From the Principal
He has risen. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter of celebration with family and friends. As a time for renewal, we are reminded that we have transformed through Lent to prepare for what God has planned for us. May our renewed life be filled with love.
Welcome back to Term 2.
Student Data
The staff took time in their meeting at the end of Term 1 to look at the student data gathered from the LWLW survey and The Resilience Project survey. Survey results were de-identified. There were some significant outcomes worthy of attention. Female students exhibit less hope than male students; year 12 females are the most anxious cohort; Year 10 are above the ‘norm’ of students in Australian schools when reporting symptoms of depression. Our Leader of Academic Care - Student Wellbeing, Mrs Jody Law, collated some of the data and it was presented to students in our PACC lesson this week. Please ask your child about the data and what they noticed. The discussion in PACC groups was quite rigorous and many groups will be continuing the data analysis in the next fortnight.
As a school community committed to wellbeing through Living Well Learning Well, our partnership with The Resilience Project supports our ability to engage students in learning to build resilience through the targeted skills of gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.
It will be interesting to see how our end of year data stacks up.
Staffing
Ms Danielle Barisa is leaving us this term to move onto further education and development in the mental healthcare industry. She has served our community as a Middle Leader of academic and student care. We are a better place for having had her with us. We wish her all the very best in her endeavours.
We welcome Mrs Bridie Graham as Office Manager. She will be available to families for information and support regarding fees and charges from the school. She will also fill the role of PA to the Principal. We welcome Bridie from a vast range of experiences in the workforce and she brings a fresh perspective to our community.
Mrs Karie Dear will be leaving us early this term. She has served our community for 9 years as Education Assistant, Receptionist, Enrolment Officer and PA to the Principal. She is moving on to an office management position and we wish her all the very best in her next career. We thank her for her commitment to our community.
Mrs Kirrie Jaeger, Education Assistant, has returned from Maternity Leave fulltime. We are excited to have her back with us.
With changes to staffing, there will always be amendments to the timetable. We are currently working on these changes and will communicate outcomes when the timetable has been finalised.
Consistency for effective learning and teaching
Great Learning and Teaching
St Mary’s College has a long standing relationship with Marie Amaro, founder of the Highly Effective Teacher. We began the term with a professional development day on supporting great learning and teaching through high expectations and high-impact strategies. It is important that we use consistent approaches in setting expectations for learning experiences so that students are able to engage fully by understanding what is expected of them.
Our teaching staff will be working with Marie and her business partner Tanya in a partnership across 2023.
The Third Teacher
According to Lyn Sharratt, the first teacher is the parent, the second teacher is the school teacher and the third teacher is the learning environment. Our teaching staff will be focusing on the Third Teacher to increase the learning potential of our students. The third teacher is visible student focused resources which is another learning place for the student to go when working on their learning tasks. This enhances self-directed learning to become independent learners.
Ask your child about what their Third Teacher is offering them.
God Bless
Bern Feldman