End of Year Blog 2023: Graduation and Formal Edition

What’s going on at LTC?

Welcome to our final blog of the year!

YWCA Canberra Clubhouse With Friends

Transport over the school holidays

Get planning for 2024 with upcoming student-free days

Become a Homestay Host

Online Safety during School holidays

Give a tree a drink

Telephone Parenting Counselling

Formal Photo Gallery 👔👗📸

Graduation Photo Gallery 🎓📸

Blog information

Welcome to our final blog of the year!

Last week, we hosted the Year 12 formal and graduation ceremonies.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to our devoted staff and incredible students for their hard work and achievements throughout the year.

Wishing everyone a relaxing holiday season.

See you in 2024!

YWCA Canberra Clubhouse With Friends

YWCA Canberra Clubhouse will be expanding their program to include a new program running Thursdays from 3pm to 6pm in Term 1. This program is run in partnership with The With Friends Initiative (TWFI) and is designed specifically for neuro-divergent young people primarily between the ages of 12 to 25 seeking social connection.

The way Clubhouse operates is that until 5pm participants are involved in structured STEAMM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics and Music) related activities and from 5-6pm they will have free time to explore the various resources our youth centre has, from VR headsets, a music/recording studio with a variety of instruments, photoshop, videography, 3-D printing, coding, T-shirt printing, jewellery making, badge making etc.

The first four weeks, the structured activities planned are designed to give participants the opportunity to explore what the club house has on offer and from week five onwards participants will be encouraged to develop a passion project which they will work on over the following few weeks and present back to the group at the end of the term.

There will be YWCA Youth workers on hand as well as mentors from the With Friends Initiative each session and the group size will be restricted (maximum of 10).

To find out more or to register interest contact YWCA at youth@ywca-canberra.org.au or fill out their form: https://forms.office.com/r/EQEEmmGy7G

Transport over the school holidays

A school holiday bus timetable will be in place from Monday, 18 December 2023 to Sunday, 28 January 2024 inclusive. The school holiday bus timetable will deliver the same reliable network and frequency that is currently in place just without the school services and diversions over the six-week period.

Free travel will be available on Christmas Day and from 5:00 pm New Year’s Eve for bus and light rail services.

Visit www.transport.act.gov.au to plan your school holiday travel.

Get planning for 2024 with upcoming student-free days

From 2024, there will be 4 student-free days for ACT public schools. These are the first day of each
school term:

Term 1, Monday 29 January 2024
Term 2, Monday 29 April 2024
Term 3, Monday 22 July 2024
Term 4, Monday 14 October 2024.

We use student-free days for staff development, enabling us to plan in a student-free environment.
Student-free planning days have been expanded from 1 to 4 days from 2024 as part of our new
Teaching Staff Enterprise Agreement which prioritises better teacher workloads for educational
leadership, teaching and learning.

For all school term dates, visit the Term Dates page: https://www.education.act.gov.au/publicschool-life/term_dates_and_public_holidays

Become a Homestay Host

Are you interested in broadening your family’s cultural experiences and forming lifelong friendships?

The ACT Education Directorate is seeking Homestay hosts for international students planning to study at an ACT public high school or college.

By becoming a Homestay host, you’ll not only provide a room and meals, but you’ll also welcome a young person into your family and support their growth as they gain new perspectives, confidence, English fluency, and academic and essential life skills.

International students participating in the Homestay program are aged 16 years or above. If you have the time to support a student’s social wellbeing and academic endeavours, and have an interest in other cultures, we would love to hear from you.

A weekly payment will be provided to help cover the costs of living expenses.

Find out more at bit.ly/HomestayCanberra or email ieu@act.gov.au, or call 02 6205 9194.

Online Safety during School holidays

The eSafety Commissioner (eSafety.gov.au) has lots of great advice and resources for parents and carers to help keep young people safe online.

With the holidays just around the corner, your children might be spending more time online for entertainment and to connect with their friends. As a parent or carer, you can help them have safe and positive experiences online. Have a conversation with your child today about how to stay safe online and to deal with online safety issues like cyberbullying, inappropriate content or unwanted contact

Give a tree a drink

Have you noticed your neighbourhood street trees recently? Are they thirsty? This summer is going to be hot and dry. We encourage all school students to help protect our urban forest and make our city a great place to live by regularly watering their street trees. Water saving tip: take a bucket in the shower with you, and use the excess, to water the base of a street tree at least once a week. Canberra’s incredible trees provides much needed shade, clean our air and provides habitats for local wildlife. Help us protect trees so they can protect us.

The ACT Government has almost 60,000 young trees on the current watering program. While young street trees are watered by the ACT Government regularly to ensure their establishment and survival, the community can help by giving their local trees a drink over summer. For more information about caring for our public trees, read City Services Trees and Nature.