Principal Message
Education Week
This year's theme for Education Week is Celebration of Cultures, which is a great springboard for many activities and lessons that we can use throughout the week and beyond to build a diverse appreciation for the many cultures that make up our wonderful community.
Building a culture of inclusion and belonging where racism and discrimination are not tolerated, is an ongoing process in a school. There are many different opportunities to have conversations about racism and discrimination within a school context and approaching the subject from different angles is an important part of a whole-of-school approach. Proactively building knowledge and competency around issues of racism and diversity is something our school and staff strongly believe in. For primary schools there are many opportunities in our Respectful Relationships curriculum and many texts that we can use to promote diversity and Education Week is just one of these.
At midday next Wednesday live from Canberra, our junior school will be participating in the National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) book for 2025 . This year's picture book is The Truck Cat written by Deborah Frenkel. The Truck Cat is a story about cats and humans, immigration and identity, and homes lost and found. Along with his human, Yacoub, Tinka travels roads wide and narrow, near and distant. But no matter how much they travel, home feels very far away – for both of them. When Tinka and Yacoub are unexpectedly separated, they are determined to find their way back to each other – and, in doing so, might find more than they expected.
Open Morning - Thurs 22nd May @ 9:30-10:30am
We have decided to run an Open Morning next Thursday, 22nd May at 9:30am. This idea was thrown out for discussion in one of our recent staff meetings as teachers were looking for a way to connect with their families and give them an opportunity to come into their child's learning space and interact by joining in some activities and games. There will be a special Education Week Assembly on Thursday at 10:30am after the Open Morning with some songs, whole school team activities as well as a surprise food from around the world for our students.
Where in the world do I come from?
This weekend we encourage you to have a conversation with your child/ren about where the family's roots lie so that they can participate in our whole school mapping activity next Thursday. Our students will be asked to mark on a world map any places that they have a connection to either in this generation or past generations. We all have somewhere that tracks back, and we want to celebrate that diversity. We will be inviting our students to ask you to share the stories that link us to our past and other cultures. My story starts in Belgium, where my great-grandmother and great-grandfather were very well-known opera singers. After the war they were sponsored to come to Australia to teach at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney. This link makes so much sense to me and who I am, as playing music is a very big part of who I am. I hope we get to share some great stories throughout next week.
Our Podcast program will be launched with the first episode being recorded and our grade 6's will be showing us how they create and write their own podcasts. We are even keen to have some of our parent's volunteer to be interviewed by our podcasters on Thursday.
We invite all families too to come along to our Open Morning and join in.
Hope to see you there!
School Council
This week we had our school council meeting and officially welcomed our newest member, James Dimmock. Being on school council is a commitment in relation to their family time and I want to thank all the members, staff and parents, who attend our meetings. This Month we discussed many items, including trying to set Working Bee's back up, marketing the school, billboards, general financial governance, fundraising in relation to our Friends of Warrandyte Primar School team and application of grants coming up.
Working Bee and BBQ - Friday 30th May from 2:30pm
As I mentioned the School Council have decided to run a Working Bee on Friday 30th May at 2:30pm - 5:00pm. The rationale behind the Friday is that many of our families cannot do weekend work due to children's sporting games. As such a Friday afternoon, with our students involved and then a BBQ might be a nice way for our community to come together. There is plenty of things for us to do on the day such as, weeding, mulching, pruning and planting, fixing and cleaning of exterior buildings, painting and general maintenance around the garden and buildings. If you are able to even help for an hour it will go a long way for us in terms of getting things done. If you are planning on attending the Working Bee and would like to stay for a BBQ afterwards, please click on the link below to confirm and let us know how many people we need to cater for. BBQ is free to all families that attend the Working Bee.
I am looking forward to a busy week next week. Have a great weekend and stay safe.
Nieta