Ryan’s Rambling
Dear Families,
On behalf of our incredible school, please allow me to extend my warmest welcome to 2025! This may turn out to be our best year yet.
I wish to pay particular attention to our new families who are joining us for the first time. Dana Street is a vibrant community school, where we value to opportunity to work collaboratively in the incredibly important and complex endeavour of educating the next generation. I personally look forward to making strong connections with you all and partnering with you over the course of your time at our school.
I am especially proud to welcome our new Foundation students, whom began their primary school journey yesterday. They have risen to the daunting task of entering a new school with such gusto! The bravery and tenacity that each of them has shown over the past two days has been quite inspirational. Our Grade 6 buddies have also enjoyed taking on an important leadership role with our Foundation students.
It is an exciting time for Dana Street Primary School, as we begin to implement our new School Strategic Plan. Much of last year was spent on our Strategic Review, which enabled the development of our new plan. Whilst we had much to celebrate with regards our achievements, it was time to look at which direction to take our school into the future. We are excited to be embarking on this new endeavour. In its most simplistic form, our goals for the next four years are as follows:
- Increase the number of students who are achieving the highest levels of NAPLAN in Numeracy and Writing
- Maintain our very high results in Reading
- Improve the sense of connectedness our students feel towards our school
- Improve the reported levels of Resilience from our students
- Improve our attendance data
Our Assembly will continue to operate every Friday morning in the SLC, from 9:00am. This morning, our School Leaders did a fantastic job of hosting their first Assembly of 2025. During the Assembly, we spoke about the importance of having a good Growth Mindset and that mistakes are learning opportunities in disguise. We welcome parents and family members to our weekly assemblies to join us in celebrating our students’ achievements.
This year we are lucky to welcome back Kate McMillan and Brooke Cowan, as they both return from maternity leave. Kate and Brooke are job sharing one of our 3/4 classes. We also welcome Leah Canavan to our Education Support team. Leah began work with us this week and has already endeared herself to students and staff. Finally, I am really pleased to welcome back Kim Crosbie, who has returned after some personal leave. It has been wonderful to have Kim return to us and I know the students have missed her dearly.
On Tuesday we have our meet the teacher and Welcome Picnic evening. Thank you to the many parents who have already registered for the afternoon. We encourage families to attend with a picnic dinner and ‘be in the moment’ together as a community. This year, we will not be conducting any formal speeches or holding any official ceremonies. If you are new to us, it will be a great opportunity to forge new relationships with other parents. I look forward to seeing you all there.
It’s going to be warm next week, so please remember to send your child with a full drink bottle and wide brimmed hat each day.
Finally, I cannot help but feel a strong sense of optimism about the year ahead. As always, my door is always open and I look forward to your partnership and support in 2025.
Have a fantastic weekend.
Ryan 😊