 Father and Son Breakfast.

With over 220 boys and guests in Centenary Hall the coffee and hot chocolate was much needed for both our boys and their guests.

One father said, “It was hard to drag him out of bed so early, but great to meet so many the fathers of Year 7”.

Thank you to Helen Graham and Kathy Walsh from the NEW Women P&F group who began preparing for the event at the crack of dawn, and for leading the team of wonderful NEW Women assistants in the organisation.

Over 13 litres of coffee and 50 litres of hot chocolate and 100 apples were served and as a souvenir. each father and son received their very own Newington College Keep Cup to take home.

This year on the menu our guests were fed breakfast pizzas from Lacantro in Leichhardt.

Congratulations goes to Mark Conor who won the lucky door prize of a Father and Son strength and conditioning session with our own Director of Strength and Conditioning, Mr Nathan Parnham, and a special thanks goes to our Head of Year 7, Ms Colleen Scalone.

At this time of every year, there are 230-ish boys doing lots of things with the word ‘last’ in front of them.  Their last school assembly, last double Biology lesson, last Cadet parade, last concert, the last time they will walk up the stairs in N-block to a class on Thursday Week A on their timetable. Those sorts of things.

It is a time of emotional rollercoasters for Year 12.  They have come a long distance in their time on the Stanmore campus in so many different and individual ways, and each small last is one piece of a bigger conclusion to what has been a big ride for them all.  It is a privilege sharing that with them, and watching them reflect on their time here, but in so many ways it is rewarding seeing them being so ready to take on the challenges beyond the gates.

However, as we celebrate them at their Valedictory lunch and their farewell assembly in front of their family, there is still a strong sense of unfinished business.  With HSC and IB exams on the (not as distant as they were before) horizon there will be lots of things happening over the coming weeks that will not have the word last popped on the front. 

It will be a while before the boys will lay claim to that last review of their notes, that last practice paper, that last essay plan, that last revision of that proof. Between now and November still lie challenges, and still lie real opportunities to get closer to academic goals.

A challenge they will face is to ensure that their best intentions are not undone by what makes them feel good when they put the time aside to study.  Researchers and psychologists tell us that when we sit ourselves down we grab those books, those notes, those questions that are full of the content and concepts we know well.  We like to experience success when we study, and we feel successful when we read or grapple with something we already understand. We fall into the trap of spending more time studying what we do know, rather than what we don’t. We feel good about what we have learned, but I am not sure it helps us make that next jump in performance we want so much.

Irrespective of whether we are aiming up at our final Year 12 examinations or getting ready for that Year 7 ‘end of topic’ test in Period 4 on Friday, good study is about actively looking for those things we don’t yet realise that we don’t understand. How we study helps us find them. And when we find something we don’t understand, we can fill that gap, and be that little bit better.

So, how do you find the holes? Revision questions are great in this regard, but grinding them out can wear you down. Doing one under time pressure with no assistance, then spending the same amount of time going back over it with notes and books, working out what else could have gone into it (the things you didn’t know) identifies your gaps and fills them in one fell swoop. Looking at that same question, then changing two words or numbers in it (could that increase become a decrease, could that 2x become -2x?) changes your focus – but this time do it all open book, and don’t include anything in the answer you didn’t already know.

Too often we associate study with a solitary life, chained to a desk, pouring over books. Often others find our gaps better than we do, be they around a desk in a seminar room in a library pooling knowledge to break open a problem, or over the dinner table in the evening with a pile of flash cards with definitions and quotes on them. Is it about passing the 90 second test – can you explain that idea or concept or cause or event to someone who knows nothing about it in under two minutes?  Feel confident at doing that, and you know you can look for your holes elsewhere. 

I am consistently intrigued, as boys of all ages move towards assessments or exams, how much time is spent reading notes and books.  I wonder if it is like training for Saturday’s rugby fixture by watching replays of Wallabies matches, or preparing for Founders Concert by listening to downloaded music.  There are so few assessments that boys will do where Question 11 reads ‘write out what you can remember from your notes’.  Using, manipulating and applying concepts and ideas are what they are required to do, and the best study recognises that and mimics it. Effective study is not a memory game.

When we plan, we use our time better, and we get more out of it.  So often we think about a study plan to be setting aside blocks of time each week, distributing them between English, Maths, Commerce and Extension Macramé.  The most effective plans, however, are the ones done in the five minutes before we sit down, that focus on how we will spend that time.  Effective study is so infrequently about how much we do, more about what we do. 

While the Year 12 boys are lining up for their last big push towards the exams, we wish them well and hope they know that they have the support of their teachers and the school in their run to their last lasts.  I hope they feel at the end that, for one last time, they got the best out of themselves.  But, I hope that the same is true for all boys, that they can feel they showed everyone their best learning as they head through Term 4 towards the end of the year.

Mr Trent Driver
Head of Academic

In Term 4, Manton House has been transitioning to a new House charity: the Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown. The Asylum Seekers Centre supports people who have arrived in Australia and are unable to go back home because of the threat of persecution. While they are waiting to be granted a protection visa to stay here, people seeking asylum are given bridging visas that allow them limited rights.

The Asylum Seekers Centre offers much-needed services that would otherwise be difficult to access. This includes legal assistance, health care, hot lunches, groceries, employment assistance, English classes, recreational activities and some assistance to meet their financial and accommodation needs. The Centre is the first contact point for many people entering Australia seeking asylum, and supported 2,600 people from 79 countries in 2016, many of who escaped persecution, conflict and trauma.

This term, each Mentor Group in Manton House is collecting food and toiletries for the Asylum Seekers Centre Food Bank, with three boys delivering the food on Friday of their designated week. The boys are given a tour of the Centre and get to see the food bank in operation.

From 2018, the partnership with the Asylum Seekers Centre will enable other ‘hands on’ and student-led service learning opportunities for boys in Manton House, as well as developing their knowledge and understanding of asylum as a global issue.

Mark Case 
Head of Manton House

The Year 9 Engineering students have been challenged throughout the year to engineer a range of solutions to various problems. Mechanical Engineering was the focus area in Semester 2 and students were given the task of  engineering a swimming robot. Black and White caught up with two of the boys to hear their reflections on the project.

This year each student in Year 9 was able to choose their own electives. I was one of the fortunate students to choose Engineering, an interesting and entertaining elective where we develop solutions to various different tasks and challenges. Our latest project was to design a robot which would be able to swim a lap of a 10m swimming pool.

The introduction to robotics, cams and linkages and gear boxes in the course has been very enjoyable. Overall the entire process of researching, designing and creating the robot has been very exciting as we are able to use the school’s various pieces of software including the 3D printer, the laser cutter and the vacuum former. After we tested everyone’s robots it was interesting to see the different designs each person had created. Although not everyone’s robot succeeded, I feel that the entire class definitely enjoyed the project and their new insights into the world of engineering.

Krishen Thevarajah (9/ME)

Our final build project was to design, make and test a structure that could “swim” a distance of 10m. The robot had to make use of cams and linkages and have some method of propulsion. It also had to float. The main part of the project was to design and make cam systems that could propel a boat in water. In testing, most of the cams worked, but a lot of them weren’t aligned or the weight wasn’t distributed properly and so a lot didn’t go straight. We spent six weeks on the project and it was my favourite one so far.

Harry Boyd (9/MO)

Student leadership is the key to high standards.

I heard a Sydney headmaster once say “no school rises above its Year 12.” What he meant by this was the standards most senior years set for the school is the standard of the school.

I commend our outgoing Year 12 for their leadership, service and above all, a good example to the younger years of our College. The systems and programs at Newington allow all senior boys to lead in some form.

Last week we welcomed our new Year 12 cohort as the leaders of the school and tasked them with the privilege and challenge of leading by example in scholarship, pastoral care and co-curricular life.

Our new Senior Prefects and their team gathered to set out their goals for the year, then those Captains and Vice-Captains planned, with great enthusiasm, the next 12 months. They were all highly respectful of the previous two leadership teams, wishing to continue the themes of Gender Equality, Positive Mental Health and Service and Support for others.

After much debate (some of it quite heated), the slogan of ‘One for Many’ was decided as the catch cry for 2018.

Recognising individuality and embracing diversity for all individuals is supported by a team approach to serve the good causes of others and their needs; especially those less fortunate than ourselves. This theme and vision supports the ethos of Newington College superbly and engages the student population in many of the wellbeing strategies and goals planned for 2018.

Together, with other co-curricular captains and with all of Year 12, this team will attempt to demonstrate they are ‘One for Many’ in this community and beyond.

We wish them every success.

List of Senior Prefects, House Captains and  Vice Captains.

Senior Prefect Lachlan McIntyre (11/JN)
Deputy Senior Prefect Matthew Dyster (11/FL)
Deputy Senior Prefect Alexander Humphreys (11/JN)
Senior Boarding Prefect Richmond Sear (11/MA)
Deputy Senior Boarding Prefect  Anthony Kama (11/FL)
Deputy Senior Boarding Prefect Tua Mahe (11/FL)
Deputy Senior Boarding Prefect Long Duy Pham (11/MO)
Deputy Senior Boarding Prefect Finn Sleigh (11/PR)

Fletcher House
Captain Dale Schlaphoff (11)
Vice-Captain Thomas Barker (11)
Vice-Captain Nicholas Fitzsimmons (11)

Johnstone House
Captain Justin Raja (11)
Vice-Captain William Mellor (11)
Vice-Captain Michael van Walsum (11)

Kelynack House
Captain Nicholas Maclean (11)
Vice-Captain Angus Bell (11)
Vice-Captain Gus Burton (11)

Le Couteur House
Captain Liam Nikos (11)
Vice-Captain Angus Crump (11)
Vice-Captain Alec Machin (11)

Manton House
Captain James Roach (11)
Vice-Captain Daniel Baykitch (11)
Vice-Captain Andrew Harrison (11)

Metcalfe House
Captain Nolan Whitcomb (11)
Vice-Captain Kelvin Du (11)
Vice-Captain Nazim Rahman (11)

Moulton House
Captain Darcy McDonald (11)
Vice-Captain Anton Fichtenmaier (11)
Vice-Captain Riley Vaughan (11)

Prescott House
Captain Matteo Lannan (11)
Vice-Captain Hunter Karam (11)
Vice-Captain Andrew Liu (11)

Mr Bob Meakin
Deputy Head of Stanmore (Students)

In November, global thought leader, author and visiting academic at the University of Oxford SaÏd Business School Ms Rachel Botsman visited Newington for the final lecture in the Centre for Ethics series for 2017.

Ms Botsman is known globally for her visionary thinking on how the power of collaboration and trust enabled by digital technologies will change the way we live, work, bank and consume.

Drawing on her recent book, Who Can You Trust?, Ms Botsman explored the notion of a “trust shift” which she explained as “a new world order where technology is re-writing the rules of every relationship”.

Recently there has been a paradigm shift away from institutional trust. Recent surveys have shown  trust in major institutions such as media, businesses, NGOs, government and religion is at an all-time low. Ms Botsman explained the notion that trust lies at the top of organisations is collapsing for three main reasons: lack of accountability, an inversion of influence and echo chambers and misinformation.

Narratives that suggest trust is in crisis amplify the cycle of distrust and are therefore not helpful. Ms Botsman sais there was plenty of trust in the global community; it’s just flowing in a different direction.

“The reason why we are feeling so much pain, change and disruption is because this trust that used to flow upward is now flowing sideways,” she said.

Ms Botsman suggested we are currently experiencing the third largest trust shift in human history.

She explained trust has had two other previous chapters – local trust and institutional trust. Local trust existed a long time ago when people lived in small communities and people traded directly, relying on person-to-person reputation. When people started to move to cities and went through the industrial revolution the trust that used to flow between people started to flow through institutions.

The third type of trust that is now emerging is called distributed trust.

Ms Botsman said: “Distributed trust flows directly between individuals but it can flow in ways and on a scale we never knew possible before because it’s not confined by physical proximity.”

Ms Botsman unpacked how trust works in a “distributed age” and explored the ethical considerations of distributed trust. The “distributed age” is changing the way trust is built, how trust is managed and how trust is lost and repaired.  

Ms Botsman spoke about the idea of trust between strangers and gave the example of AirBnB. Airbnb is not a marketplace built on money, but rather a business built on trust. More than two million people every night use Airbnb and take a “trust leap”.

“A trust leap is really important for the way a society progresses. As human beings, we take a risk to do something new or different from the way we have done it before. Human beings are wired to take trust leaps,” she said.  

“Technology is enabling us to leap faster and higher than ever before.”

So how do you build trust? According to Ms Botsman, trust is a bridge between the known and unknown. People do not want entirely new things; they want the familiar done differently. Therefore, if you are trying to build trust, you need to reduce the unknown.

Ms Botsman also touched on the idea of trust in technologies and fake news. Currently, two-thirds of Americans get their news from Facebook. People are outsourcing their decisions about what to trust to an algorithm.

According to Ms Bostman, we need to play an active role in our interactions with technology. We need to ask technology companies to design features that enable us to press pause. People are letting convenience trump trust.

Over two nights in late November, our year 7 and 8 boys took to the stage for the Junior Production of Where in the World is Frank Sparrow? by Angela Betzien.

A uniquely modern legend, the play reinvents the hero’s journey for the 21st century. The audience was propelled through the dangerous streets of Stab City and into a dark underworld of change and transformation.

The quirky, yet gritty, style of the play weaves stark urban reality with the mythic underworld of the dead. Against this grim backdrop the young hero, Frank Sparrow (Gus Morsley 8/PR), must face dangers and trials, overcome weakness, find romance and face death.

Congratulations to all of the boys involved both on stage and in the crew for presenting some very entertaining nights at the theatre!

Ms Tamara Smith
Head of Drama

The wonderful results of our 2017 Higher School Certificate and International Baccalaureate Diploma Program students remind us that the IBDP has now been available alongside the HSC at Newington for ten years. I have been researching this, among many other stories, as part of a project to update the detailed history of the College, since the publication of Newington Across the Years: A History of Newington College 1863–1998, written by Rev Dr Peter Swain OAM RFD, in 1999.

The first cohort of twenty-one Year 11 students commenced their program of IB studies at the start of the 2008 school year. While in one sense this was the start of our ‘IB era’, it was also the culmination of long planning and preparation.

In 1999 Newington’s then Headmaster, Michael Smee, took sabbatical leave in which he visited areas of interest in the Middle East and Greece, as well as schools in Sweden, Britain and the United States. Among other things he saw the IBDP in operation and became convinced of its potential for Newington. The following year, he prepared a strategic directions paper for the College Council, one of the recommendations of which was to investigate introducing the IBDP. While the proposal was positively received, it did not proceed much further before he retired in 2003.

Michael Smee’s successor, David Scott, took up the idea early in 2005. His initial interest was in seeking accreditation for Newington as an International School, through the Council of International Schools, which several other leading schools in Australia had achieved. He was then approached by two parents about the IBDP, for which the professional development, management and governance requirements were similar to those for the International Schools process.

Following consideration of the proposal by the Council’s Education Committee and then the full Council, a detailed research project was undertaken. The issues, including the required investment, were significant and needed careful consideration, but the conclusions were positive. In 2006 interest was gauged through a student survey and feedback from parents, an initial list of subjects was devised and staff attended workshops across the Asia-Pacific region. Greg Bell, a long-serving Newington teacher, was appointed as the College’s first IB Coordinator. In addition to the practical preparations, he oversaw the processes of accreditation with the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) and of integration of courses with the curriculum requirements of the NSW Board of Studies (now the NSW Education Standards Authority).

March 2007 saw the College Council formally approve implementation of the IBDP as a strategic direction of the College, while IBO accreditation was achieved two months later, paving the way for the start of teaching in 2008. The image above shows Ben Adler, Deputy Senior Prefect and Newington’s first Dux of the IBDP, with the Headmaster, Dr David Mulford, at the 2009 Prize Giving.

David Roberts
College Archivist

Since February 2017, the Visual Arts IBDP students have worked in collaboration with Dr Ian Penn (ON 1970). The boys have formed a strong relationship with the artist who has assisted in their idea development and encouraged them to explore a range of creative media. Working alongside Dr Penn taught the students about passion, knowledge and generosity. During a two-day workshop in January, Zac Hamdan (12/FL), Ben Coultas-Roberts (12/JN), Joel Gardner (12/ME), Tyrell Villania-Small (12/MO) and Louis Woodland (12/ME) worked on their personal IBDP Exhibitions, talked with Dr Penn about their concepts and brainstormed the relational links to the historical and contemporary artists. It was an unforgettable learning experience and an exciting way to build a better understanding of Visual Arts in the IBO context.

Mrs Marina Hinves
Visual Arts Teacher

Newington College has launched a major relief effort for its brother school Tupou College, which suffered major infrastructure damage when Cyclone Gita hit Tonga last week.

A 20-foot shipping container will arrive at Newington this week, and the call has gone out to families and community to fill it by donating much-needed materials to help Tupou College rebuild.

Tupou College – like much of its community – only has power for a few hours each day from borrowed diesel generators, and suffered significant damage to classrooms and accommodation. Roofing, generators, batteries, hand torches, food and teaching resources are among items most urgently needed.

Two Newington teachers – Mary Nosworthy and Klarissa Stellmacher – on secondment to Tupou have moved out of their accommodation until repairs can be completed.

Newington College has a close and enduring relationship with Tonga. The late King George Taufa’ahau IV studied at the school’s Stanmore campus, and Newington currently has eight Tongan bursary students at its Cambridge Street boarding house.

Newington College headmaster Dr David Mulford said it was a relief to know colleagues, Old Boys and Tupou staff and students were safe and well.

“Tupou now faces an enormous challenge in rebuilding,” he said.

“It is a self-sufficient school that supplies food for more than 800 students from its working farm, but its crops have been destroyed by Cyclone Gita.

“The Newington community has supported Tupou with science equipment, books, IT gear and much more over the years, and will do whatever we can to help in such a devastating time.”

Newington has offered an annual Service Learning Tour to Tupou College for 30 boys each year since 2010, and boys threw their efforts into fundraising for Tupou last week, holding a barbecue that raised more than $6000 toward the cost of purchasing and shipping the container. Tongan students sang as part of the event.

For more information about the appeal, contact Mr Cameron Quince on cquince@newington.nsw.edu.au

The Newington College Drama Department held three spectacular performances of the musical Guys and Dolls on March 1, 2 and 3 in the Parade Theatre at the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Bravo to the talented cast and crew!

Here is a look at the production by the numbers:

• 2 sets of maracas
• 4 boys in the crew
• 5 dressing rooms
• 6 weeks of rehearsal
• 8 staff creatives
• 12 prop newspapers
• 14 girls in the cast
• 17 boys in the orchestra
• 18 radio microphones
• 20 song and dance numbers
• 43 fedora hats
• 94 boys in the cast
• 250 costumes
• 284 LED tube lights
• 1,435 audience members
• 18,176 controllable LED pixels

 Photos courtesy Christopher Hayles.

All of us know the spontaneous emotional boost that comes with being on the receiving end of a random act of kindness, finding an encouraging message from someone, being given a compliment by a colleague, family member or stranger, receiving unexpected thanks.  We feel buoyant and more inclined to ‘pay it forward’. Scientists identify this as the brain releasing oxytocin, occasionally referred to as the ‘love hormone’, which aids in lowering blood pressure, improving our overall heart-health, increasing self-esteem and optimism.

Interestingly, medical research takes us a step further when we look at the impact on the brain of the simple act of saying ‘thank you’. This effect is ‘upgraded’. Benefits for all of us can include a lasting lift in oxytocin and cortisol levels and a boost to two powerful neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin[1], naturally occurring chemicals in the brain which help your body move fluidly, your mind stay calm and focused on a task, and help you to resist depression and other mood disorders.[2] Furthermore, enhanced levels of dopamine may have a role in addiction and impulse control, attention, motivation and goal-directed behaviour – it acts to reinforce behaviours that make you feel good – whilst decreased serotonin is linked to drug abuse. And, a powerful fact is that the benefits cost nothing and are available to every individual with just a subtle shift in attitude and mindset. It is argued that a gratitude attitude can re-wire our brain for the better and enhance life satisfaction.

As understanding of these benefits deepens and spreads, the gratitude movement is growing as a global phenomenon. Governments, businesses and companies, educationalists, health professionals, sporting teams, service organisations to name a few, have progressively drawn upon research to transform productivity in the workplace, attract customers, and generally promote the wellbeing and achievements of individuals. Two thirds of governments around the world also support teaching character education of which practising gratitude is a key component.[3] Signficantly, as recently reported in The Australian[4], what we as parents need to avoid is not expecting our children to be grateful anymore, that we are “accustomed to getting no acknow­ledgment for, say, devoting [our] weekend to driving them from activit­y to activity”.

In the article, Breheny Wallace refers to the work of Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of the Making Caring Common initiative at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, who has highlighted in his research that “when parents organise their lives around their kids” a sense of entitle­ment – that belief in having a right to something, rather than it being a privilege to be earned – can leave our children feeling grateful for nothing. We now more clearly understand that the psychological and social costs of this can be considerable, and that our children need new skills to flourish in the 21st century.

The act of being thankful can be life-changing. Collective research has identified that experiencing high levels of gratitude in adolescence can contribute to a child thriving, increased school engagement, a corresponding improvement in academic achievement, more fulfilment and success in co-curricular programs, a more willing engagement in service endeavours, a growth in compassion and empathy, and less anxiety and depression. In communities developing gratitude and positive education initiatives, the benefits have included an increase in pro-social behaviours and a reduction in anti-social and aggressive conduct and self-harming.

Whilst daily life is never free from challenges, what helps builds resilience is the lens or filter through which we view these. Using the technique of mental contrasting – being optimistic about the benefits of a new habit while also being realistic about how difficult building the habit may be – leads us to exert more effort.[5] The documented benefits of regularly practising gratitude include improved sleep, a willingness to engage in more frequent exercise, stronger cardiovascular and immune systems and longevity. But to reap the benefits, it involves changing behaviour and possibly introducing new routines.

There is considerable information available on beneficial strategies and practices to adopt. Three common techniques include keeping a ‘gratitude journal’ and writing down the things we’re grateful for either daily or weekly; taking five to ten minutes at the end of each day to jot down ‘three good things’ that went well; saying ‘thank you’, which may range from a small gesture of appreciation through to a ‘gratitude letter’ to someone to whom you feel you’ve never properly expressed your gratitude, which may also deepen your relationship with them. A powerful example of this is the letter Year 12 parents write to their sons, opened in a private moment by each boy at the Year 12 Retreat.

Listing the benefits of a gratitude attitude, realistically we can expect improved physical health; improved psychological health and a reduction in a range of toxic emotions including envy and resentment, negativity bias, frustration and regret; deeper relationships, increased empathy and a decreased desire to seek revenge; better sleep patterns; increased self-esteem, an essential component to optimal performance in all areas of our lives; and greater resilience – even during the worst of times mentally strong people choose to exchange self-pity for gratitude[6], a critical cognitive process.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to reorganise synaptic connections – our state of mind – in response to learning. In other words, the repeated act of practising gratitude can ‘rewire’ our thinking, and not only in the short term. The art of thankfulness, a gratitude attitude, is not a cure-all. But the rewards are instantaneous, and can be life-changing.

Being grateful shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see, and empowers you to discover what’s possible.

Linda Munns-Conry
Acting Deputy Head of Stanmore (Students)

[1] Gottfried, Sarah MD, Thanksgiving: What Gratitude Does to Your Brain                  

[2] LIVESTRONG.COM, Dopamine vs. Seratonin

[3] World Government Summit, The State of Positive Education

[4] Jennifer Breheny Wallace, Gratitude, the life-changing attribute you can teach your kids          

[5] CARPENTER, Derryck MAPP, The Science Behind Gratitude (and how it can change your life)

[6] Morin, Amy, 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude

The Newington Swim Team completed the GPS season on Friday 23 March with a fantastic night of racing at SOPAC. The swimmers conjured up some amazing performances, which ultimately resulted in a GPS Senior Swimming Premiership and a GPS Open Relays Competition victory.  A huge effort was put in by every member of the team, whether they swam in one event or many. The black and white army turned out in force to cheer the boys on.

The magnitude of the senior team’s effort is evident in the results.  No Newington swimmer placed lower than 4^th in any race in the final night of competition.  Ten first-place finishes were achieved with seven of them shared between Jack Rudkins (12/MA) with four and Lachlan Sheehy (11/JN) with three.  Captain of the team Aiden Fisher (12/FL)also placed first in an individual event and the 17 Years relay team won both the Freestyle and Medley events.

Congratulations to all swimmers for their efforts and thank you to the boys who came to cheer them on on the night.

For ‘old hands’ at Newington, the site of our new Early Learning Centre is remembered as ‘Mary Andrews House’ or ‘Braeside’. These enigmatic names give just a hint of the site’s long institutional history, of which Newington’s ELC is the latest chapter. The ELC has been opened for business since the beginning of the school year and was formally opened last Tuesday,  

A small hospital, Braeside Private Hospital, operated on the site since at least 1915. From 1946 it operated as the Braeside Church of England Maternity Hospital. Later it became a geriatric nursing facility, under the name of the Braeside Hospital, and closed in 1992.

From 1997 the buildings functioned as an additional campus of Mary Andrews College, formerly the Anglican Church’s Deaconess House and re-named that year after its longest-serving principal. The rest of Mary Andrews College moved to the Stanmore site from Newtown in 2007 but, following Newington’s purchase of the site in 2009, moved on to a new home in 2010.

Newington’s negotiations with the Anglican Church over the site had begun in 2002. The College’s initial interest was to consolidate boarding, at that time split between Edmund Webb House and the secondary campus, in one location. With that issue settled in 2007 in favour of consolidating boarding in Edmund Webb House, the negotiations resumed the next year with a view to establishing a pre-school facility on the site.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

David Roberts
College Archivist