Message from the

Director

Dear Colleagues, 

Last week I had the privilege of being involved in two special events. On Monday evening I attended the CSNSW Primary School Sports Award and on Thursday and Friday our assistant principal and leader of pedagogy professional learning days. These events both celebrated our system of schools and our achievements.

CSNSW Primary School Sports Award

A wonderful tribute to our friend and colleague Gary McSweeney at last night’s inaugural CSNSW STATE Sports Awards in Caringbah, Sydney. It was an honour to present the Gary McSweeney Awards together with Gary’s children, Georgia and Jack. 

From the awards program:

“The Gary McSweeney Award is presented to the most outstanding Catholic Primary Schools Sportsperson of the year for male, female, and multi-class. 

It is the most prestigious award given at the NSWCPS Sports Awards night.

Gary has been a significant influence in Catholic students being able to compete against Government and Independent schools. We would not be able to provide the pathways we do now, without his guidance, support, and commitment to Catholic School sport. 

Gary’s involvement in Armidale Diocesan Sport, NSWCPS, and NSWPSSA was instrumental to so many students and educators over the years. In 1996, Gary commenced his membership with Catholic Schools Coordinating Committee (now  Catholic Schools NSW Sport) and took the first Polding Athletics team to a NSWPSSA carnival. This was the first event that Catholic students were able to compete in.

Gary was the Senior Vice President for NSWPSSA, and was the President for School Sport Australia. 

It is with great sadness that we lost Gary this year, however his legacy is incredible, paving the way for all students and staff to fulfil their potential as athletes, administrators, and good-hearted individuals. 

It is with great honour that CSNSW Sport name the awards for the most outstanding athletes across all of NSW Catholic Primary Schools in his honour”

Congratulations also to  Molly Ramien, St Xavier's Primary School Gunnedah and Leeroi Stokes, St Philomena's School Moree who won State Maroon Awards; Molly for swimming and Leeroi for rugby league. My sincere thanks to Heidi Hardaker for the wonderful work she does leading the Armidale Diocesan Primary Sport Council.

Assistant principals and leaders of pedagogy professional learning 

It was my privilege to present for the last time on leadership and school improvement to our wonderful group of assistant principals and leaders of pedagogy from across our school system at Armidale Bowling Club last week.

We discussed the various strategies that we have used to promote system and school improvement using the following diagram that I developed:

Whilst our focus is always on faith and instructional leadership, we discussed the importance of reflecting on the style of leadership we employ. Our success as leaders is strongly related to how reflective we are about our leadership style, and our understanding of the strengths and challenges of different leadership styles. We did a jigsaw activity in table groups to consider the article which can be found at the link below, and compared the leadership styles:

• servant Leadership
• transactional Leadership
• emotional Leadership
• transformational Leadership

https://blog.youragora.com/school-leadership-styles-which-one-are-you

My thanks to the assistant principals and leaders of pedagogy for the great work they do as members of their school’s instructional leadership team.

Best wishes, 

Chris