Old Scholars School Tour
At the start of 2020, we planned to celebrate Seacliff Primary School’s 60th anniversary in a big way but then something (COVID-19) happened! At the time, Marilyn Bowden (Class of 1960) contacted the school to ask if her group could visit the school and have a look around their old classrooms and play areas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible last year, but Marilyn kept in touch with the school and we settled on a date for an ‘Old Scholars School Tour’.
On Friday 21 May, we had a group of 20 Old Scholars come back to the school to ‘take a trip down memory lane’. When they arrived, they were met by some of our middle primary and junior primary students and taken to reception to do a COVID check in. They then went to the library to enjoy some morning tea and looked at some old school photos and class records from our archives. After that, the older scholars split up into groups of 5, with 2 senior student hosts to take them for a tour around the school. Each of the 4 tour groups started off in a different part of the school.
We (Evie and Jordan) joined one of the groups to get a record of this event for our website. First, we went to the upper primary Japanese room to see some manga drawing that the students did during class. After that we went to Room 2 to see a short presentation and answer some question about what it was like to go to school 60 years ago. Some of the questions were; ‘What was your favorite toy when you were young?’ and ‘What games did you play at recess and lunch?’ The most common answers were, “My favorite toy was my doll and we used to play hopscotch, skipping and chasy.” We went to a few more classes after that to see a small presentation or act. To finish off the day we saw a wonderful performance by Room 16 to the song ‘Fireflies’.
Fun fact: Did you know back when Seacliff primary school first opened students didn’t have to wear a school uniform?!
Now, let’s see what it was like to be amongst the first students in Seacliff Primary School.
How many people were in your class?
There were over 40 people to my class.
Did you bring your own food or did you have a school canteen?
We bought our lunch from home every day except Monday because we didn’t have any fresh bread.
What was the starting time and ending time for school?
8:45am to 3:45pm but we also had afternoon recess.
Thank you very to Evie and Jordan for reporting on this event. Thank you to Robyn and the library team for putting up a presentation of memorabilia from the school archives. Thank you to the JP and MP students who met our guests on arrival. Thank you to Team Canteen for providing a lovely, welcoming morning tea. Thank you to all of the staff and students who prepared short demonstrations or items to share with the Old Scholars. And an especially big thank you to our senior students (Ava & Mikayla, Cooper & Elliot, Liam & Jaren and Georgie & Minami) who arranged and conducted the tour schedule for the day.
The Old Scholars presented the school with a lovely gift which we will use to mark the occasion of their visit in some way.
