Principal's News
Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome back to everyone for Term 3. I trust the recent break to the school routine provided an opportunity for our students to enjoy some much needed “downtime” and hopefully even some respite for some parents too.
Term 2 was one of the more challenging that I have encountered in 36 years in Primary schools. Our staff team were flattened by sickness, as many in our community have been. And of course this is an ongoing concern across the entire community, as we battle Covid-19, the flu and other coughs and colds that continue to circulate. I have personal and very recent experience of exactly how hard our fantastic Colac Area Health workers are working at the moment, as they battle their own staff shortages amid surging infection rates. As a community we must pull together and take some responsibility for our health and plan not to contribute to the workload of our doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians etc who work so hard for the benefit of our community’s health.
I’ve had a text this morning reminding me that it has been more than 3 months since my Covid-19 Booster and that as someone over 50 I can book in for the 4th needle any time. My understanding is that this is available to all of us over 30. Anyway it’s a small thing that I can do to help.
REPORTS AND ASSESSMENT CONVERSATIONS So challenging was Term 2, in fact that for the first time in my career, we had to reschedule our Parent/ Teacher interviews and the accompanying reports for all classes from Grades 1-6. We just did not have the continuity of staff attendance to get them done, or our teachers were simply too sick to do them.
However, I am happy to report that all reports are now done and are in the editing stage of production so they will be ready for distribution to parents at our rescheduled Assessment Conversations.
The Assessment Conversations will be scheduled over a week or so commencing NEXT Tuesday, July 19th.
Bookings for these meetings can be made via PAM from 3:30pm today.
Students are expected to attend the first part of the meeting with their parents.
CANTEEN/LUNCH ORDERS Please refer to updated price list in today's newsletter. It is important to have correct money securely enclosed in a zip locked bag or envelope inside your child's brown paper bag.
PREDICT MY FUTURE: THE SCIENCE OF US A conversation with a friend during the recent holidays prompted my memory of a fantastic documentary that I had recommended to parents via this newsletter many years ago. My friend urged me to suggest it again to a new generation of parents, so I am.
The series screened on SBS some years ago and centred on the “Dunedin Study” where researchers have endeavoured to track the lives of 1000 babies born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972 to try to determine the childhood factors and influences that contribute to successful, happy and fulfilling lives in adulthood.
The study is world renowned and its results have been replicated all over the world. It’s well worth watching (well so my friend whose children used to attend Sacred Heart believes).
For those who won’t have the time, one spoiler: SELF CONTROL appears to be a very important characteristic to train in our children, i.e. Those children who can control their own emotions, those who learn to defer or delay their reward, become less impulsive and tend to make better decisions later in life (Translation: be good at the shops, you might score an icy pole for the way home and in later years - work now to earn a greater reward later)
I found the first episode on Youtube for those interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqThvpFck3s&ab_channel=Spark