dear families and carers,

Wow, what a week. It has been simply wonderful seeing children return to school so optimistic, happy and settled. Congratulations to you all for helping so much with this transition, preparing your children getting ready for this significant transition. It has been truly lovely seeing so many of you over the fence!

Preparing for the return to school.

Last week we held two Family Forums, one Foundation and one Junior Forums. These provided an opportunity for staff to provide important information to families while simultaneously encouraging families to ask questions and to give feedback. One session was facilitated by Tanya Pittard, and one by Anthony Atkinson. Both of these were recorded and then sent out to all families who were unable to attend the sessions. Both sessions were highly successful and provide a model for us to use, especially if we can't have families onsite.

While we had initially planned on holding similar meetings during the week prior to the Middle and Senior students returning, the early return to school of grade 3-6 students as determined by the Victorian Government, resulted instead in the teachers using teleconferences to address students’ feelings, while working with families to ‘get ready for the significant transition’.

Staggered starts

We empathise and understand the decision to stagger the return to school was challenging for some parents, in particular parents of grade four and five students who had three additional days of remote learning. We acknowledge it may have induced anxiety and concern within households who felt as if they have no further resilience left to undertake the juggle. We are sincerely sorry for this impact.

I want to assure everyone that at all times our focus was on the wellbeing of our students. We strongly felt that the Foundation to Grade 2 students needed at least two days to transition back to school with additional adult support from teachers and ESS. We then wanted both Grade 6 and Grade 3 students to have the opportunity to return and have a day with a smaller cohort. The Grade 4 and 5 students then had the same opportunity to spend their first day back at school with only their cohort in their classes.

Grade 6 students in particular have missed significant milestones and rites of passage. We understand how worried parents are feeling about their grade six students; finishing primary school in three months and moving to year seven next year. They are facing a transition to new schools, with new student cohorts. We are looking at activities that can be undertaken this term to support Grade six students and their families. And we are actively looking at how we can make graduation special for them and parents.

In saying all of this, I’m happy to report that the return to school was highly successful and overwhelmingly provided a calm pathway for all children. This now lays the foundation for us to be able to resume the ‘real work’ of schools and that is of face to face teaching and learning. People are very welcome to speak with either Hannah or I if you have further questions or concerns.

Term 4 priorities

The Department of Education has three priority areas, which are forming the basis of all of our work:

Priority 1 – Mental health and wellbeing.

Priority 2 – Learning

Priority 3 – Transitions

An example of our approach to priority 1 was the whole staff meeting facilitated by Deb Robins, Faith Kelly and I. This whole School wellbeing professional learning approach includes the following 4 key elements of returning to school:

Time to process
Co-create community
Normalise the challenge
Encourage positive emotions

Significantly these concepts apply to all community members.

Each team determined strategies to address these elements, while also considering signs of children being vulnerable and requiring additional support. Please read the attached documents:

Or go to the following link for further information:

https://is.vic.edu.au/blog/how-to-come-back-three-things-every-school-can-do-to-successfully-return/

Parking Inspector – Moreland Council

From Monday, the council are sending parking officers to the areas around our school. Please ensure you are no:

double parking
parking over driveways
parking illegally.

This is an opportune time to remind everyone about the importance of Covid safe behaviours to reduce congestion. Please park away from the school and either students walk and meet families there or parents walk to the school. We don’t want anyone being fined and we certainly need everyone safe!

STELA Update.

Exciting times ahead. The contract has been awarded and final preparations are being made! As is in the case in Victoria in general, COVID restrictions need to be observed. We have our fingers crossed that we’ll know more about a start date after this Daniel Andrews announcement this Sunday.

In the meanwhile, we are so excited to be working with our architect as we has some additional funds available to dedicate on our old building! This will significantly improve the integration of the new build into existing buildings while bringing our beautiful and historic building into the 21st Century. Very exciting indeed.

Lunch clubs

We are thrilled to commence the lunch clubs again, from next week. We are also opening the library for the rest of this term each lunch time so that children have a quiet space available to them. Please see the attached Lunch Club timetable and discuss this with your child.

Covid & Food

I must say, I am guilty of using the phrases ‘Covid calories’ and ‘Covid curves over the past few months. In fact I’d say that for many of us, they’re quite common phrases. Attached is a brief article sent from one of our families (Food Education in Covid Times). I found it very interesting and since reading it has already impacted on my awareness and consequently choice of language around the whole Covid and Food space. I’ve shared this with our staff and I thought you might find it interesting too.

One last beautiful thing…

Thank you Deb for this! Here is The Great Realisation which is a poem that has now been published as a children’s book, about the silver linings of the lockdowns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4

Take care,

Wendy White

food education in covid times

“As Victoria gets set to head back to school on Monday, some of our bodies might have changed. Our eating habits in iso might have changed. Teachers, your students’ bodies might have changed. Please don’t comment on their bodies or their lunchboxes. Teachers please don’t comment on your own weight to each other and especially not in front of the children. And parents, as you gather by the school gate, please don’t comment on your own or others’ weight. And yes jokes about jeans not fitting are being negative to our bodies.

Our society tries to make us believe that what we weigh is indicative of our health status and it is not. Weight, health and eating all have multiple influences. They cannot be assessed by a simple glance and then compared to society’s incorrect ideas of health and body size.

Now many of us would like our bodies to be different, heck I’d like to be taller, and that’s okay. It’s more about accepting our bodies (be positive if you want but neutral is just fine). Let’s try and focus on what our bodies can do (today mine cleaned the house and hugged my children) instead of what we wished they looked like. It’s hard and takes thought and general reminders to yourself.

And please stop commenting that weight loss is a good thing (as it is not always) and that weight gain is a bad thing (it is not necessarily).

I often think...how can we complement each other on things other than weight and external appearance? Maybe on our effort? On our kindness? What do you think?

Do we want our children to be obsessed that their body’s are not right for them? Do we want them to change their bodies? Or do we want them to understand that we are all different and all look different. To be comfortable in their own skin?”

Source: Foost, a social enterprise company based in Melbourne, creators of Positive Food Education.

The Nor'Wester

Issue 29 · 16 Oct 2020

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