The RC—hitting the ground running in 2022!

The Resource Centre has hit the ground running. Staff and students may have noticed that we’ve gone with a new ‘industrial chic’ look after flooding over the summer holidays. As soon as staff were back so too our shelves, furniture and books all brilliantly unharmed.

Without a doubt our busiest time of year the first few weeks consist of lending out mountains of textbooks, class texts and novels. It has been a particular delight to welcome our Year 7 students to the library. This is happening formally in Resource Centre orientations as well as at lunchtimes and breaks as we get to know our avid readers. Further we have been working with Year 9 on a new wide reading program that has allowed library staff to individually mentor students. These have been wonderful sessions of honesty, realistic goal setting and oh so many personal recommendations. Our Thursday recess reading café is back and we look forward to introducing a new Manga club to our junior students.

This year we have rolled out our new reading challenge Readopoly. This consists of students getting their very own board and filling it out whenever they read books of certain genres or complete challenges. The board has six coloured sections and at the completion of each section students go into the running to win one of four $50 Westfield Gift Card as well as other prizes. We have had such wonderful collaboration on this project. Staff from a range of departments have given us three book recommendations to share with our students. Mrs. Talbot went on to ask authors what three books they believe are a must read for all high school students. Amazing Australian authors such as Jack Heath, Jackie French, Cass Moriarty and Mark Smith (to name but a few) all lent a hand and impressively no one mentioned their own book. We have already had some entries and are excited to see how Readopoly goes as the year progresses.

Finally looking to the future, we are so excited to continue serving the school and creating a space of safety, joy and learning over 2022.