"Let us pray well and never grow weary." Catherine McAuley

DEPUTY PRINCIPAL STUDENTS

The second period of remote learning has been a different experience for everyone in our college community.  While we have all learned new skills, it has not been without its challenges.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the resilience, perseverance and effort that you have displayed.  This includes, but is not limited to the students and staff.  I also thank the families who have guided and supported the students through this uncertain period.  I speak on behalf of all the staff when I say that we look forward to the students’ return to face-to-face learning.  

 

To monitor wellbeing and workload levels of our students, they have been surveyed fortnightly.  This information is then shared with the Wellbeing and House Leader teams to identify specific students who may require additional support.  This information is also shared with the Learning and Teaching team to ensure the students are receiving an appropriate amount of work.  We always encourage our students to communicate with their subject and homeroom teachers if they require support or discuss concerns with their progress, and this has been more important than ever before.

 

A new school-family relationship

During the remote learning period, our teachers have attempted to take care not to overload, exhaust and frustrate parents and carers with too many demands to support their children’s learning.  We have all been trying to balance and deal with the impacts on our own work from home lives.  Happily, it would appear, this has created more opportunities for parent and carer understanding and empathy for the work of teachers, and vice versa.

 

This is a genuine opportunity to consolidate, and even extend, our communication strategies and structures with parents and carers.  For example, greater parent and carer understanding of content could facilitate establishment of more meaningful student learning goals and better support systems at home.  For students with significant additional needs, learning support teams and processes provide an obvious vehicle to harness this increased shared understanding with parents and carers to further refine, modify and adapt individual learning programs.

 

The education of our students has always been a partnership between the college and the families, and this has never been as evident as it is today.  As the African proverb states - ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, which means that an entire community of people must interact with children for those children to experience and grow in a safe and healthy environment.

 

FOOTY COLOURS DAY 

The Footy Colours Day will continue as planned on Friday September 18.  Whilst Victoria has lost the rights to host this year’s AFL Grand Final, hopefully the Victorian teams can still do the State proud. 

 

PHOTO COMPETITION 

The Student Representative Council (SRC) would like to invite all students to enter a photo in the St Joseph’s College Remote Photo Competition.  Students are invited to take a photo and send it through to the following email addresses in the following categories:

Appropriate photos will be displayed in a gallery on the college website, with judging and awards to be presented in Term 4.  Entries for the competition will run through to Friday October 9.

 

Mr Heath McClaer

Deputy Principal Students