David's Message

Dear Sunshine Heights Parents and Carers,

First things first - a huge thank you to our parent and staff team who have been busy baking biccies, selling snags and crafting coffees for the election today. We are very lucky to have such an amazing and engaged parent community. Amy Moriarty did a great job of putting together the rosters, sourcing sausages and bringing it all together. Thank you also to all the parents who have donated products, time, resources, bread, onions or cans of soda. 

Next up, a few important dates. On Friday 9th May, from 8:15am, we would love you to join us for our Mothers and Special persons breakfast. Grab a free coffee, a danish or take part in our mothers day raffle. A few weeks after this, we have Twilight School on the first Thurday in June (June 5th). This is a special date in our calendar where we start the school day at 1pm, and finish at 7pm. During the day, parents are welcome to join us at any point to join in the learning, see how instruction is delivered at SHPS, and to keep the learning journey in our school transparent. More details will come out soon; Team Kids is available in the morning until 12:45pm for parents and students who need care. 

As you may have seen, we have some postcards for completion in the office as part of our review. One of these postcards "What is the point of Education" has caused a lot of rich discussion in our team; it really does touch on a point in our society as a whole about why we engage in formal education from the age of 5 all the way through to at least 18 years of age. Do we do this simply to gain the ability to get a good job? Is the point of life to work and earn money, or is there a deeper meaning to why we are doing all this?

For me, in answering this question about education, I do feel we have to examine the purpose of life. Each of you as a parent is with us because at some point you decided to have children. Our hopes and aspirations for our students are really important, and with our review upcoming, I wanted to share our key foci for your child. 

We believe that every child needs core learning that is guaranteed, in Reading, Writing and Numeracy. This means both the agreed knowledge, and the ability to practice and hone the skills in each of these core learning areas. Beyond this, we want to ensure that children have opportunities for diverse learning, from engaging with specialist lessons to magical experiences that allow them to discover passions and talents. We have captured this in the phrase "We are confident in what student must learn, and open to what students could learn." Whether your child has a talent already present, or an ability to find one in Sports, the Arts, Science or History; or if they have big wonderings and curiosities about the world around, we want to bring the sparks of inspiration to your child.

For our whole staff team, we would love to hear from you what your aspirations are for your child, and what is important to you? Is it the social or wellbeing focus of our school? Do you hope for more transferable skills such as organisation and communication? Or does it relate to community impact and being part of a global society?

Thank you to those parents who have already completed a post card, and we look forward to hearing from more of you in the coming weeks. 

Best wishes,

David and the Sunny Heights Team