The Hedge
Week 8, Term 4 | Thursday 5 December 2024 A weekly snippet of what’s happening ‘behind the hedge’ at Mercedes College for our final week of 2025...

Leading the Way in 2025

A key focus at Mercedes College is leadership. Leadership of self and of others. We have a robust leadership framework that spans across the Junior, Middle and Senior Schools.

Whilst we believe you don’t need a badge to be a leader at Mercedes College, we have now completed our nomination and voting process for all Captains for 2025.

We look forward to working with our Captains, as well as our House, Arts, Sports, and Justice Leaders and all those who have a role to play in all we do at Mercedes.

We are delighted to announce our 2025 Captains:

College Captains Middle School Captains Junior School Captains
Annabelle Keane Alexander Roccisano Aria Callisto
Theodore Sweeney Milly Pfitzner Annie Pfitzner
James Nussio Mitchell Chan Alina Placanica
Annabel Hage Portia Cook (absent) Markos Wang

 

Congratulations to you all – we are confident that student leadership and agency will thrive in 2025.

Director of Co-Curricular Sport

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Brodie Atkinson as our new Director – Co-Curricular Sport in 2025.

Brodie brings a wealth of experience and a passion for sports that aligns perfectly with our vision of fostering a vibrant and inclusive sporting environment. His leadership will be instrumental in delivering a programme that promotes active lifestyles, diversity, inclusivity, and excellence in sport.

Whilst Brodie loves all sport, his background and experience is predominantly with football. He is a past Adelaide Crows and St Kilda player, Magarey Medal winner, SANFL player and coach, AFL Talent Scout, and has worked as a Secondary School Coach in a variety of sports for the past six years.

Brodie has a focus on mentoring young people to be the best they can be, both on and off the field. He has three children and has been involved in their sporting activities in both coaching and volunteering roles for many years.

We look forward to welcoming Brodie to the College in 2025.

A Glittering Celebration

Last Friday evening our Class of 2024 graduates completed their final rite of passage, sharing their 2024 Graduation Ball with friends and family. The Theatre space at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre looked like the Emerald City, bathed in green sparkling lights.

There were many highlights, but the two standouts had to be the ‘Year in Review’ video, which was filmed by Year 12 students. The clip covered all the highlights events, carnivals and burning questions from the cohort, and was a great trip down memory lane for students and families alike.

This was only topped by the mother/son and father/daughter dances, which saw every class on the dancefloor – and some of the moves had to be seen to be believed!

A wonderful night’s celebration of our Class of 2024; go well in your adventures ‘beyond the hedge’.

Guest Artist Workshops 2025

In 2024, senior Visual Arts students were given the opportunity to work alongside featured portraiture artist, Mel Brown, in a nine-week intensive course exploring tone, colour temperature, blending and edge work. The end results were stunning.

In the new year, students in Year 10 to Year 12 will have the chance to work with Adelaide artist Rebecca Hastings for a 14-week Workshop Series crossing Term 1 and Term 2.

Rebecca is a lecturer at Adelaide Central School of Art who works in oils to create surreal images, and regularly exhibits her work, recently completing her exhibition “Feed” at Flinders Street Gallery in Melbourne.

During this Workshop Series, students will create an ‘uncanny self portrait’, designing and taking their own photograph to work from, learning skills in colour mixing, tonal underpainting, and glazing a canvas.

This Curriculum Extension Activity (CEA) has limited numbers and will start in Week 5, Term 1, on Thursdays from 4pm to 6.30pm, with an introductory session on Wednesday 5 February. All materials will be provided as part of the CEA cost and students can nominate with other CEAs in January.

Deck the Halls…

If you have passed through the Reception area in Strathspey House recently, you may have seen the stunning ceramic decorations … all hand made by our Year 3 students.

There were trees, Santas, reindeers, hats and more… all bringing the colour, joy and, laughter of Christmas to our community.

Jenny had several requests to buy these stunning little pieces, they are simply gorgeous, but they are now making their way to the artists’ homes for the festive season.

Our students continue to delight and surprise us all with their magnificent art creations!

We are looking forward to seeing their work popping up around the Campus in 2025.

Today’s the Day…

Last week, our youngest Reception students took off to Carrick Hill for a Teddy Bears Picnic, with their favourite bears in tow.

Gathering on the beautiful lawns, students shared their lunch with their plush friends and listened to a story, before exploring the Storybook Trail, a short walk with features reflecting classic British tales reflecting the era of Carrick Hill’s original owners, Sir Edward and Lady Hayward.

This meant discovering elements of Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, The Secret Garden, Charlotte’s Web, and more!

Class RFS had a wonderful time imagining all of these colourful characters come to life.

New Community Portal

As you know, the College is transitioning to a new Community Portal from Catholic Education South Australia (CESA).

In the coming weeks, you will receive an email invitation to log onto this Community Portal.

This new Portal will be used by our College community to:

  1. View family transactions
  2. Access financial statements
  3. Update medical and contact details

The email invitation will come from noreply@civicacloud.com.au

Please keep an eye out for this email (and maybe check your junk folder). You will have seven days to register and log into the Portal.

Please note: this CESA Portal will only be used for Financial, Medical and Contact Details.

SEQTA will continue to be the platform for all communication with families and for student attendance.

Living our Mercy Keys

Earlier this week, our Senior School students and their families gathered in the Yitpi Centre to congratulate our Year 10 students on completing the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP).

At this event, we also recognised outstanding student academic achievements, and presented our 2024 Mercy Key awards to both Year 10 and Year 11 students.

The Mercy Key is one of the highest honours bestowed by Mercedes College.

Each recipient is presented with a gold key, which received a makeover as part of our 70th year. Keys feature the Fleur de Lis, the word MERCY, and the letter M for Mercedes.

Congratulations to our 2024 recipients:

Key of Compassion | Archie Burton (Year 10) and Jayden Bence (Year 11)
Key of Integrity | Alexis Mynott (Year 10) and Caton Siu (Year 11)
Key of Justice | Eamon Ford (Year 10) and Amitej Singh (Year 11)
Key of Loyalty | Lucy Pfitzner (Year 10) and Annabel Hage (Year 11)
Key of Mutual Respect | Claudia Patterson (Year 10) and Vidhi Parikh (Year 11)
Key of Responsibility | Hunter Wood (Year 10) and Danny Stewart-Kladianos (Year 11)

Two special awards were also presented on the evening.

Congratulations to Annabelle Phillips (Year 10) for receiving the ADF Long Tan Award for Outstanding Leadership, and Annabel Hage (Year 11) for receiving the IB Learner Profile Award, for best demonstrating the attributes of a true IB Learner.

Congratulations to you both and to all our Mercy Key winners and academic achievers!

Learning about Saints

Throughout Term 4, our Year 6 students have been researching the lives and canonisation of the Catholic Saints, each selecting one Saint to focus on.

For the culmination of their studies, students dressed as their chosen Saint and presented an exhibition of learning for our Year 1 and Year 2 students.

Well done to everyone on your creativity and presentation skills!

Orientation Day

Last Friday our students had a taste of 2025 with Orientation Day. There was lots of excitement (and a few nerves) as new students joined our continuing students to meet their teachers and other classmates ready for the new year.

Once everyone made their way to their class, all families were invited to our College Café for a coffee and chat.

We welcome all of our new families to Mercedes College and look forward to seeing you all next year.

A reminder – Day 1 of Term 1 is Wednesday 29 January.

If you need any new summer uniform items, please make an appointment at The College Shop so you have everything in time for the start of the new school year.

Year 10 Personal Projects and EIF Exhibition

After celebrating their completion of the IB Middle Years Programme, our Year 10 students showed off their 2024 Personal Projects and Exploring Identities and Futures (EIF) pieces in an exhibition in Gleeson Theatre.

Project topics were varied and numerous, with students able to choose a subject matter that was of specific interest to them. This resulted in everything from cooking, to the design and history of fashion, improvement of sporting prowess, and the improvement of mental health.

It was an impressive display of learning and commitment from each student, and families enjoyed seeing the outcomes of these detailed studies.

Last Day reminders

Tomorrow (Friday 6 December 2024) is the last day of the school year and students will be dismissed early at 12.30pm.

In the morning our Middle School students will attend their End of Year Presentation Assembly, where Awards and Mercy Keys will be presented. Following this, the whole College will celebrate with an Advent Mass.

We wish everyone a safe, joyous, and relaxing Christmas and holiday break.

Thank you for your support this year, and for being part of such a wonderful, warm and engaging community.