Principal Report

Principal Update Week 5 Term 3

There are so many wonderful quotes by Sir Ken Robinson regarding the importance of teaching The Arts and valuing and nurturing creativity in our children. I especially like this:

“The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.”   Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Education Paradigms (2010).

If perchance you have dropped by the the school and heard wonderful sounds coming from the hall, you might just have been privy to what I am talking about. For the past two terms, we have been singing, dancing and acting and in true sense of the quote above you could say ‘flourishing’.

In the last newsletter I wrote about theimportance of developing soft skills- kindness, tolerance, empathy, resilience, creativity, collaboration, cooperation, sensitivity, understanding and acceptance. Since that article there have been a number of new reports including one from the OECD that have reiterated the need for these soft skills to be taught alongside the more traditional, if society and our children are going to be successful in the future.

Children’s participation in the Arts, and in particular the Performing Arts, helps to develop so much more than we would first expect:

• They learn to think creatively, with an open mind
• They learn to express feelings, with or without words
• They practise problem-solving skills, critical-thinking skills, dance, music, theatre language
• They discover that there is more than one right answer, in fact there are always multiple points of view
• They learn to collaborate with other children and with adults
• They feel connected as the Arts also builds community

And because there is not just one right way to create art, every child can feel pride in his or her work. In fact the Arts builds and instils confidence and resilience.

In a nutshell participation in the Arts, has enormous benefits academically and socially emotionally. We set out to this year to stage our second musical, encourage teamwork and collaboration and of course have fun. With great confidence I am willing to say that by the end of this experience each child will have achieved far more than this.

Thank you to everyone who has already bought tickets for our musical. We sold over half the seats allocated to each night  as soon as ticketing opened.

Secure your seats for the night:  https://www.trybooking.com/BEGJZ

September 10 and 11, CBC St Kilda, 7:00pm.

Further information regarding arrangements for the nights of the musical and days proceeding will be sent home via Flexibuzz over the next few weeks . Please make sure you check Flexibuzz and the newsletter regularly.

St Columba's Snow Team

On Monday the inaugural St Columba's Snow Sports Team will compete at the Victorian Interschools competition at Mt Buller. We have 16 children competing, ranging from Year 2 to Year 6, in the Alpine Giant Slalom and the Snowboard Giant Slalom. We wish all the children competing the best of luck and hope they enjoy the experience. Look out for photos and some student reflections in our next newsletter.

Staff Professional Learning Day

Last Friday’s school closure day was dedicated to staff professional learning. At St Columba’s our staff highly values the times we are able to come together to continue our learning journey. Our school improvement plan has as one of its major goals: To embed a strong professional learning culture of mutual trust and support with a focus on sustainable school improvement.

Over the course of the past two years we have had a focus on empowering staff to become high quality teachers and to work collaboratively in high performing teams. One of the most powerful ways of ensuring that staff are continuosly learning is to provide staff with the opportunity to learn from one another. Research states, that adults learn best in an environment of peer learning. Peer-feedback is one of the most effective ways to both learn about yourself and support the development of others.

Conditions for effective peer-feedback require a whole of school approach and agreement from all staff. They are not the work of one teacher alone. We have developed a peer to peer feedback model that we will be using during term 4 to improve and support best practice amongst our teaching staff. We have all agreed to and made a commitment to using the model and I look forward to sharing with you the impact this model will have on building capacity and ensuring continuous reflective practice is embraced and embedded within our school culture.

Daniella Maddalena

Principal St Columba's Elwood

All students attending St Columba's Primary School have the right to feel safe.  The care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people is a fundamental responsibility of all within our school.