Last week we met at the Mercure Hotel with our guest speaker - Peter Riordan - Principal of Simmons College. Peter gave a really insightful discussion about his life as a teacher and then a Vice Principal and now Principal of Simmons College. Most of us were actually surprised at how successful has made the school given the difficult background a lot of the students come from. He explained that there are over 40 nationalities and that the students are sourced from about 45 different Primary Schools. Yet despite all that, it appears that their results are close to the best of the other Catholic Schools and right up with a lot of the select entry schools in the state. Nearly a quarter of their VCE students got a score of 90 or more and nearly all their students end up at University. Mainly RMIT. It is clearly a reflection of him and the emphasis he puts on teacher selection. He knows the name of every one of the 300 students in the school and I think their parents as well.
He certainly made clear that whatever form we finally put the John Hanley Scholarship at this school this year and ongoing that it will definitely be very well received.
Last week I mentioned about getting an offer of e free quarter-page ad for the club in the 1st edition of a brand new monthly local newspaper publication well I went into Ferguson Plarre today for lunch and there was a stack of papers there so I took it. one.
As you can see it does promote International Women's Day and while I would love the ad to have an effect I am certainly not expecting it and so I hope at least our own members can do their best to support the night on Wednesday 10th Mar 2021 by bringing their partner or another family member or anyone else at all so we can at least get some reasonable numbers. We had our AG Kate Strain at our meeting last week and she has said she will be attending on the 10th as well which is very good of her as I understand she will have attended a breakfast meeting and a lunch meeting both for International Women's Day earlier that same day. I know Ida is trying to push the event to some of the other young doctors so hopefully, she has some success with that.
I had to be at Patrick's badges this week for another reason and so I have picked up Ida's badge so next time we meet up she will be able to wear it.
I got quite a lot of notes to Henry Drury to prepare an article about our club in Networker and he has done a good job putting together an article about our club which I expect will get published shortly.
I was contacted by Don McQueen during the week with the contact details for organizing a Peace Pole at Haileybury College and he rang me today to say he will organize a meeting next week.
Our meeting tomorrow, 25th February 2021 is on Zoom at 7.30 pm and the plan is for us to catch up with our President-Elect, Sainab Sheikh over in Nairobi, Kenya so we can hear about what has been going on in her life over there. hopefully, the technology will not fail us.
The zoom details are:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81416591461?pwd=OGN4Ymd3L0VUK2oxUGpKVVppUHNWZz09
Meeting ID: 814 1659 1461
Passcode: 225467
Have a Great Rotary Week!
