Maitland Area School

The two Year 6/7 classes visited Point Pearce on Thursday September 13 as part of their Aboriginal Cultural Studies. Along with teachers Martin Salmon and Pat Hasting and elder Eddie O'Loughlin, the students visited sacred sites and learned about life for the traditional custodians of the area.

Wednesday

On the 16th of May “The Screaming Eagles” went to Adelaide for the Aboriginal Power Cup. The team is a combined team and has students from four different schools that meet up at Maitland Area School every Tuesday. The team consist of Kirsty Weetra, Kiara Miller, Kiyanne Sansbury, Lynette Wilson, April Wilson and Nicole Walker from Maitland. Willis Daveson, Teekah Chantrill, Tianna Sansbury and myself (Kayla Masters) from Moonta. Stacey Pratt and Sam Power from Ardrossan and Mikey Aplin from Kadina. 

We held our Reconciliation Week Assembly on Friday, June 1st. With stories, puppets, slide-shows and a thought-provoking guest speaker, it was a wonderful way to acknowledge this important event.

During this term, Mrs. McCauley’s class studied the Dreaming story, Winda the Owl and explored what has happened to the Aboriginal people since white settlement. The class enjoyed making a book about Winda and murals depicting changes to the environment.

The MAS Staff visited Point Pearce for a cultural tour, led by Narungga Elder Uncle Eddie O'Loughlin. Thank you to George Walker and the Point Pearce Aboriginal Council for their support. 

Click any of the thumbnail photos for larger versions. 

The students and staff were very nervous about the lead up to the Aboriginal Power Cup Carnival as none of us had participated in it before. The carnival consisted of football matches, a formal dinner and career expos.
Our students found the Career Expo quiet useful as they learnt about a few different careers of interest and gave some students a bit of a clear idea of what they would like to do when they leave school.
The Formal dinner was exciting with four awards being presented on the night Our SAASTA group took out two of the awards for Best Team Song and Best Guernsey which Joel Lawrie designed. The students were thrilled to have won the awards. 

The Reconciliation Week assembly guests included Peter Stockings (Regional Development Board), Tim Schwartz (MAS Governing Council)) and George Walker (Point Pearce Council).

Peter spoke to the assembly about what reconciliation means to him and students showed work they had produced within a theme of reconciliation. The highlight of the assembly was the walking in by students of a multi-coloured chain symbolising the linking of races and cultures. Reconciliation week certificates were also presented.

On Thursday 19th of May we had a visit from Paul Vandenburg, Wade Thompson, Byron Picket and Amy Rogerson, who work for the Port Adelaide Football Club.

They came to Maitland Area School and talked about careers, team goals, personal goals, team building and also ran through some football drills with the students, which they found useful.

We were also lucky enough to have the Para West Adult Campus SAASTA students visit us. They are the team that Maitland SAASTA students will be joining with for the Power Cup Carnival. This gave our students the opportunity to meet their new team mates.

On the training side of things the teams are starting to take shape as they are improving on their ball skills, fitness and working more as a team.