Albany Senior High School Turns 10!

This term, Albany Senior High School celebrated turning 10 years old. Over 200 people attended the anniversary event held at the school.

Principal Claire Amos was joined by Foundation Principal Barbara Cavanagh, Foundation Board Chair Simon Russell and one of our Foundation Head Students Isabel Russell, along with many past and present pupils and their families, for a night of re-connecting, catching up and reminiscing about the journey ASHS has been on. It was also an opportunity to reflect on where we might go in the future! This year has marked a renewed curriculum and the establishment of a dedicated high tech Makerspace. It has also seen ASHS quick off ConnectED which is dedicated to connecting students with local business, industry and community groups.

ASHS joins the NetSafe Youth Squad

NetSafe is a New Zealand run not for profit organisation which helps provide support for those who feel unsafe on the internet and on social media platforms. There was a group of nine students invited to the conference with seven girls, one guy and myself.

The conference had speakers from USA, Australia and represents from three major social media platforms Facebook Youtube and Twitter who came in to talk about their policies and how they deal with social media bullying and other abuse taking place on their platforms. This was a great insight into how social media deals with their problems.

What I personally took away from this experience is how much help we have surrounding social media but how unaware our country is of how to educate youth on how to navigate these applications safely. I believe something that may help in the future is courses in school that teach kids how to use social media, similar to how most mainstream schools do sexual education classes. This would definitely help because I believe educating would be cheaper than the cost of helping those abused on social media to recover.

This was a great event hosted By NetSafe and e-safety. The next conference will be held in Sydney Australia and I cannot wait to attend in September 2019.  

- By Dominic Taylor, Year 13 student and NetSafe Squad Member


Issue 97 April 2019