Message from the Principal
St Anthony’s Parish and St Anthony’s School hold the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people as central and fundamental responsibilities of the Church. St Anthony’s is fully compliant with all policies in relation to Child Safety. These documents ensure compliance with the Victorian Government Child Safety Standards which took effect on 1 January 2017 and reflect our Parishes’ ongoing commitment to ensuring that all children are safe, happy and empowered.
A very special week
“audite et humilitate”
Pope Francis at the most recent Synod, challenges us to “audite et humilitate”, to listen with humility.
I welcome you this week to listen, learn and reflect together on the ways we listen with humility to those in our school community and through the way we interact with each other with positive unconditional regard. I'd like everyone to take a moment in the coming weeks to visualise and reflect on our school’s unique context and our students, staff and families and consider what messages you would like to give us as we approach the upcoming CEMSIS surveys.
Welcome to week 6 and 7 and thank you to everyone who sent their well wishes and prayers my way during my recent recovery. Although it has been a traumatic and difficult time for me and my family, I have been overwhelmed by the love and support offered to me by everyone. I am feeling much better and I have loved being back at work this week and catching up with everyone.
I would like to thank James Gow and Glennis Kerr and my leadership team for their exemplary leadership of the school in my absence. It is reassuring that our team is strong and our focus on a collaborative and distributed style of leadership enables our beautiful and busy school to continue to flourish in times of stress. I would also like to thank all of our staff for their support and ongoing work that never wavers. It was work as usual over the last 5 weeks and the evidence of this is in the Production rehearsals so far and all of the amazing events that have occurred always with the children at the heart. Well done everyone. Well done families. Well done children.
Our leadership team met with our architects this week to begin initial planning for our 10 year building and Masterplan. One of the outstanding features of our school that drove the conversation forward was that the child is at the heart of all we do, the importance we place on family and community engagement, offering a range of blended learning opportunities and how we look at each individual child and grow them was especially highlighted. We look forward to working with all of you, our staff and our students in gaining more insights into what we want in the physical spaces for our school as we grow into the future.
We will be sending out information soon regarding the CEMSIS surveys (I have put this letter into this edition for you to read again). You would have read a letter in a previous newsletter explaining the importance of these surveys. Every year we survey staff, year 4, 5, and 6 students and parents and the data we receive helps us to identify areas for growth and improvement. These surveys help to drive our work forward. Many of you will receive information and links to this survey in the coming weeks.
In the past weeks many community building events have been happening all around us. You can see all of the amazing work that is always going on through our Facebook page and our School Story via Dojo. Again, I thank the team that enable all of these things to happen and of course, you our parent community who continue to work in partnership with us to make the learning experiences at St Anthony's encompass the whole family.
Go about your week gently, and as always if you have any feedback, ideas or 'wonderings' they are always received gratefully.
God bless,
Patrika