Reconciliation Week 

Wrap-up

Special Assembly

It was such an honour to have many of our Koorie students stand proudly up the front and take a leading role in running assembly and sharing their stories. Well done to Bonnie, Savannah, Sofia, Elsie, and Laylah, and thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

We also enjoyed two performances: 

• The choir sang Paul Kelly's "From Little Things, Big Things Grow", which was beautiful. Thanks Ada, from the SRC for the idea to involve the choir, and Elsie's dad Joe for the song suggestion, and Katherine for running the choir. 
• Our student band (Volt) performed Beds Are Burning, which raised the roof! Beds Are Burning is this year's official song for Reconciliation Week.

Thank you also the SRC for announcing the outcome of the fundraising.

Show Your Colours + Fundraiser

A huge thank you to all those who supported the SRC's fundraising efforts for the wellbeing program at Yirrkala school. We raised over $600. Bec has asked us to pass on a huge thank you to all community members who supported this initiative.

The link below is to an article published by Melbourne University last week for Reconciliation week.  It outlines the partnership between Newlands and Yirrkala. 

We are pleased to announce that Yirrkala will be visiting our school again from November 23rd - 30th. 

Smoking Ceremony

Of course, we were also so fortunate to have Uncle Trevor perform a Smoking Ceremony last Friday - see last week's newsletter for more details and photos. It was so special for our community.

Gardening - Indigenous Planting + Bush Tucker Garden & tea

Elsie, one of our Koorie students, was keen for us to do some cooking with indigenous ingredients and that's how we came up with the idea of having a bush tucker garden and then drinking some river mint tea afterwards. Pascale was joined by several students who opted in at play time to learn about plants like the murnong, bulbine, river mint, ruby salt bush, small leaf clematis, native flax, lomandra, blushing bindweed, and more. We then planted most of these plants in a new little garden bed before retreating to the staffroom for river mint tea. Yum!

Pascale volunteers at NPS twice a week, propagating, weeding, planting, and caring for our gardens as well as running the Rain Moth Community Nursery.

We had also scheduled in an indigenous planting session, but this has been rescheduled to week 8 due to the rain. Our 3/4s enjoyed weeding the garden during Philosophy for Reconciliation Week and to reflect upon our relationship with nature. 

Staff Reflection

Also during Reconciliation Week, staff took time after school to watch this very powerful and emotional video of Ziggy Ramo performing with Paul Kelly, and then had some minutes of silence to reflect upon how we can be better allies and support reconciliation and truth telling.

Thanks for all of your support and being "All In" for Reconciliation!

Nerida & Sonya