Mrs Ryan's Fortnightly Reflections

Time to Connect

Welcome back to term! It's hard to believe that we are in the final term of the year and we have 11 weeks of learning, fun and celebration to experience. The last term of the year is my favourite, firstly it is jam packed with excitement and celebration however it also plans for future improvements and for what is next! I hope to see many of you throughout the term as there are multiple opportunities to tune into the growth and learning that is happening at St Mary’s. 

This term we welcome the season of Advent. Advent is the time of waiting in hope! What a lovely sentiment to conclude our year, celebrate our Catholic community and actively give back to those in need. I look forward to sharing with you all some social justice initiatives that will hopefully care for our community during the time of Advent. 

This week your children may have come home sharing that we have changed our lunch time eating routine. At 1:25pm each day we now remain inside with our class group to eat and connect. This initiative is inline with our restorative teaching where we are dedicating time to connect and build relationships in our classrooms. Discussion circles, games, quizzes and shared stories may be items explored over eating. We recognise that many of our learners and families provided feedback on this initiative and were hopeful of us trialling this. Alongside the relationship building we hope to see a reduction of waste in our school and a more comfortable and calm approach to eating out of the elements. We are hopeful that parents will also support the decrease in waste by opting for Nude food processes. Can I ask that we send as much of our school food without packaging. Waste will come home to support sustainability and care for the environment in our school. 

The fourth term of the school year focuses deeply on staffing and teaching recruitment. St Mary’s has been actively committed to this for some time now. Annually, we experience an approximate staff turn over of 12%. We foresee a similar number occurring this year.  As many of you are aware we are experiencing a national shortage of teachers and this is impacting St Mary’s ability to employ staff also. The Victorian Institute of Teaching has shared that teacher registrations are already 12% down on last year. Our recruiting campaign will continue so please share our adverts on socials if you can. We are being as active and creative as we can! 

Half way through this term, our highly capable teachers will begin the process of classing for the 2024 school year. This process is data informed and guided by a student agency. The school's process will soon be shared with the community to provide you all with clarity of how and what is considered when placing your child in a classroom each year. 

A final reminder of the many events and celebrations that we can collectively look forward to this term. We have school camps, our bi-annual fete, Year 6 Graduation, the swimming program, Advent and a myriad of sporting events. With our external community we will also welcome Grandparents day, our Foundation Transition program and welcoming many new families starting their school journey here at St Mary’s. 

We can already sense the business of what is to come. The first week has been extremely settled! We hope that our start will continue and hope that a well balanced routine will support a successful school term!

Take Care & God Bless, 

Jasmine Ryan

Principal