A message from Denis

Dear Parents and Carers, 

I hope you are all adjusting well to the cold Melbourne weather we are transitioning to.  I must admit, I am not doing so well!   We are not even in winter yet and I am already struggling with the cold and early dark evenings that we are encountering.  The only saving grace for me is our new fireplace in our house. It has been great to sit beside it and relax at the end of a busy day/week.

We are at the halfway point of Term 2 with lots of great learning having been undertaken so far at St Mary’s.  It has been great to hear feedback from many parents and students about how they are loving learning in our new Creativity and Innovation hub; learning in the areas of STEAM and Visual/Creative Arts.  The engagement, enjoyment and learning from our students has been impressive and very pleasing to watch.

Be Ready 2024

My example of Be Ready for this newsletter comes from the many families and prospective students that I have been meeting that want to start Foundation at St Mary’s in 2025.  The year before starting school is a huge year of preparation for parents and their children.  Students work on developing their independence with tasks such as getting ready in the morning, feeding themself lunch and recess and toileting.  They work on their ability to listen in group settings, sit and attend to tasks, socially interact and navigate friendships and conflicts, regulate and understand their emotions, develop their fine and gross motor skills…….the list goes on.

In the end, it is difficult to be fully ready for such a big transition; but with effort and intention, great progress can be made towards being as ready as they can be.

STEAM Day

What a great day St Mary’s had last Thursday on our inaugural STEAM day.  With a number of our staff out sick, I had the wonderful opportunity to take on one of the STEAM activities and teach two different groups of students on the day.  We read an inspiring book about collaboration, conflict, construction and creativity called Boxitects.

We used that as inspiration to construct some creative and cool buildings.  Each large group split up into smaller groupings and constructed a piece of the larger scale end product.  At the end of the sessions we came together and merged the smaller constructions to make our final group creations.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to get out of my meetings and get back to teaching, it was a lovely reminder of why I love this job so much.  I will try and sneak in some opportunities to teach over the next few weeks.

Thank you to our dedicated staff, parent volunteers and our Deputy Principal Olivia Hodgetts for her organisation of the day.  She definitely nailed the Innovation brief of her portfolio on STEAM day.

Review and Closure day

Last week on our closure day our staff worked at scoring ourselves and gathering evidence of these scores on the School Improvement Rubric.  These scores and evidence will; be submitted to our external reviewers who will look over the evidence and give our school a final mark and feedback on areas of strength and areas for future improvement.

There are five spheres in the SIF rubric:

• Learning and Teaching sphere
• Religious Dimension sphere
• Leadership and Management sphere
• Wellbeing sphere 
• Community sphere

We look forward to the review process and developing our next four year School Improvement Plan to help us on our journey of improving St Mary’s.

Building repair works update

I have received the final engineering report and initial scope of works for the maintenance and b building that needs to occur on our Roseberry St building.  The works are more significant than previously anticipated and as a result, the costs of the works are also higher than anticipated.  I am working with our Finance Business Partner and MACS planning and infrastructure to work through the task of financing and scheduling the required works.

I will provide more updates as they become available.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay connected,

Denis Johnstone 

Principal