Dear Parents,

Congratulations on a wonderful week of learning last week. Students have been working really well in their new learning communities and are striving to achieve their very best in all they set out to do.

Congratulations to Mrs Reed on a successful St. Joseph’s swimming sports last Thursday. What a wonderful day with all students from Years 3 to 6 doing their own personal best efforts in the pool! It was a positive community day and an absolute thrill to have so many parents, grandparents and special friends attending on the day. A huge thank you to all staff and parents who assisted on the day. What a wonderful community we have at St Joseph’s!

We warmly welcome IBU Ellen Easton into our school community. Ellen will commence shortly as the Indonesian language assistant. “There are many kinds of languages in the world and no kind is without meaning (1 Corinthians14;10). We have seen from recent events that global connectivity is transforming the cultural landscape across our world. This highlights the importance of our community being learners of language.

Learning a language can have many benefits including enhancing literacy skills, enhancing brain development and increasing global interconnectedness. At St. Joseph’s we learn Indonesian through learning a functional language approach where every member of the community is asked to learn a few words per week. We look forward to continuing our journey of a whole school approach to learning Indonesian.

As we go into another lockdown period my thoughts and prayers are with all of our community. I hope all of our family and friends are not too badly affected by this recent lockdown. We are here to support you in any way we can.

Our theme of ‘Dream big with eyes wide open’ challenges us this week to look widely in all that we do to keep our eyes wide open to see every need that we can address and to ensure every person in our community is ok. Please reach out and check in on your fellow families in your child’s learning community to see if they are ok and please do not hesitate to contact me on principal@sjcribpoint.catholic.edu.au if you know of a family that requires a helping hand.

Our theme for week 4 and 5 is respecting the dignity of every human being and building safe and supportive relationships. What a perfect theme for us this week! Look out for each other, stay connected and make sure we respect that each individual may react differently to what occurs around us so the utmost respect, tolerance and love to all.

We are focussing on the think, feel, act tool on our tool kit. Ellis (1997) highlights that we can maintain emotional stability and wellbeing through self-acceptance by disputing our thinking. As one internalises, self regulates and assimilates their thinking to self they experience autonomy in agentic ways (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

By teaching our kids that how you think is how you feel which results in how you act we can step by step empower each individual to be aware of our thoughts. Our students need to be explicitly taught this through role modelling, discussion and challenges to turn head hassler thoughts into rational mind master ones to ensure successful problem solving occurs daily.

Please take the time to look at the wellbeing and faith slide shows in the newsletter which will assist in deepening an understanding of the whole school focus. All year levels will be focussing on this in their learning.

If you enter the school please continue to adhere to the COVID recommendations by wearing your mask inside, adhering to the room number allocation and keep to the 1.5m social distancing rules. If you are in the school longer than 15 minutes we ask that you sign in at the office.

After School Pick up:

We have received feedback regarding school pick up arrangements with parents wishing to park in Collins Parade and at the Crib Point Footy ground so as to collect their children via the back gate.

We will now have the back gate open for parents to enter the school grounds and collect their children from within the school.

Any students being collected via the back gate will wait on the steps outside the Senior Building.

Students will not be allowed to walk to the gate without an adult.

NEW MULCH AND SAND PIT SAND

A big thank you to Shannon Barton for supplying the school with some new sand for the sand pit and new soft fall mulch for the Junior Playground. We also are very grateful to Shannon and his business for donating 3 metres of garden mulch for Lucy to utilise around the garden beds of the school. THANKS Bittern Garden Supplies.

Please do not hesitate to contact me at anytime if you have any questions or concerns. I am very proud to be the Principal of this magnificent school and look forward to all we achieve together in 2021.

Yours In Partnership,

Gabrielle Espenschied

Second Hand Uniform Shop...