Our Careers program offers a professional service for Damascus students that meets the challenges of the changing world of work in which we live.

It focuses on:

• It focuses on incorporating careers education in to the curriculum
• Supporting appropriate student pathway selection into senior certificates such as the VCE, VCE-VM and Vocational Education and Training (VET).
• Enrichment activities and opportunities to learn from employers, including visiting speakers, career counselling and mentoring.
• Every student to learn through first-hand experience at work experience, work visits and work shadowing
• Ensuring every student understands the full range of opportunities available to them, both academic, vocational and in the workplace

More information on the Careers Program at Damascus can be found here

This team of staff support the academic and social needs of students by working on strategies that enable the student to meet the goals they set for themselves in conjunction with their families and educators.

The team works with:

• Students with disability, special and additional needs
• Literacy and numeracy interventions
• Gifted and talented students
• Strategic interventions

And will work on:

• Monitoring progress of students with additional needs, and identifying and coordinating support mechanisms required to meet the educational, pastoral, safety and health needs of each student
• Partnering with parents/guardians in developing the program to suit each student's needs
• Involving student and parents/guardians in the Personalised Learning Plan in Program Support Group and Review meetings

The College offers a range of programs to support each young person to achieve success and ensure engagement with their learning in line with the National Disability and Discrimination Act.

More information on our Diverse Learning Program can be found here

Year 8 students are immersed in STEM through Damascus’s ESTEEM program. ESTEEM is a hands on, project-based learning environment which encompasses the science, mathematics and digital technologies components of the curriculum. In each of the projects, students are challenged to transfer their learnings to create a designed solution to solve problems or challenges that have real world context. Through employing the design process, students work collaboratively to research, plan, create, test and evaluate their solution. This program runs over 15 periods in a 10 day cycle in Semester 1 and 18 periods in a 10 day cycle in Semester 2.

Units can include:

• Perfect Temperature
• Thunderstorm Asthma
• Robotics
• Net Zero
• Keeping Chemical Time
• Escher Tessellations

Check out previous ESTEEMERS in action on the below video.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an internationally recognised approach to teaching both a language and subject content at the same time, for example teaching Humanities content using French as the medium of instruction.

Students electing CLIL will study a language (French or Indonesian) and in addition they will apply that learning to their elected Humanities class in the foreign language.

This Hands on Learning Program (HoLP) focuses on learning by doing that caters to the different ways young people learn, helping to build confidence and capacity, leading to greater engagement and achievement in schools. It develops students social and emotional learning skills to succeed in life, these are:

• Collaboration
• Problem-solving
• Communication
• Resilience
• Empathy

Students are selected to be part of HoLP which prepares them for their senior years of schooling where students and teachers work collaboratively to negotiate, create and implement meaningful and practical projects that benefit the school and the community. Students build self-esteem, friendships and a sense of belonging and become more content at school.

A targeted approach to acquiring the key social and emotional learning skills to be a success in Senior School.

Consisting of:

• Academic Mentoring- 1:1 and Group mentoring with all students
• Study skills workshops lead by Elevate Education – maximising study period and work life balance and tailored study programs focusing on soft skills and growth mindset
• Career counselling workshops and follow ups throughout the year
• Wellbeing workshops (prevention and intervention) and presentations lead by key external facilitators in the areas of mental health, social responsibilities and nutrition.
• Tailored academic workshops in key subjects, to assist students in the lead up to exams
• VCE Support Group counselling, programs and interventions