NEWSLETTER: Footscray campus (July 2005)

The 'let us know' list

1. If any of your contact details have changed, please let us know.
2. If you are planning to have contact with your student outside of SAIL
hours you must let us know first and complete the contact request form.
3. If you intend to bring a friend to SAIL please direct them to the website first and direct them to apply online or just let us know beforehand.
4. Let us know if you are going to miss a Saturday by email, phone or the "Can't Come Sheet"- now also online here!
5. Please check and read your emails each week- if possible, Friday is best!
6. Please let us know before you speak publicly or publish an article about SAIL.

Ongoing offers

1. Photocopying- for any SAIL related photocopying, simply mark the pages from the books you want copied and give the book to Will, Cait or the library crew on Saturday- it will be ready for you the following week!

2. If you would like to post an ad or some other information relating
to SAIL or another not-for-profit venture in which you are involved, please email it to SAIL@africanoz.com to be included in the next newsletter.

3. The Tutor Resources section of the website is available at all times to provide tutors with ideas, games, work-sheets and support. We strongly suggest that if you are experiencing difficulties of any kind when working with your student, you post a request for advice on the SAIL Panel of Experts Bulletin Board (accessible from the Tutor Resources section). Tutor Resources can be accessed from here!


Please read this newsletter in the following week, it gives
updates on SAIL past, present and future!

Our apologies to those who found themselves locked out of the usual parking space on Mephan Street on 9 July. This comes coupled with a request that SAILors who drive to kindly make use of this space. Understandably, the residents of little May St are always concerned that their street is not overrun with cars. Please park in the Mephan St facility rather than in May St.

New Catalogue

You can find a heap of good reading in the SAIL library and we would like to give students an opportunity to read anything they want from A to Z. So we have started cataloguing books (white and black sticker category) to enable students to borrow them and read them at home. So far there are 50 books suitable for all age groups in the catalogue (you will find fairy tales, scary stuff or even Shakespeare or Dickens).

If there is a book (white or black sticker) your student would like to borrow for home reading you are welcome to ask the librarians to enter the book into the catalogue and help to build up our resources for borrowing.

How it works:
1. pick the book
2. name of student will be entered into the database of borrowed books
3. student will receive a “readers ID” with the book title and date of return
4. after 2 weeks return the book to the library – with the student’s “readers ID”
5. if a student hasn’t finished reading, just ask the librarians for an extension!

Reading Books During SAIL Hours:

For those who do not remember the barrage of information from the very first day at SAIL, we thought we would summarise how the library works:
1. Picture books: are on the shelves in alphabetical order according to title. Here you can also find Disney, Dr Suez, Sesame Street and Fairytales in their own categories. Simple counting, colours, alphabet, shapes etc. are kept next to the picture books on the shelf above the cabinet next to the door with the label 'ABC....123' .
2. Reference books (atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias): are next to the picture books
3. Non-fiction books – red sticker, are in order according to category
4. Readers – the levels of difficulty:
§ yellow – basic
§ yellow/ green – basic/intermediate
§ green – intermediate 1
§ blue – intermediate 2
§ white – advanced teenagers/kids
§ black – advanced adults
§ all books with extra orange stickers are suitable for adults

RETURNING books – when you finish reading, please return all books into the provided boxes next to the door – Please DO NOT place them onto the shelves.

GAMES - can be borrowed only by a tutor, and it is necessary to sign them out. When a game is returned please make sure that all parts are in a box and tick your name off.

Don't forget to ask us to help you navigate your way through SAIL's super (if small) library and share your ideas about resources with us!

The SAIL Librarians

AMES have kindly offered free training to SAIL Senior volunteers. It is acreddited and has proven very valuable to many SAILors over the years. It will take plave in the city on Thursday nights starting 4 August 6-8.30pm for six consecutive Thursdays. Contact Kathy Earp, SPP/VTEP Coordinator on
Ph. 9926 4633 or email: earpk@ames.net.au for more information.

Another diary reminder that 27 August is expected to be another festive day of celebration for SAIL’s fourth birthday! We hope you will join us for an extended SAIL (until 1:30pm) and then for the biggest tutor bash (in the strictly non-violent, Gandhi-esque way) on the same evening at 82 Perry St, Collingwood!

As Week 5 rolls around for another time this year, our fantastic Week 5 Coordinator Prue has lined up some stellar talks! For SAIL Junior there will be a talk about behaviour run by one of our very own Junior Coordinators. For SAIL Primary volunteers we have a talk about bullying and ways to address this issue at SAIL. As always, these talks will be from 12:30 – 1:30, we hope that you will be able to make the time to attend. Finally, the community talk this week will be about apprenticeships and traineeships. Please encourage your students to attend this important community talk, particularly SAIL Senior students and those in the VCE Centre.

We are fortunate to have some ex-world champion debaters from Freedebate running a series of 3 public speaking skills sessions for our Senior students. The first session was a raging success with both tutors and students giving brief talks about a country of their choice. Everyone was fascinating and much fun was had. If anyone else would like to suggest these classes to their students please let Will or Cait know.

SAIL has recently seen the launch of a Drivers Ed program run by William, Ater and Mading in the Chapel from 12:30-1:30 for any SAILors interested in preparation for L and P Plate written tests, and Melways reading. Although only in its fourth week, the successful completion of the L Plate test by one of our SAIL Senior students Angalina M. just last week is testament to its greatness! Drivers Ed will be running for the rest of the year, in both Arabic and Dinka, so if you have any students who would be interested in attending these classes, please chat with Will or Cait on a Saturday.

Our new extend series is full of excitement yet again. We welcome back the Westside Circus to teach new tricks to our little performers. Cooking with Michelle has proved monumentally popular with pizza, cookies and hamburgers flying out of the ovens into eager participants mouths. While are art team are painting trestle tables with nature scenes including flying farm animals!

It has been a big cycle for SAIL About with SAILors heading in all different directions for all kinds of events.
Two groups of chirpy SAILors were lucky enough to attend the latest season of Circus Oz. Over 60 SAILors received complimentary tickets. Five SAILors went to see Temptation; the new Sale of the Century being filmed which came complete with cheesy photos with Livinia Nixon! Courtesy of the AFL, 25 SAILors also went to the G for the Sunday football.

Upcoming SAIL About events include another visit to see Rove Live, another circus visit to Circus Royale and trips to the Poly Woodside and Kiss Me Kate at the Arts Centre. It is all happening!!! If you want a piece of the action, please email sail@africanoz.com to register your interest in taking other SAILors! Similarly, if you are aware of any upcoming events that you believe SAILors might be interested in attending, please let us know so we can get our fantastic SAIL About letter writing team on the job!

Can we tempt you with some tickets to Temptation (pronounced "Sale of the Century")? We have five freebies available for Tuesday 20th September 12pm in Richmond. If you and some SAILor buddies would be interested, please email sail@africanoz.com

Kiss Me Kate
This is not a proposal to our fearless campus co-ordaintor but the name of a much loved musical. We have five tickets for SAILors to attend it on Wednesday 20 July at 2pm. If this is for you and your SAIL buddies, email us at sail@africanoz.com.

Footy fanatics
Free tickets are available to any SAILor for the footy on Saturday 6 or 7 August- Bulldogs v Weagles or Carlton v Port Adelaide, both at the MCG. The tickets are only available for a short time so please email soon if you are wanting to snatch them!

In the first week of July we had 30 SAILors from Dandenong and Footscray campuses head down the coast to Cottage by the Sea for the second SAIL camp for 2005. Thanks to a sublime team of SAIL volunteers, the camp was an immense success highlighted by close encounters with animals, the sea and a very long, especially scary water slide! The next camp will be a whole campus camp for Altona to go tree planting in the Wimmera.

This is the first newsletter in SAIL history to be sent out without a substantial total trivia section. How trivial is that!