Celebrations and Highlights

Celebrations 1: Staff

As a team, we love to celebrate each other, and this has been evident as we have delighted in the news that our Deputy Head of Primary, Catherine Fernihough, and her husband Matthew are expecting their first child later this year. We give thanks to God for His provision and pray blessings over them both as they prepare for a new season as a family.

Celebration 2: Parent Partnership

For our parents, our Head of Innovations, Brendan Deith, facilitated a fabulous Cyber Safety evening last Monday. I thank him for his passion, his preparation and his presentation of some invaluable information for our parents to consider and apply at home with their children. 

Here's Brendan's summary of the evening, beginning with this comment from a parent:

I went into the night convicted by the truth of Proverbs 22:6 “Start children off on the way they should go and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.” 

I left the night convinced that the DCC community is deeply committed to ensuring the online safety of our children and that we are ready to do battle with the tech giants who think otherwise.

A huge shout-out to the members of the parent panel: Lindsay Spence, Gaya Pedris, Wayne Chau, Sam Ringwaldt and Emma Ku who all shared openly about their family’s cyber journey so far. The top three takeaways from the evening included:

• Have regular conversations about technology with your children. Sometimes these conversations are as a family, other times we need to tailor the discussion to each child if there is an age difference. It’s also important that we acknowledge the online struggles adults face.
• Bedrooms are strictly ‘device free’. According to esafety.gov.au, “one in three teens say they are on their phone at night when their parents think they are asleep.” Furthermore, children and teens are more likely to be cyberbullied or encounter online predators when alone in their bedrooms (cyberbullying.org).
• Have a family technology agreement. Example agreements can be found on esafety.gov.au, thinkuknow.org.au and raisinghumans.au 

Empower your children to make the right choices and encourage them when they do. Get them to do some research for a family holiday, new car purchase, or a family project.

Let’s keep this conversation going!

Brendan Deith, Head of Innovations

If you would like a copy of the slides from the night, please email Brendan at Brendan.Deith@donvale.vic.edu.au.

Celebration 3: Student Learning

There is much to celebrate as we continue to learn and build relationships in our vibrant Primary school. There are multiple learning moments that are noteworthy, with our staff working hard to build authentic learning experiences that engage our students in moments of critical and creative thinking across the Primary school. It is both exciting and encouraging to see young people wondering at the goodness of God as they learn about His world.