Scholars’ Club promotes service The Scholars’ Club is a voluntary lunchtime enrichment club for students in Year 7, facilitated by High Potential and Gifted Education Coordinator Ms Anne-Marie Singh and select Year 9 and 10 students. In the current climate, service learning in co-curricular opportunities plays an integral part in the school environment, encouraging inter-disciplinary learning and aiding the development of critical thinking skills. The initiation of the Scholars’ Club has proved to be no exception to these observed developments. In fact, I believe I can speak on behalf of all Year 9 Scholars’ Club leaders when I say that the club has fostered an environment that has exceedingly promoted these skill developments, but even more so, endorsed academic appreciation and student equity among the club. Cradled in an open, thought-provoking environment, students are eager to participate and share their knowledge, coming together to interact and collaboratively improve. The service learning aspect of the Scholars’ Club encourages interactions between year groups, ultimately uniting the younger years of the school cohort and thus enriching the school experience. Year 7 Scholars’ Club members have enjoyed participating in the Bebras Australia Computational Thinking Challenge, Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee, GATEWay 8 (an inter-school academic challenge), da Vinci Decathlon, Metro Minds (a STEAM challenge), Paper Plane Challenge and Buildings Challenge, public speaking events, sudoku, chess sessions and trivia challenges. Oliver Manks Year 9 Images from top: Alexander and Lucas Ross testing their paper aeroplanes; Year 7 scholars involved in a lunchtime game. Eamon Jia (Year 9) ‘Being part of a university program is something that I never thought would happen – I didn’t even know that high school uni programs existed. Yet this is exactly where I am now, as a part of the University of Sydney’s Mathematical Problem Solving Correspondence Program. ‘Joined by like-minded and similarly talented peers from around New South Wales, I began a journey through a challenging program, covering applications of seemingly simple maths in complex problems, to travails into the deep rabbit hole of sophisticated maths. Aided by a mentor from Sydney University, I explored my way through this program, with my understanding of problem-solving maths becoming deeper every moment. In meetings at Sydney Uni, I listened to enormously interesting lectures, covering topics from cryptography and neural networking to the modelling of infectious disease. I cannot express how grateful I am to have received such an opportunity, truly expanding my knowledge and feeding an endless passion.’ Service| News Spring 2022 | Stanmore 7–12 | 25