For a number of years our school has considered updating and revamping our houses to make them more relevant to our school community and to facilitate a more even distribution of student numbers across the houses. With discussions taking place about the introduction of a house shirt and correcting the uneven numbers in houses, 2021 became the perfect opportunity to embark upon this journey.
The process to update the names of our Sport Houses was first initiated through discussions between our teachers and students as part of their learning about indigenous perspectives, which are embedded in all learning areas of the Australian Curriculum. Our Student Council took on this challenge and very quickly and unanimously voted to change the names to reflect our school's connection to our local area and celebrate the importance of Quandamooka Country to our school. To further highlight this connection, the students chose animals that are significant to our local area and researched the Jandai names for these animals. Jandai is the language spoken on Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) and Moorgumpin (Moreton Island). The list of suggested names were discussed at a Student Council meeting and voted upon. The final step in this process was to present the new House names at a meeting of the Minjerribah Moorgumpin Elders-in-Council to receive their blessing, which took place towards the end of last term.
Optional House Shirts
The change of House names has also been timed with the P&C's decision to offer a House Shirt as an optional addition to our uniform. Students will have the option of wearing this official 'house shirt' on sports carnival days such as the Swimming Carnival, Cross Country, Junior and Senior Athletics Carnivals and Under 8s Day. Of course, they can still wear a coloured t-shirt instead on these days if they wish.
In addition to carnival days, every Wednesday students will also have the option of wearing their usual school polo shirt/ blouse OR their official house shirt. They cannot wear a coloured t-shirt on Wednesdays. The official House Shirt is not compulsory.
Ordering the New House Shirt for 2022
Shortly the P&C will be sending home information about ordering the new House Shirts for 2022. We are hoping these shirts will be available for collection for the start the 2022 school year, however there is a possibility that they may not arrive in time for the first week, which is when the Senior Swimming Carnival is scheduled to take place. The shirts will however be available for all of our other carnivals scheduled throughout the year such as Cross Country and Athletics.
New House Allocations For Students
Finally, the last step of updating our Sport Houses is to redistribute all of our students into new houses to ensure numbers are even across year levels and across the school. We will be following a similar model to the high schools where students will be split into houses alphabetically according to their surnames. This will also ensure siblings will be placed in the same Sport House. All students will be notified shortly of their new Sport House. What an exciting year for 2022. History in the making! I wonder which Houses will take out our highly coveted House Swimming, Cross Country and Athletics Carnivals in 2022!?!