Tieri State School – 2019 It’s a wrap.

Principal’s Address

I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that our celebration evening is taking place on tonight – the Western Kangalou people, and acknowledge their Elders past, present, and emerging, their traditions, language and culture. I would also like to acknowledge the Bidjara people, one of the custodians of the Carnarvon Range for they hold my dreaming and the stories of my Elders.

The imagery of dreamings and stories is powerful. It evokes the idea of continuity, of growth and development. It acknowledges the past, claims the present and looks to the future. As the students will tell you, I went to principal school last week. While I was there, I was prompted to think about how I would tell the story of Tieri State School. I had, in fact, given this some thought, whilst developing a new blurb for the website. After a few tweaks from the staff we identified the following inherent belief in our collective thinking:

Together as a community, we can

Inspire a love of learning, so students can

Excel and experience success, as they

Reach their full potential, and

Imagine any future they wish to be a reality.

In that brief story of Tieri SS, we hear 3 things that make a great school – community, students and staff.

We have a great community. A community that starts with our parents and our parent group, the P and C. Our school community supports us in our goals to ensure that every student is succeeding and our parents do that in many ways – attending meetings, walking kids to the pool, helping at tuckshop, helping in classrooms, going on camp – the list is endless. Because of you, our school is a great school. Thank you to our executive, Barb, Chiara, Bec and Nathan and their offsider in the tuckshop, Jo, for your work this year and for continuing to find ways to support our school in its care of our students as well as our strategic goals.

Alongside our school community is our town community and the relationships we have with you all whether that be our businesses in town, our support and allied health services, Glencore, the Central Highlands Regional Council or our elected representatives. Your generosity of time, donations, grants and goodwill strengthens the programs we can offer the students at Tieri SS. You help make us great. Thank you.

The other important community relationship for a great school, is the great school down the road. The relationship we share as a school with both Capella SS and Capella SHS is one that we respect and look forward to nurturing and strengthening as state school educators over the years to come.

We have a great staff who want to be here, teaching our kids, caring for them and helping them strive for success. And that’s all of our staff, from our class teachers to cleaners, to teacher aides to facilities officer to business manager to tech officer to support staff who visit from the region including our Assistant and Regional Directors, Angela Collins and Kim Fredericks. We have more than a village raising our students in education and I am more than proud to be able to offer them guidance and leadership in their work. At this time I also wish to acknowledge Morgan Straney and Tammy Beck for their skills and giftings that they have shared with us. Their footprints add to the dreaming of Tieri SS and for that we are truly grateful.

We have great students that have dreams they wish to achieve. We have great students that are welcoming, funny, polite and hard working. We have great students who want to learn. We have great students, great kids. Some of those students are leaving us this year. Some of them were quite small when they came to us – preppies full of wonder, starting their first year at big school; some were a bit bigger. Now, they are ready to take their next steps in learning. As a community we will farewell them this evening and present them with their graduation certificates. But first, let’s take a short walk down memory lane before we welcome them onto the stage. (Year 6 retrospective images from Prep to Year 6 were then played). Tieri SS families, friends students and invited guests, please stand and welcome our Year 6 Cohort to the stage.