Education in Faith
Drawing together leaders and teachers to enliven the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Religious Education and Catholic Identity for schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
As mentioned in Mr Ru's From the Principal Page, he and I were very fortunate to attend the MACS RE Symposium this week. Titled Inspired by Faith, this was two massive but very valuable days. We gathered with around 1000 of our colleagues from around 600 different schools and parishes in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
Through this symposium were a number of special guest speakers including Most Rev Archbishop Peter A. Comensoli, Br William Short OFM, Prof Br David Hall fms and many, many more!
There was a wide range of interesting discussions and sessions led by leaders and world known experts in this space, which was truly valuable for Mr Ru and I to take part in. We are after all life long learners! Completing Professional Development like this allows us to continue to grow as leaders and educators, and we look forward to passing these new ideas, initiatives and more down to our staff and students. We are given the ability to see the most up to date research and work of experts in the field of Religion, but also more general education and working in schools.
A very, very brief snapshot of some of the concepts that we were briefed on include:
- Fostering Engagement in Religious Education.
- Neuroscience and the brain development of our students.
- The Eucharist as a Call to Action.
- The new Religious Education Curriculum currently being built.
- What are they really thinking? The impact of Social Media and the Internet on students.
- Sacred Spaces in our Schools.
We look forward to continuing to pass on concepts we have taken from these two days, including in this newsletter so keep an eye out!
The Sacrament of First Eucharist 2026
We look forward to celebrating the Sacrament of First Eucharist in the coming week with many of our Year Four students, and ask that you continue to keep these candidates in your thoughts as they embark on their preparations.
As always students have been doing a thorough and reverent job of this, and they will be very ready for our Sacrament on Sunday the 9th of August.
As part of these preperations our Year 3/4 students have been embarking on a unit of learning titled Jesus and Scripture.
They have begun the term by unpacking life in the time of the Bible, and how it was very, very different to modern day!
Our class has quickly decided that language barriers aside, jumping in the time machine to a time where Jesus and his disciples walked in cities such as Nazareth and Jerusalem, would still be very eye opening. Both for us and anyone of the time we might try to talk to!
In thinking about the things we might talk about with people of this day, one of our students even asked if Paper-Scissor-Rock had been invented at this point. We had to do a bit of research to find it was not yet a thing! How fun and interesting to unpack!
Further through this unit we look forward to exploring the links between the Sacrament of Eucharist and the events of the last supper, as well as how we celebrate Eucharist in our contemporary Mass.
God Bless!
Tim O'Mahoney
Education in Faith Leader