This newsletter provides me with my last opportunity to speak about our current Year 12s, the Class of 2020 while they are still students at TIGS. Next week this cohort will graduate and to ensure that we can suitably recognise this significant milestone the staff at TIGS have gone to quite extraordinary lengths for our Year 12 students – this is exactly as it should be!

All around the world individuals are impacted by the experience of living in a global pandemic. It is easy to say that we are not the only ones who are having to make adjustments and missing out on important events, milestones and experiences. Yet at the same time, it is true that we are indeed missing so much of what is normal, appreciated, important and valuable. This is an inescapable fact.

As a school, we have been particularly focussed on Year 12 since March. We have been intent on ensuring that their learning continued with minimal interruption during hybrid and online learning. We have paid particular attention to their wellbeing and Mrs Lowe, Mrs Burton, Mr Rodgers, Mrs Ions, Ms Crombie, Mrs Golding, Mr Keating, Mr Davis, Mrs Baird and Mrs Horley as the Deans and Mentor Teachers have worked particularly hard ensuring that the students they have cared for since Year 7 feel connected, supported and able to keep responding to the challenges of 2020.

Our teaching, property and support staff have planned, reviewed and re-planned the final events for Year 12 as advice from NSW health and the State Government has changed. Always with the view to ensuring that our Year 12 students have an opportunity to celebrate a most demanding year and the end of their formal schooling. Next week we will have a COVID safe Great Race, so that tradition will continue. We will have a hybrid style graduation ceremony for Year 12 which will be streamed online for parents and family to watch and celebrate. After the HSC and DP examinations have concluded, we are determined to have a COVID safe formal for our Year 12 students adhering to whatever guidelines are in place at that time.

Through all of this, our students have displayed the characteristics of a TIGS graduate. They have been determined and have raised matters of concern to them in appropriate and proactive ways. They have been resilient and dealt with multiple disappointments and kept ongoing. They have been supportive of each other. They have demonstrated gratitude for the effort of their teachers, their parents, each other and their school. They have continued to serve and have considered the needs of their fellow students and worked hard in SRC and as leaders at TIGS. They have worked hard chasing their goals and over the last week or so we have been delighted to hear of our students receiving early entry to courses of study at their preferred university. They are also focussed right up to the end, working and studying hard and determined to do their very best in the coming examinations.

When our Class of 2020 graduate next week, I will delight in telling them how spectacular they have been and how proud I am of each one of them. Right now however, I want to tell the rest of our school community of this fact. Teachers, parents and students from Kindergarten to Year 11, you too can delight in and be thankful for the Class of 2020. They have led the way for every other student at our school. They have displayed exactly our values in action and the benefits of a TIGS education for younger students to admire and emulate. They have done themselves and us proud.

When you see a Year 12 student on campus or in the community next week (you will be able to identify them by their unique Year 12 bomber jacket) take the opportunity to tell them what a great job they have done and to wish them success in their upcoming exams. They deserve our acknowledgement and praise.

This is the last newsletter for Term III. I do hope that our community finds the opportunity to rest and refresh safely and I look forward to a busy Term IV at TIGS.