Principal's Message

A Christmas Message

Ready or not, that’s a wrap on the 2021 school year! Wishing our wonderful students, families and staff a very Merry Christmas. 

Advent has been such a joyous time as we await in hope for Christmas and the birth of Jesus. This beautiful story was brought to life by our amazing Prep children on Monday in front of their proud families and caring Grade 6 Buddies. This was also shared on Google Classroom for all classes and families to view. We have very much enjoyed conversations in classes about how different families prepare for Christmas and what plans are in place for this special day. 

We have enjoyed our Christmas Hip Hop Concert and Prep Nativity Play in the last couple of weeks - such great opportunities to celebrate and perform on a stage! We are in the process of producing videos of the Christmas Concert and Art Show that we will share with you as soon as they are ready.

End of Year Thank You

School Staff

My sincere thanks to our staff for making it through a year where we were quite possibly more ‘offsite’ than ‘onsite’.  I thank those who taught from home each day through a computer screen and those who remained at OLA supporting our regular small crew of children of essential workers.  We worked hard to keep our children engaged and immersed in positive relationships with their teacher and their classmates.  Being back onsite in Term 4 brought great joy and made us all realise how heart warming the noise of a busy school full of laughter and learning can be. 

In more recent times I thank the staff for squeezing in so many events that had been postponed due to COVID.  This is inclusive of Bike Ed, All About Me for Grade 6, the Beach and Water Safety Program, the various Sacraments, Prep 2022 Transition Program, Semester 2 Reporting, 2022 Class Formation, Graduation, Advent liturgies etc.   We all look forward to the restful times of the holiday break! 

Amongst it all I thank the staff for supporting each other and for their ongoing care for our beautiful children. This level of care can be witnessed by the manner in which staff cater for the wellbeing of our children and importantly for their academic growth.    We have been most delighted to see that the collective efforts in the targeted delivery of curriculum positively impacting our children.    

We give thanks to a number of our colleagues and friends.    We thank Tom Perkin for his contribution to the OLA community.  We wish him all the best as he explores new opportunities for personal and professional growth in new educational settings. On behalf of Fr Alan, the staff and past and present children we thank him for his individual roles in developing the children that he has taught and cared for.   We also wish Francine Jorgensen all the best as she takes 12 months leave from her teaching duties at OLA, Marsha Van Cuylenburg who is taking maternity leave and Carrie Mulcahy who is reducing her days from 4 to 1 day in 2022. 

Thank you to each and every staff member, may your Christmas holidays be full of peace, joy and restful days. 

School Families

On behalf of the staff team I thank each and every family for your support for the staff and your children throughout the year.  I can only guess how the level of stress of homeschooling, with the added strain of high financial stress for many families, may have impacted on families throughout the past 12 months.   We thank you for working with us and for being beside your children in their learning journey.  

We can only hope that 2022 is a year in which your children celebrate their classes face to face with their teachers, as opposed to discussions centred on screen time, internet access, online learning, virtual assemblies etc!   

Enjoy a wonderful Christmas with your families and we look forward to you joining us again for the commencement of the 2022 school year. 

Children

We thank our children for bringing joy to our daily work.   

We congratulate our children on the level of resilience that they have demonstrated throughout a year in which they learnt from either behind a screen or in their classrooms.  They are to be given enormous credit for remaining engaged in both their learning and in their classroom friendships throughout the year.

I particularly give credit to our Grade 6 children who missed a significant amount of their final year of primary school.   These children missed their leadership opportunities, the opportunities to be involved in inter school sports challenges, at school assemblies and in their general role in school’s day to day activities.   We hope that their secondary school years are full of reward, great friendships and learnings that set them up for positive futures. 

We look forward to our Grade 4 and Grade 5 children stepping up to be our new leaders in 2022 and our 2022 Preps bringing their own sense of joy to our community.    

Parish Team

I thank Fr Alan for his ongoing support for our parish and in particular the parish primary school community.   We thank him for his efforts to ensure that our special school celebrations and the celebrations of the Sacraments could still take place amongst the madness of an ever changing calendar of events.   I thank all members of our Parish Team for their partnership with the school.  

A Personal Note of Thanks

My thanks to Gabrielle and Alicia for their daily support for myself, Caitlan, the staff and school community.   We thank Gabrielle and Alicia for their hours of work both on and offsite and for flexibility to deal with the ongoing changes that the year presented.    

I also acknowledge the work of Lee Vaessen and Mark Thredgold, our leaders in maintenance,  who continue to maintain our school site in an outstanding manner. 

Thank you to our Leadership Team who continue to model being good human beings, positivity and professionalism. Thank you to Josy for your lead and support in Learning and Teaching and for sharing your passion of meeting children’s individual needs in learning and wellbeing. And of course I particularly thank Caitlan Taig for her significant role of making OLA a better place to be for our children.  Caitlan’s passion for each child in the school is undeniable and her relentless desire to improve each child’s learning outcomes is inspiring to witness.   I thank Caitlan for her ongoing leadership, for the many unseen weekend and evening hours dedicated to the school and children, for our regular conversations centred on school improvement and of course for the good humour, the daily banter and for the balanced wisdom in a year where acting decisively and empathetically was of greatest importance.  Thank you Caitlan.   

Wishing all members of the OLA community a safe, relaxing & joyful Christmas. 

End of Year Gratitude

On Wednesday 15 December all classes participated in a reflective prayer walk followed by a prayer service. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect on the year that has been, our achievements and events that we have celebrated together. 

There were 12 photos stationed around the school celebrating events such as the swimming program, the installation of the Cumulus playground, returning to school after remote learning, Remembrance Day, Book Week and Zoom and Kahootz even got a mention! In amongst the craziness, we are so grateful for our amazing community and the support we have shared this year. 

Again, we hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and find some time to be together with loved ones. 

All the best. 

Richard & Caitlan