A message from Denis

Dear Parents and Carers, 

Welcome back to our families and students to Term 4 2024.  We are now two weeks into the busiest term of the year and hasn’t it gone quickly?  I hope that you all had a good rest and break over the Term 3 holidays.  It has been great to hear about the getaways and fun filled days that the students experienced over this time.

I was able to ha e lots of time to focus on my favourite thing, being a dad.  As Jess works across the holidays, it is holiday dad time on the school break in the Johnstone household.  This holidays I took up the challenge to minimise screen time at home and so Hendrix, Zadie and I had some great adventures across the two weeks.  We did Werribee Zoo (they have a new baby Rhino), Melbourne Zoo, the Aquarium, the movies, multiple parks, bike rides and outings to kick the footy and shoot hoops.  We made and created things including a dragon themed marble run and went on a quest through highpoint to find marbles; no mean feat but we did find some!  

All in all it was a great break and I return to Term 4 energised, excited and uplifted for a great final term of 2024.  After the first couple of weeks back, I can see that our students and staff are too.

Building Update

I spent some time over the holidays meeting up and walking through trades on site to ensure we are best situated to begin our refurbishment of the Roseberry buildings on schedule and on budget.  We continue to be on target currently and I am looking forward to the next month where we can lock in a builder and subsequently a timeline.  I will be able to communicate any impact to classrooms coming at the end of the year once we have a schedule outlined.  As previously mentioned, I am working hard to ensure that there is minimal impact to teaching programs. 

St Mary’s Networking Lunch

Last week I had the privilege to attend my first St Mary’s Networking Lunch, a terrific event well organised by St Mary’s Father’s Association.  The event offered terrific speakers in a great venue with delicious food.  I was particularly impressed with Olympic Silver medalist’s Christian Ryan and host Sarah Jones's conversation about the Olympian’s experience in preparing and competing in an Olympic Games which is the focus of my Be Ready entry for this week.

Be Ready 

Most of us have had to prepare and Be Ready for a competition of some sort over our years.  But there is no preparation like an Olympian’s and where the phrase Be Ready takes on a whole different life.  Christian Ryan talked about the 4 years (minimum) of preparation that goes into competing at an Olympic games.  4 years at minimum that is all over in a five minute rowing race, for good, bad or other.  There are hours, upon days, upon weeks of training, dieting, sacrifice and preparation that all boil down to one five minute race.  And if you do not win, there is nothing else.  A silver medal is by any measure an amazing achievement, but if when you have given up four years of your life for the chance at Gold, a Silver medal is cold comfort.

The dedication, discipline and beliefs that must be built up over the four years is an extraordinary skill set that Olympian’s can take into their ordinary post Olympic life.  A truly impressive group of humans, making the term Be Ready an inspirational call to action.

Fiesta 2024

A huge thank you to our amazing Fiesta Team who continue to put in a power of work to organise and get the 2024 Fiesta ready to go.  It was wonderful to have such a great turnout at our last Fiesta meeting and look forward to seeing more volunteers join the efforts to make this Fiesta a great one.  A special thank you to Sarah Connolly who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to have our Fiesta preparations on track. Along with Tom Connelll our co P&F presidents supported by an amazing team of volunteers have been doing an amazing job in organising what promises to be a wonderful community event for St Mary’s.

A reminder that we are looking for item donations as per yesterday's Audiri post and we are still taking donations for our silent auction and raffle.

If your business can offer a donation of either goods or services that could be used for raffle items, silent auction and spinning wheel, we would love to hear from you.

To donate simply complete the google form at https://forms.gle/LefiwqW5Bcr422JM7 or email us at sponsorhip@smascotvale.catholic.edu.au 

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay connected,

Denis Johnstone 

Principal