St Joseph's College, Echuca

Principal's Report

Welcome

 

A special welcome in this first week of school to the 158 new Year 7 students, 24 new students across years 8 – 12 and 18 new staff members. All up, 200 new people to our St. Joseph’s College Catholic Learning Community.

 

I have no doubt that the St. Joseph’s College community will help them to settle in well.

 

It was good to welcome students and staff back last week. They are all starting relaxed, refreshed and renewed in their commitment to their studies, work and their own growth.

 

College staff members have been working hard in recent weeks to make sure that we are ready to again provide wonderful learning opportunities for the students entrusted to the care of this Catholic Learning Community.

 

At Friday’s Opening Mass we celebrated God’s love for our Catholic Learning Community, St. Joseph’s College and asked for God’s blessings on the year ahead.

 

Here is an adaptation of my speech at the opening of that Mass.

 

During 2020 we give priority to the Kildare Ministries Core value of Justice – Making the needs of the vulnerable paramount.

 

What do we mean when we use the word Justice? When we say that we will make the needs of the vulnerable paramount?

 

There are about 800 of us returning this year and about 200 starting.

 

We are all vulnerable in some way, some of us are vulnerable emotionally, some spiritually, some intellectually, some financially, some by virtue of race or sexuality, some physically or some simply by being new to our school.

 

Our physical environment is vulnerable too. Our facilities here are vulnerable due to age and crowding, our global climate is vulnerable due to a wide range of practices that we must change.

 

 

So, we have settled on a simple but also complex annual plan in 2020

Two main priorities

Priority 1 is to embed the cultures of

Principles of Living Justice

            A community of witness - the voice of Jesus

            Learning for Justice - the heart of Jesus

            Courageous Leadership – the hands, feet and                    eyes of Jesus

 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

            Respect, Commit, Gratitude

 

and

 

High Impact Teaching & Learning Strategies

Literacy & Numeracy interventions, Honour the Learning strategies, Professional Practice teams developing better pedagogies

 

However not only are people vulnerable but our environment is vulnerable too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our global environment is vulnerable. This summer for example.

 

Our local environment is also vulnerable. Locally we now have well over one thousand people crowded into a very small space.

 

Thus, our second priority in our annual plan for 2020 is to focus heavily on doing everything we possibly can to ensure that the Stratton Rd campus is open for Year 7 – 9 students in 2023.

 

While we are doing that, we will also be paying attention to our Dickson St. environment.

 

In a nutshell, 2020 at St. Joseph’s is about working towards embedding cultures of justice for 

  • Learning
  • Positive support
  • Care for the vulnerable, and
  • Our physical assets, play spaces, climate and resources

 

We aim to achieve this by building right relationships, walking in solidarity, welcoming without prejudice and calling to action with Jesus at the centre of everything we do.

 

We, the St. Joseph’s College Catholic Learning community, as a community of young people of the Church, can do this by getting involved, by speaking up, by being upstanders not bystanders.

 

All of this is summarised in our 2020 College theme which challenges us to:

 

Assume Responsibility

Seek Unity

Restore Reason

 

Welcome to the 2020 school year. Thank you to all those who put in a tremendous amount of work over the holiday period to prepare for the year.

 

Best wishes to everyone for a successful 2020.

 

God bless.

 

Michael Delaney

Principal