From the Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

What a magnificent term it was once again at Golden Grove Lutheran Primary! Our term commenced with an Anzac Day Service in the Worship Centre for our Year 3-6 students. We were pleased that members of the 7th Australian Army Regiment and the Australian Army Band, as well as Mr Malcolm Fergusson, President of Tea Tree Gully, Mr Ray Shillabeer, a member of our Golden Grove congregation who also served in the Vietnam War, and Mr David Thiele, representing Endeavour College, were able to join us for this special service.

Our class carers ran a wonderful Mother's Day Stall for the students, and we enjoyed a special Mother's Day Worship Service on Friday 7 May. We are grateful for our Class Carer's Network, as well as for our Parents and Friends who ran an amazing Middle of Term Breakfast this term with lots of delicious pancakes available. 

Our 3/4 students enjoyed a camp at Aldinga Beach, whilst Years 1 and 2 travelled to Monarto Zoo for a great experience there. National Simultaneous Storytime was a big hit for all of our students and our inaugural Colour Run (also generously supported by our P & F) was a special highlight of the term. A number of our staff team as well as Theodore Newman and his dad were a part of Walk My Way in the Barossa Valley. Both Walk My Way and the Colour Run were initiatives in support of the Australian Lutheran World Service helping primary school-aged refugee children in Africa to receive an education and we were overwhelmed by the support received from our school community. 

We also enjoyed our first Old Scholar's event with an under 18s reunion being held at GGLC Youth Group, and Date Night was well received by many of our school families! As a school, we also marked National Reconciliation Week through a range of activities led by Mrs Zadow. 

Our school has received a $6000 Federal Government grant to engage Walter Brooke architects to develop a new buildings and facilities master plan for our school. We have had some preliminary meetings with our architects as School Council have engaged with this process and we look forward to sharing some initial concept plans with our school community shortly. The soft fall in the junior primary playground has been resurfaced as part of a State Government Capital Grant that we received and we are thankful to Kuno Berghout for his efforts in researching this project and bringing it to fruition. 

We are delighted to welcome back Mrs Melissa Bishop who is facilitating our Wakakirri rehearsals this year. We are so pleased to be able to offer this program for students and it has been a delight to be a part of rehearsals and to see the planning and practicing of our school item taking place. 

Evelyn Donoghue has been appointed to our School Counsellor role for the remainder of this year from a competitive field of applicants. We are delighted to welcome Evie into our school community and pleased with the way that she has begun to work closely with a number of students, staff and families already. 

This term also saw a large scale upgrade of our ICT systems at the school with the NBN being connected and fibre optic cabling installed to all learning spaces along with a new WiFi network and firewall. We are seeing great benefits from this work already, with our download and upload speeds now reaching up to 900 megabytes per second. 

A number of our students proudly represented our school at SAPSASA Touch Football and Football and the number of teams that we are fielding in basketball and netball competitions each week continues to grow. Our school was also involved in DaVinci Decathlon, an academic challenge that extends students, for the first time, as well as the Australian Mathematics Olympiads. A number of students are continuing to enjoy the Children's University programme, and are broadening their horizons through a number of cultural activities to grow their learning. 

We enjoyed working collaboratively with students and our school families on building the learning of our children, particularly through the Student-Led Conferences in the final week of term. 

As the term concludes, there are a number of staff to acknowledge, especially Mr Bob Baskerville on his retirement. Bob has driven one of our school minibuses each morning and afternoon for the past six years and we wish him all the very best for this next chapter in his life. We are blessed with both the care of the students and the skilled way in which Bob drove the bus to transport the students safely. Bob's good humour and open disposition are greatly valued by our school community. Mr Martin Meinel had been managing our ICT for one day each week on secondment from Endeavour College for the past eight years. Marty has done much to build up and progress ICT in our school over that time, as well as keep it all running smoothly. We are thankful for Marty's extensive ICT knowledge and friendly demeanour as he continues full time at Endeavour and we welcome Mr Bailey Winterford to our school as he steps into this role. Mr Luke Napier has been a valued member of both our school and church communities for a few decades now and we wish him every blessing as he takes long service leave over Terms 3 and 4 to travel with his family. Luke has given much to our community and we pray he enjoys a very well-deserved break before returning in 2022. Mrs Natalie Clark, an experienced teacher who has worked in a number of Lutheran and Christian schools for some time, will replace Mr Napier in 5/6N for the remainder of this year and we warmly welcome her to our school. 

Our Connected Schools Reconciliation Action Plan continues to progress speedily and the collective staff professional learning day is planned for Wednesday 30 June at Endeavour College. We also have a staff spiritual retreat planned for PD week, as well as some professional learning in supporting students on the autism spectrum and in ICT and the use of the Office 365 suite. 

We are grateful for the dedicated volunteers on our School Council, led by Mrs Genevieve Freund, and for the efforts of our entire staff team who are a very dedicated and caring group of professionals. I am particularly grateful to Mr Tim Kriewaldt for his amazing efforts as our Deputy Principal as he is simply invaluable. 

Likewise, we are thankful to each of our school families for the way in which we are able to partner together to provide a nurturing and stimulating education for each of the children. We wish you every blessing over the winter holidays and look forward to sharing an exciting Term 3 together. 

Blessings,

Will