Lizzie, Head of Houses, needs your support!
Hi Everyone!
In case you don’t know, I’m Lizzie and before the Easter holidays, I was elected as your New Deputy Head Girl for Houses. My role is quite diverse, but generally involves promotion of the house system and ensuring that it is always running smoothly and is appropriately competitive. I regularly meet up with your Heads and Vices of Houses and help manage the work they do. I also host the annual house music festival and at end of the prefect year, I am the one in charge of announcing the winner of the house shield!
This time of the year is a particular busy time for me – with sports day coming up on Wednesday, there’s a lot of preparation to do! It’s looking like it will be a really exciting and fun day – like last year, each house has chosen a new representative song that will be played as each one parades out onto the field at the beginning of the Sports afternoon. Bronte has chosen ‘Blue by Eifal 65’. Curie has chosen ‘Shout by Dizzee Rascal’. Nightingale has got ‘Waving Flag by Knaan’, Pankhurst ‘Oh I Just Can’t Wait to be King’ and Teresa……… the Darth Vader theme tune!!
What’s new this year are the house coloured T shirts – and I’d encourage you all to buy one for yourselves (not only for Sports Day but for future competitions!)! Each one is a very reasonable £3 and can be purchased from the PE department. Thank you to everyone who bought one and wore it for Olympic Day a few Fridays back by the way – although I haven’t seen them yet, I hear the aerial photographs of the Olympic rings look fantastic!
Just to finish, I thought I’d tell you about some of our plans for the house system for next year. As you probably know, each house has their own charity to which any fundraised money is donated. In the Autumn term, your Heads and Vices and I are looking into organising a charity week of some sort where each house will take it in turn to raise as much money as possible for their charities on specific days of the week. I’m also working on negotiating with the boys’ school about organising a joint sports day, so that’s another thing to look forward to!
Well if you have any ideas for the house system or anything else house-related that you feel needs mentioning, then please don’t hesitate to contact me – my address is i04greli@challonershigh.com
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Sports Day, the weather and the last few weeks left of school!
Lizzie
x
Rosslyn, Head Girl for Public Relations needs help from the public.
Hello all!
At this time of year, as Deputy Head girl of PR I’m now beginning to think about next year’s school magazine and what we can do to make it even better than the previous year.
One thing I’d really like to do this year, is to include articles and contributions from all years in the school as sometimes it can seem like it’s only the sixth form that submit stuff. So in order to do this I’m going to allocate a year group to a member of my editorial team, they’ll then let you know who they are and you can then email them with any articles you’ve written, or poems, or pictures, or photos, or anything you think would be good to go into the next magazine.
In addition to this, I’d like to know how you think communication within the school should be improved, do you always feel you know what’s going on? Does the current way of spreading notices and news work or do you think you miss out on information you think you should know? I’m always up for new ideas and new perspectives and you can either grab me in the corridor or email me on i04mcros@challonershigh.com.
Thanks very much!
Gurkiran’s happy bunny post!
Hi, I’m Gurkiran, Deputy Head Girl for Student Welfare. My role involves the pastoral care of the students; in simpler terms making sure the school is filled with hundreds of happy (and potentially bouncing with joy) bunnies!
I just want to say feel free to come and talk to me about anything whatsoever. You can usually find me in the common room. Any concerns or ideas you have would be really useful in our aim to make school life even more enjoyable. I know we all want to feel the glee vibe at our school! But honestly this is YOUR school. So please come and talk to any member of the team and we’ll try our very best to make change happen. Alternatively you can email me at i04gregu@challonershigh.com.
At the moment a VLE page is being set up for the school counsellor so from September you will be able to book an appointment with her online instead of approaching the office staff. Abi the school counsellor is lovely so don’t be anxious in approaching her for advice.
I’m also planning to set up a mental health awareness campaign; hopefully having a whole week dedicated to the cause. I will need some help in coming up with some smashing ideas to raise awareness so look out for notices in your registers! If you are interested check out this website: http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/home.
Part of my role is making sure the form prefects, heads of year and befriender roles are running smoothly. This year we want form prefects and heads of year to have a more influential role in supporting you, so hopefully you will notice this. As 6th formers we’ve been through it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly so why waste our spectacular wisdom! In the head girl team one of our aims is for 6th formers to integrate more with the rest of the school and hopefully these changes will help achieve this. New befrienders will be chosen soon and I can’t wait to work with them into making their roles even better.
I’m sure you will be seeing me around school as I plan to come round to each form and ask you lots of questions about life at school. Anyway better stop before I ramble uncontrollably. Hope you are all enjoying summer term, work hard and play even harder! 🙂
thats it, thank you x
Emily’s First Official Post!
I’m coming up with ideas on how to improve the I.T in the school and putting my plans into action, but any ideas or grievances from students are always appreciated, just email me: i04noemi@challonershigh.com
Jess’s Blog, Deputy Head Girl for PR
It’s the final week of this snowy half term, and it’s getting closer to my personal deadline for producing and publishing the annual school magazine. My team of Year 13 editors and I have been collating articles and photos for the last term and a half and after our break away we will be working with a local printer to organise how the 52-page-long magazine, which covers everything we’ve done at DCHS from April 2009 to March this year, will look.
As the majority of those who submit articles are from the sixth form, it would be great if we could have more involvement from the lower school. So, if you feel you can help – let me know! i03wajes@challonershigh.com Cheers.
Anna’s Blog – Head Girl
It seems fairly shocking, but within two weeks, the new Year 12 Prefects will have been chosen and they’ll be starting their ‘shadowing’ of us after half term. Those of us who are currently Prefects will be sad to go – although we do still have 8 weeks left that we’re determined to make the most of.
The new Prefect structure will look slightly different to the old one. For a start, it’s going to be far bigger. Now, directly below the 10-strong Head Girl Team will be 50 or so Senior Prefects who have roles ranging from Head of House or Head of Year to Form Prefect or a specialist Prefect in a particular subject like Music. Making up the third tier are the Prefects, who belong to a particular Team led by a Senior Prefect: examples may be the Student Voice Team or the Charity Team. As with any new system it may take time to adjust, but it looks like it will work really well because this way, everyone who wants to get involved in giving something to the school in year 12/13 can do so – hopefully, lots more will get done! Many hands make light work…
Something new and useful that we’ve done just recently are the maintenance forms, coming soon to a classroom near you! Basically, the usual process for students to report problems like jammed toilet doors, broken radiators etc. may have been slightly haphazard – you had to report it to your Form Teacher, or take it to School Forum – and you may have felt like it got lost. Now, all you need to do is take a form, fill it in, and drop it straight off at the Finance Office. Much easier for you; much easier for the school to know what needs fixing… and as a result, hopefully things will get fixed more quickly.
Another exciting development is the ‘What’s On Board’. School Forum have used some of their £1000 annual Budget to fund a big outdoor notice board which will be a central spot to find out everything that’s going on in the week. With a space for every day, clubs, cake sales, activities and all sorts will be put up there so you can at a glance see what’s important this week. Should be arriving soon, so keep your eye out for it around school.
Lastly, I expect everyone knows by now about the Citizen of the Term award… Set up last term, to recognise people who are good citizens (either by being consistently generous and kind, or by having done a particularly outstanding act of kindness), the award was presented in assemblies over the last two weeks. There was a wonderful response to the call to find good people, with 60 people nominated (staff and students). The shortlist of 5 was given – anonymously – to School Forum in December, who voted for the winner. The shortlisted people were Elizabeth Godfrey-Gush, Miranda LeGood, Harriet Grantham, Mr Maynard and Emily North, with the final award going to Emily for her volunteering with Sine Nomine (a volunteer group in school), Amnesty Interntaional, Bell Lane Primary School, teaching PSHE lessons and generally being a very helpful, generous and kind person!
Nominations for this term’s Citizen of the Term will get under way soon – the deadline will be 5th March. Nominate by emailing i03stann@challonershigh.com or by putting a form in the envelope on the Citizen of the Term board.
Megan’s Blog (Form Prefect for Year 7C)
Hello, I’m Megan 7C’s form prefect. It’s been really fun getting to know the girls. At the beginning they were very quiet and completely silent whenever a teacher was talking, but now they have come out of their shells a bit!
My role as form prefect includes taking the register every Wednesday, collecting in fund raising money, and helping out at Year 7 and 8 discos.
My highlight of being a form prefect was going with them on the bonding trip to Marchant’s Hill. It was an action packed weekend, and I was very proud of myself for managing to go on the giant swing!
Finally I would just like to wish my form the best of luck with their assembly- a musical performance about Marie Curie.
Student Interview Panel
In the recent interviews for the new Head of Humanities a student panel questioned all the candidates. Asking a number of serious questions about careers, options, extra-curricular and other issues which are important to the students, we put all candidates on the spot. We hope the interview panel will set a precedent for increased student involvement in choosing teachers, especially important appointments.
Any further questions about the process, please contact me Iona – I am on the challoners network.
Thanks!
Jenni’s Blog (Deputy Head Girl for UCAS and Careers)
Hi, I’m Jenni. I am Deputy Head girl in charge of UCAS and Careers. As the Oxbridge application deadline (15th October) loomed, it was all hands on deck for students and staff to write and perfect that magical personal statement and reference. The final date for all applications to be in by is January 15th so it is definitely a work in progress getting all the applications off at the moment. Recently, it has been a beautiful sight to see so many Yr 13s in the Careers library, researching their top choice universities and courses. Day by day, offers are trickling in, a very exciting time.
We have also had a couple of Careers speakers this term. Firstly I organised a Q&A session from prospective and current Oxbridge students who were all ex-Challoner’s about the entire application process. From DCHS, we were lucky to have back Harmeet, now reading Economics, and Kate, now reading History, from Oxford. Representing DCGS we had James, a second-year Art History student and Oliver, now reading Natural Sciences, both at Cambridge. This was a really good chance to learn about the ins and outs of applying to Oxbridge, the highs and lows of life at an Oxbridge university, and that no matter what happens people ultimately end up at the right place for them.
My role on the Head Girl Team, however, does transcend UCAS and Careers. We always are coming up with new initiatives that we all help to put into practice. Recently I took a school forum on discrimination in school, ready to start a project called ‘SoCoPro’, tackling discrimination in school where it is present. A survey will eventually be formed to discover if and where this problem occurs.
We are always up to something on the Head Girl Team, if you want to let us know about anything we could change then just find one of us and we’ll listen.
Citizen of the Term
At the start of the year, Anna , your very own Head Girl, decided to set about launching a project that would celebrate the amazing achievements of the girls at DCHS outside of the school arena. Not only are all our students incredibly gifted intellectually (it’s true!), more importantly, in a sense, you are also all hugely compassionate and kind people.
The project was inspired by a then Year 12 student who, putting into practice the first aid skills she had learnt in complementary studies at school, noticed a seriously injured man on the side of the road whilst driving and -demonstrating courage beyond her years – saved his life. Her amazing actions remained hidden from the school for quite a period of time, and it was this that led the Head Girl team to the idea that there should be a system in place to celebrate these sorts of achievements.
So, Citizen of the Term is a new award we’re launching to recognise people in the school who do, or have done, kind things for other people. Anyone (staff or student) can nominate anyone else (staff or student) within the school for the award. We understand that not everyone is going out performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – it could be anything: the person who stood up for someone else when she was being teased, or the person who helps out at a youth club after school every week, or the person who organised a charity event, or the person who always takes work for people who are ill and calls them up to see if they’re better. It could be anything.
Nominations are now open both on email or by putting a form in the envelope on the Prefect Board (bottom floor of the Tower Block, by the pegs).
To nominate someone by email for Citizen of the Term, all you need to do is email Anna (using io3staan on the school email system) with the name of the person you are nominating, their form (if they are a student), and the reason why you are nominating them.
Nominations will close on the 30th of November. The winner will be chosen by the School Forum, who will be able to see the reasons for nomination but not the names of the people being nominated (to avoid any bias!).
Please give Citizen of the Term some thought and we look forward to unveiling the winner nearer to Christmas.
Thank you!
Dr Challoner's Prefect Blog 