From the Assistant Principal
BE INVOLVED, BE CONNECTED
Dear SMPPS families
Well, it has been a blustery, wet, cold week, but the rays of sunshine and blue sky in between are all the more appreciated as a result!
WELLBEING AND ENGAGEMENT UPDATE
The staff have been working through a range of professional learning this term including a review of the Child Safe Standards and Protective Intervention. In addition, the whole staff have now completed their two-yearly Anaphylaxis training and Sam (Ms Thompson) and myself have completed the Anaphylaxis Verifier training. We are working our way through the recommendations and updates regarding policies. As you will have seen from my Compass post a few weeks ago – we would like to review our practices around food sharing. ASCIA (Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy) who provide the training for the Department of Education advise not to have blanket bans as they provide a false sense of security and are impossible to assure, however we are reviewing what can be done in the realm of food sharing to minimise risk whilst still acknowledging the celebration of students’ special days.
STUDENT LED CONFERENCES
As you may have noticed, the bookings have opened this morning for these in Compass – it is a wonderful opportunity for your child/ren to showcase and celebrate their learning with you. We strongly encourage you to discuss this with your child/ren and make an appointment. It looks like this on your child’s profile when you login via a web browser and is likely to be a notification window at the top when you log in via a phone app.
CYBERSAFETY
The subject of cybersafety is an important one to continue revisiting. As always we encourage you to have open discussions with your child/ren about how to keep safe online and how to respond if something that makes them uncomfortable does appear on their screens. Importantly, please ensure you have full access to your child’s devices and ideally can monitor their usage whilst maintaining healthy, age appropriate boundaries. Children are always going to be curious, so openness and supportive understanding is always preferable to blanket bans or punishment. This greatly increases the likelihood that they will open up to you when something has gone wrong and avoids the shame and ‘blame game’ element. There are also a number of reports of very young students accessing sites that are quite scary and not always appropriate for younger children – Poppy Playtime being one notable one that comes up a lot. It is worth considering blocking access to certain sites or videos and definitely activating parental controls. No matter what we believe about our children, they absolutely have ways of getting around things and magically knowing your passwords.
For families interested in how to support your child/ren with some tricky conversations, Ms Abbott has alerted me to this excellent website with some tips very specifically for adults at home. It is not just about cybersafety, however this was a handy opportunity for me to share it.
https://amazingme.com.au/blogs/
SUPPORTS AVAILABLE
Another reminder about supports available – all families are ‘doing it tough’ right now. We have the family food stall every assembly but we recognise that not all families are comfortable accessing these items at this time. Please as mentioned previously, contact Sam Thompson for P-2 and Trish Wan for your needs and we can organise the most comfortable way for you to access additional food supplies. Moreover, State Schools Relief allows schools to place orders for free generic uniform items as well as $85 vouchers towards PSW (branded) items. If this is something that you would like, please contact us. The SSR has also got additional items such as shoes, socks, underwear, jackets and hygiene packs with toiletries. Please email Sam or Trish or the office if you need any items. Wait times vary as unsurprisingly the SSR have been inundated with requests.