Dear Members of the St Raphael’s school community,

Our thoughts and prayers extend to the people of Afghanistan. The recent news reports and horrific images of desperate people trying to flee persecution has been deeply disturbing. It is a reminder to us all that whilst we are experiencing another lockdown and tighter restrictions, there are people who are far worse off than us. We give thanks and gratitude for the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy in Australia as a democratic country. We pray for peace in Afghanistan for the people, particularly girls and women, to live freely without fear of draconian laws being enforced on their civil liberties.

Once again, we find ourselves in another extended lockdown throughout Melbourne. We appreciate the difficulty and disruption that these lockdowns cause to your family, home and working situation. Most importantly, we must take care of our family and friends during this time.

Our school staff have adopted the word 'Connection' as our theme for this extended lockdown period. We continue to try and connect/ engage with our children on a daily basis but we must also ensure that we provide self-care and remind ourselves of the importance of continuing to connect with colleagues, families and friends during this dislocated time. We know that many of the children are experiencing difficulty with being disconnected from their peers and teachers. As adults, we also need to be prepared to reach out to others if we require personal support. As always, the School will continue to support all children and families throughout this difficult time and I encourage any parents who may need additional support or assistance with their children to contact myself or their child's teachers for advice.

I would like to pass on my gratitude to all parents who have been sending positive messages of support to myself and the staff. Your messages are really appreciated at this difficult time and give all of the staff a great lift as we try our best to give your children the best online learning experience. It is at times like this that we pull together as a school community. We will get through this if we stay positive and supportive of each other.

Stay safe everyone.

Remote Online Learning Parent Survey

As a school, we endeavour to make this remote learning experience as positive and productive as possible for the children.

I would like to thank the 99 respondents to our recent Remote Online Learning Parent Survey for your suggestions, feedback and positive affirmations on how we can improve this time for all.

The school’s leadership team met on Monday and analysed the feedback and suggestions for improvement. These suggestions were then divided into each year level, and the staff worked through this feedback at yesterday’s staff meeting.

As a result, commencing tomorrow, each year level will implement some changes to the timetables and structures. Some changes include more opportunities for children to socially interact and focus group work with support from our Education Support Officers.

I have asked the teachers to communicate with you about any changes specific to your child’s year level.

Many of these changes and initiatives will be optional but directly respond to your feedback from the survey.

As you would appreciate, everyone’s circumstances are different, and these changes reflect the common themes that have emerged from the feedback. It is impossible to implement all of the suggestions. Still, we hope that these changes will enhance the experience for the children and provide parents with additional support during this time.

Attached are the survey results. In addition, I have included the Question 11 comment feedback as a separate document and, for privacy reasons, have blanked out the names of children, teachers and year levels.

The feedback from the survey questions include:

An even spread of respondents from parents of children across all year levels
33% of respondents say children are motivated to be online each day, 33% sometimes and 33% of children are not motivated to be online.
82% of respondents say their child is engaged or somewhat engaged in their online learning.
54% of the parent respondents are working from home.
79% of parents say they can give their child support all the time or sometimes.
80% of the respondents say their child needs assistance or some assistance.
83% say that two uploads per day are adequate.
83% responded that their children can access the Google Classroom platform for learning tasks and Zoom links.
82% say their children enjoy Wellbeing Wednesday.
84% of parents indicated that the school's processes and procedures are adequate/ exceptional in meeting the learning needs of the children.

Skoolbag Communication

A reminder to all parents to please keep checking the Skoolbag App notifications. The use of the Skoolbag app is the best way for the School to effectively communicate with parents of any necessary updates and correspondence during this time.

National Book Week

We look forward to celebrating National Book Week next week with your children. The theme for Book Week is ‘Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds’. Even though it will be strange celebrating Book Week online, we encourage you to join in with reading with and to your children next week as we celebrate the wonder of literature.

With the theme of this year’s Book Week, it may be a great way to engage friends or family (grandparents?) using an online platform to read to your children their favourite picture book or an excerpt from a book. As a staff, we have decided that when we can all return to on-site school that we will be celebrating Book Week as a whole school community with some great ideas, activities and initiatives planned for the children.

Whole School Assembly

We look forward to seeing all of the children at our whole school assembly this Friday 20 August at 1pm. All parents are welcome to join us.

A Zoom link for the assembly will be shared in your children's Google Classroom page.

SPICE

Connecting Online