By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
IT’S no easy thing keeping staff and students’ spirits high as their 44-year-old school dies.
But Barbara Mothersdale, principal of Endeavour Hills Secondary College, is determined the school’s final term will go off with a bang.
Ahead are climactic social events, such as a feast and a cocktail party for past and present staff, parents and students.
The anticipated highlight is the school’s last concert ‘The Final Encore’. It will be staged from this Thursday to Saturday by a singing, dancing cast of old and new teachers and students.
It promises to be a blockbuster. But as an ex-drama teacher, Ms Mothersdale knows it will be a “heart-wrenching” send-off.
Low enrolments led to closure of what was the smallest and oldest secondary colleges in the region. Yet Ms Mothersdale is far from begrudging of Doveton College, which opened this year and sealed her school’s fate.
“Every child should have the chance to go to a well-resourced school. I think it’s exciting for the students and the community to have such a wonderful facility.”
To make the school’s final year as memorable as possible, Ms Mothersdale has put money aside to indulge teachers in pet projects, such as a vegetable garden and entering a human-powered vehicle challenge.
Also for the first time, six year 9 students were funded to join 39 students around the state at a camp at Snowy River for eight weeks.
“It was a big thing for them to leave their families for eight weeks. They have just looked as though they’ve grown physically and spiritually.”
Those six students have plans for a memorial garden or sculpture near the school’s indoor sport stadium. They’ve dubbed the project ‘Endeavour for ever’.
The school has an odd, vacant serenity as Ms Mothersdale tries to keep it running “business as usual”. The year has been one big countdown: the school’s last first-term, the last second and third terms, the last school production.
A number of its 137 students and teachers left mid-year for new schools. It’s the staff that Ms Mothersdale most worries about — not all of them are guaranteed a job in the state school system next year and many are not keen to move on.
And for Ms Mothersdale herself, the future is unknown. “I don’t know if I could leave a job so consuming and go into retirement. I’d go stir crazy. I love working with people. I’m sure something will come up.”
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