By Parker McKenzie
The Patch Primary School celebrated its 40th anniversary on Thursday 6 October, with students participating in shared learning through displays and performances throughout and in the leadup to the big day.
The school celebrated with a homage to all things 80s and The Patch, after students spent class time during the year exploring both the school’s history and the local Indigenous culture pre-settlement.
Assistant Principal Michelle Rayner said the celebration was on a day close to the original opening in 1982.
“It was really rich learning because there are lots of aspects of the school’s history that they weren’t aware of, we looked at old footage of things that the school had done and the way the land has changed over that time,” she said.
“The three classes of preps created a model of the school grounds with every aspect from wetlands and gardens to the oval in there, with every building with its Indigenous name.”
Ms Rayner said the celebration raised around $10,000 for the school, which was an “extraordinary result.”
“From 9am, we had an Acknowledgement of Country delivered by a proud Gunai/Kurnai woman Emmy Webbers, who’s a parent to that school and she did that with a group of kinder children,” Ms Rayner said.
“Then we had a performance by all our grade three kids that captured all aspects of different performances over the years we’ve done.”
After the performance, students spent the rest of the school day visiting each other’s classes, to see the work they’d each done throughout the term on the school’s history. Children’s music performer Cath Russell also played for the school.
Ms Rayner said parts of the celebration were themed around the 1980s, while students also independently put up enterprise stalls to raise funds for the school.
“At the end of the day at 4pm, we resumed our celebrations with all our community on the basketball court, where we had a concert for two hours,” she said.
“We finished off with 80s aerobics for everyone on the court, dressed in 80s gear.”
Parents joined the students at a barbeque, closing the celebration of an important part of The Patch’s local community.
Ms Rayner said the school was grateful to be able to celebrate the milestone after a difficult few years.
“It’s just nice to take stock and reflect on the last 40 years and then start thinking about what the next move might be,” she said.
It’s just a timely kind of reminder of the way things transition and change and constantly improve.”
