News From Mr Smith

 Dear School Community Members,

Education Week: 

Our school, along with many other schools, will celebrate education week next week. This is an opportunity for our community to celebrate the wonderful opportunities, experiences and achievements our students undertake on a daily basis at Manifold Heights Primary School. Our key events next week are:

• Education Week launch at assembly:       Monday, 19th May                  9:05am
• School Tours for Prospective Families:    Tuesday, 20th May                  9:30am                                                                                             Wednesday, 21st May          12:00pm
• Open afternoon for current families:         Wednesday, 21st May            2:30pm

We warmly encourage all families to join us at any of the activities throughout the week.

Racism: 

Mano has zero tolerance to racism!

In Victoria in 2024, 16.5% of students reported they experienced racism.

Racism refers to a variety of practices, beliefs, social relations, and phenomena that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yield superiority, power, and privilege for some, and discrimination and oppression for others. It can take several forms, including interpersonal, institutional, systemic, structural, internalised, and ambient racial discrimination.

Manifold Heights Primary School has a zero tolerance to racism. Our process in responding to an experience of racism is:

• Student or parent/guardian report racism to staff member 
• Member of leadership informed
• Member of leadership respond promptly to student (victim) and parent/guardian
• Contact Koorie Education Support Officer (KESO) 
• Prioritise time to meet with victim and perpetrator 
• Listen actively to victim and perpetrator
• Act
• Communicate openly and transparently
• Check in regularly with victim

I encourage students and families to contact us promptly if you are aware of incidents of racism.

Mano has zero tolerance to racism!

Staff Professional Learning – Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): 

Professional Learning Communities is a key feature of the work our staff undertake weekly as we strive for ongoing improvement. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) is an approach to school improvement where groups of teachers work collaboratively at the school level to improve student outcomes. PLCs focus on a specific aspect (crumb) of student learning that is guided by the interrogation of data.

I am pleased to report that our PLCs have set their focus (goal) for Term 2 and are currently in the ‘planning’ phase of our PLC cycle.

We look forward to sharing with you our progress with our PLCs as the year unfolds.

Active Travel to School – Safety: 

It is fantastic that we have so many students who travel to school actively – walking, riding or scooting. With this in mind, it is essential that we promote and maximise safety so that students can continue to walk, ride or scoot to and from school. Recently we have had some incidents where a student or community members safety was compromised due to not using the crossings on Strachan Avenue or Minerva Road. I encourage families of students who travel to and from school on a bike or scooter to regularly remind them of the importance of always utilising the crossings on Minerva Road and Strachan Avenue, and walking their bike or scooter across the road after looking both ways multiple times. 

Thank you for supporting our school and have a great week.

Christian Smith