Dear Families,

Over the last weeks since our Holy Father's passing, I have had time to reflect on the life of Pope Francis. As the principal of St Joseph's Catholic Primary school, I have reflected on our school values of Strength and Kindliness in light of Pope Francis' service and in the time he was our Pope from 2013 to 2025.

Pope Francis emphasised the importance of both strength and kindness in leadership and living a virtuous life. He believed that true strength comes from a strong moral compass, coupled with the ability to be compassionate and gentle. He frequently highlighted the importance of kindness, empathy, and love in both personal relationships and in addressing global issues like poverty, injustice, and climate change.

Pope Francis' own life and teachings exemplified the power of kindness and strength, inspiring others to embrace these virtues in their daily lives. He encouraged individuals to choose love and make a positive impact on the world.

We need people like Pope Francis in our world, people who help guide us and remind us of what truly matters. Pope Francis was a voice for the voiceless and a champion of social justice. He stood alongside those who were often forgotten, and his gentle leadership touched hearts around the globe.

At St Joseph's, we have prayed for Pope Francis and spent time discussing his message and the values he stood for, values we hold close in our school community. His compassion, humility, and deep care for others continue to inspire us. We join with others in mourning his loss and in honouring his enduring legacy of love, kindness, and hope.

As the leader of our Catholic school, I am especially moved by his example of leadership, one that was grounded in service, simplicity and deep humanity. He showed the world that true leadership isn’t about power or status, but about love, mercy, and walking with others. In the end, only kindness matters.

On Monday, many people from our Catholic schools and parishes attended the Solemn Pontifical Mass for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis at St Patrick's Cathedral. It was a very special opportunity to pray for and mourn Pope Francis and to give thanks for the life and service of our Holy Father.

Prayer

As Easter people and people of prayer may this be a time for each of us to grow in our relationship with the Risen Christ.

Let us pray for Pope Francis, may our Lord carry him into the warmth, love, mercy and light of your presence.

We pray to the Lord.

Let us pray for the whole Church as she joyfully celebrates the resurrection of the Lord, Archbishop Peter Comensoli and all the clergy, and for all God’s holy and priestly people. We pray to the Lord.

Let us pray for the cardinals, who will soon gather to choose a successor. May they continue to listen to the Holy Spirit and hear God’s call for the future.

We pray to the Lord.

Let us pray for all nations and generations, to whom Christ’s resurrection offers the fullness of salvation; for peace throughout the world and in the Holy Land, and for those who are experiencing natural disasters and violence.

We pray to the Lord.

Let us pray for our school and parish community, as we commence Term Two, may they gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, nurturing faith and the call of God for all who seek God’s guidance in their lives.

We pray to the Lord.

Sad News

This week one of our staff members, Karen Redenbach, lost her dear Mum. Karen's Mum passed away on Monday night. On behalf of our school community I know you will join me in keeping Karen and her family in our prayers and thoughts.

May perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace.

ANZAC Commemoration Service for our Senior Students at the Shrine of Remembrance

On Monday 28th April, our senior students joined hundreds of other primary and secondary school students from around Victoria for the Legacy ANZAC Commemoration Service at the Shrine of Remembrance.

Our Year 5s and 6s have helped to keep the Anzac spirit alive by commemorating the sacrifices made by the brave men and women who have served our country.

Honorary guests and dignitaries who were in attendance addressed the students, and the students had the opportunity to watch the Defence Force Cadets, school bands and choirs, and the RAAF fly-over.

After this special service, teachers and their students were invited inside the Shrine of Remembrance to view the Shrine Crypt and Galleries of Remembrance.

Our wonderful Year 6 students Callum, Stella and Bridget shared their reflections of this Ceremony at our assembly this morning. You can view the other senior students reflections in this newsletter.

Election Day Tomorrow- Saturday, May 3rd- Vote at St Joseph's

There is certainly a buzz in their air at St Joseph's! We look forward to enjoying a wonderful day of fun and community spirit!

Tomorrow, our school will be hosting the AEC, and voting will take place in the Parish Hall. On this day, we will be holding some special events within our school grounds. Some highlights of the day will include:

Sausage BBQ
Drinks Stall
Bake Sale
Coffee Cart
Cubbyhouse Canteen- thank you, Narelle (Navy's Mum)
Face Painting
Petting Zoo
Ice Cream Van
Children's entertainment- A visit from everyone's favourite blue heeler!
A St Joseph's Information Stand
Children's Voting Stand
School Tours
Live Music

Please bring your families along to vote at St Joseph's. Please also invite your extended family and friends. This will be a great opportunity to have some fun and to support and promote our school!

We thank all of our community for your support. There is a wonderful buzz in the air. What great community spirit!

Some behind the scenes helpers as we have prepared for Election Day at SJM...

And a special thank you to all the families who supported us with our Bake Sale. Everything smells and looks delicious!

Next Open Day at St Joseph's- Tuesday, May 6th

Please encourage any families you know who are looking at a school for 2026 and beyond to book a tour with us at any time or to attend our next Open Day on Tuesday May 6 from 9am to 11am.

Enrolments for 2026

It is always very exciting when we begin to look forward to our enrolments for the next year. With our Open Days running over the next few weeks, we are beginning to plan for 2026.

Thank you to the families who have been in touch with our office to let us know that your child will be commencing Prep in 2026. If you have not done so as yet, we request that you please make contact with the office as soon as possible to make sure we have your child enrolled for next year. It is very important that we have this information as soon as possible. Thank you!

Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram

Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook: Search 'St Joseph's Primary School, Malvern'

Instagram: Search 'stjosephsmalvern'

The more you like, comment and share, the more we raise the profile of our amazing school!

Annual Action Plan for 2025

Each year schools have goals that are a focus for the year. These are the four goals that we will be focusing on this year at St Joseph's

To improve student achievement in Spelling in Years 3 and 4 through explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, orthography, morphology and etymology.
To improve student achievement in Writing, particularly sentence structure and single-paragraph construction in Years 3 to 4
To improve student achievement in Mathematics, particularly place value, in Prep and Year 1
To improve our Catholic Identity for non-teaching staff and families.

We look forward to sharing our progress in these areas across the year.

Term 2 Learning Overviews- Class Dojo

The Term 2 Learning Overviews for each class have been posted on the Class Dojos today. Please look out for these and have a good read of them so that you are familiar with the learning that will take place for the term as well as any events particular to that class. If at any time you have individual questions or concerns about your child, their wellbeing or their learning, we are here to support, so please reach out to the teachers in person or via their email.

Junior Joey's Playgroup

Our amazing Ms Stacey has our Junior Joey's playgroup back up and running! What a wonderful start we had on Monday. Junior Joeys will run each Monday from 9am to 10am in our multipurpose room. If you have a young child from 0-5 years please come and join us. It is a great way to make friends and help your children make connections in a supportive and welcoming environment. We look forward to seeing you there!

Friday Disco Fun

St Joseph's on Friday at lunchtime is the place to be! We are so grateful to Ms Georgie Carman who organises our Friday lunchtime disco. Here you can see our students lining up to give Ms Georgie their song requests that they then dance away to with the music blaring through the school playground. It is always fun when we hear this on a Friday afternoon!

Our School Assembly

We thank your school leaders for leading our weekly assembly and congratulate all or our STAR Award recipients. And we wish each of our birthday children Tanti Auguri for this week!

Principal Awards for Community Service

It is with great pleasure and privilege that I honour the students who attended the Easter raffle with their families at Coles to raise money for our school. I thank the following students for the way they greeted members of our local community so politely, encouraged them to purchase raffle tickets, they spoke so enthusiastically about our school. I thank you for your commitment and for raising money for our school.

Holly, Alice, Harvey, Annabelle, Grace, Isabelle, Luke, George, Edmund, Ivan, Oliver, Chloe, Eliott and Frankie!

These children were presented with certificates at our school assembly today.

Dendy District Cross Country

Congratulations to all of our students who participated in the Dendy Cross Country this week. We thank Ms Christie Birch for all of her work in organising this for our students. More information to come in next week's newsletter.

Congratulations Callum and Evelyn!

We are so proud of our two superstars Callum and Evelyn!

On Thursday, Callum represented St Joseph's in the 12/13 boys 50m freestyle final at the School Sports Victoria (SSV) State Swimming Championships held at MSAC. He has previously won this event in the 9/10 and 11 age groups, and yesterday he placed second in a very close race. He swam beautifully, recording a time of 29.75 seconds and breaking the 30 second barrier for a second time. This was an incredible achievement to make the podium again this year and we are immensely proud of him!

Evelyn also had an amazing day, representing St Joseph's at the SSV District Cross Country and placing 1st in the 9/10 girls. She set up her race beautifully from the start, and finished incredibly strong. She was supported by our senior school students whoheer her on as she raced down the hill towards the finish line! This is her first SSV medal and she is so excited to progress through to Division later this month!

We thank Ms Christie Birch for her support with the SSV swimming and Cross Country events who is heavily involved on race days and supporting behind the scenesto make these very positive experiences for Callum and Evelyn. Thank you Christie!

Congratulations Cooper!

As most of us know Cooper loves playing soccer, and earlier this year he was one of 11 children across the state selected to play for the Melbourne Victory Academy, where he travelled to the Gold Coast and spent a week of his holidays playing in this prestigious tournament. Not only did Cooper represent Melbourne Victory, but their team went undefeated scoring 70 goals, which is more than any team in every age division, and came away winning the tournament!

A week later Cooper's soccer team, Broxham Academy, then played in the finals last weekend for the JSL (Junior Super League) tournament, which had been a build up of playing teams across the state over the last 2 months. Incredibly, Cooper’s team ended up also being undefeated and won the tournament!

Cooper’s has show great persistence and a consistent effort with his training. He trains and plays 4-5 times a week, and sometimes he’s played 4-6 games in one day!

We congratulate Cooper on his achievement!

Interschool Sport

Our senior students commenced interschool sport today. They participated in both netball and football. We look forward to hearing more about this over the coming weeks!

Parents and Friends - Mother's Day Lunch

Mother's Day Breakfast & Liturgy- Friday 9th May

Next Friday we will have our annual St Joseph's Mother's Day Breakfast at school from 8am to 9am. All mums are warmly welcomed. This will be followed by a very special Mother's Day Liturgy in the hall run by our beautiful Preps at 9am. Mums please bring your tissues. You are in for a treat!

Uniform Reminder- Extended Transition

As the weather is still looking quite nice, we have extended our transition to Winter Uniform for another week. Next week the children can wear either their Summer or Winter uniform. From Week 4, the children will be expected to wear their Winter uniform. It is so wonderful to see our students wearing their uniform with pride.

As we change to our Winter Uniform it is timely to communicate a few gentle reminders:-

Please ensure your child is wearing the correct uniform on the appropriate days
Correct shoes should be worn with the correct uniform (ie school shoes with academic uniform, runners with sports uniform)
Hair accessories in the school colours
Jewellery should be simple and appropriate for school
No nail polish or fake tattoos
No other jackets, hoodies, etc other than the school uniform

Thank you to parents for supporting this so that we can continue to maintain our high standards.

Sustainable Uniform Shop

Today our wonderful parents Angela, Annie, Simone and Bryony ran our Sustainable Uniform Shop. With the beautiful weather they had a very successful morning, raising a total of $1639 which is amazing! We appreciate the work they do in sorting the second hand uniforms, washing them, ironing and labelling them. It is quite a lot of work and this benefits our community so much. Thank you for supporting them and our sustainable uniform shop!

Child Safety- New Security Entrance

Our new security gate at our main entrance is almost done! We hope to have this completed early next week. It is very close! In the meantime, the front gate will continue to be locked. Please contact the office during school hours for access. Once again, this is a great example of the way we prioritise the safety of the children in our school community. A huge thank you to our P&F for your support with this.

Family School Calendar

Here is the link to our family school calendar so that you can keep up to date with school events across the year.

https://www.sjmalvern.catholic.edu.au/mevents

Upcoming Dates and Events

Election Day Voting at St Joseph's - Saturday 3rd May
Open Day - Tuesday 6th May
Sacrament of First Eucharist (Year 4) - Family Information Night - Thursday 8th May at 6pm
Mother's Day Breakfast - Friday 9th May at 8am
Mother's Day Liturgy - Friday 9th May at 9am
Mother's Day Lunch (P&F Event) - Friday 9th May at 12pm
National Reconciliation Week - Monday 26th May to Friday May 30th

Staying connected...

If, at any time, you have any concerns or worries about your child's wellbeing, learning, or friendships, please do not hesitate to have a chat with your child's teacher as your first point of contact. If you have other concerns, please feel free to touch base with our wonderful admin team, a member of school leadership, or myself. For more serious concerns, I encourage you to please reach out by either making an appointment through the office to see me, or contacting me directly via email.

I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for our exciting community event!

With warmest regards,

Annabelle Marinelli

Principal

annabelle.marinelli@sjmalvern.catholic.edu.au

St Joseph's Mother's Day Lunch

SAVE THE DATE - 9th of May 12-4:30pm