Dance challenge brings joy in lockdown

What started off as a Physical Education task set by Learning Mentor Ellie Phillips for the School of Wonder children on Tuesday, ended up in a dance challenge that quickly spread throughout the college. The PE task was to come up with a "family dance". Charlie N in Year 2 then challenged Principal Sue Carroll to complete a dance, which was recorded and placed on the School of Wonder children's learning platform Seesaw. In her video, Sue challenged Learning Mentor Kate McGrath to record a dance and it took off from there, with other Learning Mentors challenging each other and posting their videos. The dance videos brought much-needed joy to the children, their families and staff, during this time of lockdown when social connections are so important. Now we are wondering

who will be challenged next?

Exciting news from Ebony!

Justin and I are very excited to announce that we are expecting our first child, arriving early January, in 2022. It has been a wonderful experience being able to share this news with our families, friends and workplaces. We have received plenty of heartfelt messages and know that we are surrounded by a lot of love and support, which will be helpful come January when bub arrives.

My intention is to see out my role as Deputy Principal until November 2021, when I will transition to maternity leave. I am looking forward to transitioning to becoming a mum and spending time at home getting to know our little one.

St Anne's has been such an enormous part of my life to date. I have been fortunate enough to have been a part of the formation and creation of this exciting, vibrant college, and although I'm excited for this next phase of my life, I will be sad to step away from the college and the beautiful people within it. I look forward to what my role within the college will look like when I return, knowing that there are many wonderful, experienced, committed and motivated staff to fill my shoes while I'm gone.

Now, something that I am going to need a hand with is choosing a name for this bub! All submissions can be made to my email address: eanderson@sackialla.catholic.edu.au and will be placed on a list ready for selection. Justin and I have decided not to find out the gender of our child so it will be a nice surprise for us when this little one arrives.

- Ebony Anderson, Deputy Principal

St Anne's College welcomes Deanne

Deanne McNair

I am very excited to join the amazing team of educators and support staff, and the broader community of St Anne's College. My position at St Anne's is Daily Organisation and NCCD Administration. I've worked at Notre Dame College for the past six years, also in a non-teaching role, and I am looking forward to broadening my skills while I am learning something completely different at St Anne's.

Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my family. We are always busy, and I love it! We travel a lot for our kids' sports (rugby and BMX racing) and are actively involved with the local rugby club and BMX club. Our kids have raced all over Australia, in New Zealand and the Netherlands. We were supposed to race in Houston, Texas last year but . . . COVID!

When we're not volunteering or trackside at a BMX event, or cheering from the sidelines of the rugby field, we can be found camping somewhere along the Murray River, and when the weather is good, we're in our boat skiing and wakeboarding.

(Useless) fun fact: In 2010 I was the first female to commentate on the racing at the BMX State Championships.

I’ll see you around the college sometime soon.

SWPBS - What does it mean?

As a part of our Professional Learning Days, St Anne’s College staff were invited to upskill their professional practice in the area of School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) at the beginning of this term. During this session, Behavioural Analyst Dan Petro’s strategies were relayed to staff to encourage a holistic approach to supporting students' behaviours.

St Anne’s College has been working closely with Dan Petro to develop and upskill in evidence-based strategies, when respectfully supporting the behaviour of students. There are often many questions related to the SWPBS approach. I have outlined some responses to these questions below.

What does School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) mean?

SWPBS is a well-researched, evidence-based framework that recognises that behaviours change when people are explicitly taught what the expected behaviours should look like. SWPBS is a framework that aims to prevent, reduce and replace problem behaviours and build respectful relationships. The main purpose of the SWPBS approach is to put time into explicitly teaching positive and appropriate behaviours, opposed to continually punishing misbehaviour. SWPBS is a frequently-used framework across many school settings, nationally and globally.

So, does this mean kids don’t have any consequence for bad behaviour?

This is a question that is frequently asked. Many people believe that children "get away with it" or "do whatever they want" with an SWPBS approach. The short answer to this question is, “No!” Children do have a consequence for behaviours of concern; however, we do not use punishment that is used to humiliate, embarrass or control the child. Instead, we prioritise teaching how expected behaviours should look. When implementing a consequence, the dignity of the person is our priority. The consequences given are related to the behaviour of concern and the focus of consequences is to enable the student to learn to regulate their behaviour and to educate the child how to behave in socially acceptable ways. We seek to model appropriate conflict resolution when dealing with behaviours of concern, and we use a calm, neutral tone, as this models to our students that when people "misbehave", we still maintain respect and recognise that all people deserve to have their dignity intact. This is critical for our young people as they will soon be in relationships, have jobs, and be actively participating in our community.

Modelling respectful behaviours aims to promote and instil in our young people respectful relationships. Our community seeks to provide an environment that will support students’ efforts to develop self-management skills, promote academic achievement and to develop independent and likeable citizens.

Well, how will the kids ever learn how to behave when they are given no harsh consequences?

Children aren’t born with bad behaviours, they learn them. I know that is a bitter pill to swallow for many parents and educators. Just like with any learning, we must teach. If we want children to learn how to read, swim, drive, complete maths problems, ride a bike, bake a cake etc., we put effort into teaching and allowing the learner to practise. When it comes to teaching behaviour however, we traditionally punish. Explicitly teaching the skill, allowing the learner to practise and providing feedback is how we learn. Schools have typically relied on traditional discipline practices such as detention, suspension and expulsion to teach students how to behave. Unfortunately, research has consistently demonstrated that these techniques are not effective, because they do not aim to replace the punished behaviour with appropriate behaviour; they do not teach new, more appropriate behaviours, they do not reduce future incidences of the punished behaviour, and as a result of these techniques, students miss valuable instruction time (Cameron, 2006).

As an alternative to these techniques, researchers have developed and begun implementing Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS; Sugai & Horner,2006). I guess, if detention really worked as a way of ‘curing misbehaviour’ then we would never have circumstances where people placed in jails reoffended. The SWPBS approach supports behaviour and aims to support students to be self-managers, engaged learners, risk takers and confident leaders who are stewards of our environment, socially respectful, value diversity and act justly.

- Kate McGrath, School Wide Positive Behaviour Support Leader

St Anne’s College staff 2021

Susan Carroll - Principal

Ebony Anderson - Deputy Principal

Administration

David Villani - Business Manager

Robyn Parker - Office Manager

Debbie Mori - Communications/Publications

Mardie Guppy - Reception/Community Engagement

Tara Jeffery - Enrolments/Student Services

Jamie Hatch - ICT Administrator

Michael Sorbello - Grounds and Facilities Caretaker

Julie Villani - Library Technician

Deanne McNair - Daily Organisation and NCCD Administration

Learning Support Team

Rebekah Watts - Learner Diversity Leader

Leesa Shannon - Team Leader/Learning Support Officer

Luci Amodio - Learning Support Officer

Jacqui Avard - Learning Support Officer

Amanda Borysiewicz - Learning Support Officer

Chelsea Crawford - Learning Support Officer

Nikea Grinter - Learning Support Officer

Ella Hibble - Learning Support Officer

Sarah Maloney - Learning Support Officer

Stacey Rae - Learning Support Officer

Maddison Crawford - Trainee: Learning Support

Tyler Jamieson - Trainee: Learning Support

Sean McAllister - Trainee: Learning Support

Ella McDonald - Trainee: Learning Support

Leonie Drummond - Koorie Education Worker

Melanie Formica - Wellbeing Officer

School of Wonder Team

Laurel Baxter-Butts - School Leader/Reading Recovery

Roslyn Heathman - Foundation Learning Mentor

Jasmin Buha - Foundation Learning Mentor

Andrea Bergamin - 1/2 Learning Mentor

Kara McCann - 1/2 Learning Mentor

Kate McGrath - 1/2 Learning Mentor

Linda Alampi - Languages Learning Mentor

Debbie Mori - Languages Assistant

Chantelle Bell - Visual Arts

Ellie Phillips - Physical Education/Performing Arts

School of Innovation Team

Patrick Noonan - School Leader

Sarah Baglin - Year 9 Learning Mentor

Paul Howard - Year 9 Learning Mentor

Christian Steri - Year 9 Learning Mentor/Languages Leader

Adam Zito - Year 9 Learning Mentor

Keshia-Lee Dean - Year 8 Learning Mentor

Chelsea Nicholson - Year 8 Learning Mentor

Sean O'Brien - Year 8 Learning Mentor

Olivia Sorbello - Year 8 Learning Mentor

Stephen Kealy - Year 7 Learning Mentor

Nicole Leys - Year 7 Learning Mentor

Georgina Rykers - Year 7 Learning Mentor

Marian Segrave - Year 7 Learning Mentor

Cosimo Rando - Specialist Learning Mentor/Digital Technologies

Belinda Gleeson - Specialist Learning Mentor

Chantelle Bell - Specialist Learning Mentor

Debbie Mori - Languages Assistant

Pastoral Group codes and leaders for 2021

A reminder to all parents/carers that if you need to get in contact with your child's Pastoral Group Leader, School Leader or Learning Mentor you can contact them via their work email listed below: