ASSOCIATION
ARTICLES NEWS
Editor's Letter (continued)
Group photograph – from left: Margaret Shepherd (President); Julie Rogers (Treasurer); Anjali Rao (Y.S. Coordinator); Angelina
Arora; Jihad Dib (Shadow Minister for Education); Deborah de Ridder (Vice-president); George Pinniger (Editor)
As Angelina was explaining the chemistry of the plastic she had
made from prawn-shell and maize flour, and the improvements
necessary to stabilise it and make it environmentally better,
we were awe-struck! Jihad urged her to stay in Australia so
her genius would stay here, and pleaded for her to become a
science teacher! We were pleased to meet Angelina’s justifiably proud parents,
who were naturally thrilled to hear Mr Dib’s high praise for their
daughter!
Furthermore, Australian students performed extremely well in the
International Science Olympiads in 2018 – the best results since
2009. Of these, the two gold medals were both from NSW, Hugo
McCahon-Boersma (Sydney Grammar School) in the Physics
Olympiad in Portugal and Rebecca Whittle (Abbotsleigh) in the
Earth Science Olympiad in Thailand. Two NSW students also
won silver medals in Earth Science, three won silver medals, plus
one Bronze medal in the Chemistry Olympiad in Slovakia and
the Czech Republic. A full list of the most successful Australian
students is included following this Editor’s Report. concerned they won’t work. One of my dearest aims is to be able
to supply lots of these ideas for sharing amongst our readers so
they’ll gain confidence, smile as they walk into a science class,
and help those pupils to discover that it can be fun as well as being
interesting. Then those who receive these pupils afterwards will
find most of them to be interested and keen, inevitably resulting
in classrooms that are easier to manage, and reduced levels of
stress for all. For SEN#2 there were only four articles that had not
been republished, apart from Reports at the beginning. This time
there are more, for which I sincerely thank the contributors, and
urge every other member who reads this appeal both to consider
an article for SEN#4 (submissions close on 12th October) and
to encourage your colleagues to consider doing the same. SEN
would be a journal by Science teachers for Science teachers and
their students.
As STANSW’S Editor, I do wish to encourage all STANSW
Members to consider writing material for SEN – it’s your
mouthpiece, and there are numerous thoughts, ideas,
experiences, projects and experiments that each of you has had
that others of your colleagues have not. We already know that
many teachers, including Primary teachers, are desperate for
ideas, and experiments they can do themselves without being
Best wishes for your students, particularly those facing the HSC
later this year.
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 3