Principal's Post

Dear Families,

Thank you to all the parents who joined us for our Father's Day breakfast and the amazing P & F team behind the scenes making sure the mornings breakfast celebrations and Father's Day stall ran seamlessly and was a great success. We hope all the Dads and Father figures enjoyed the gifts on Sunday morning.

Thanks to Michael & Julie Allen from Mad Dog Coffee and Rick & Caleb from Harringtons coffee van who kept our Dads pleasantly caffeinated all morning. Special mention to Camp Australia for sponsoring one of the coffee vans.

Raising Resilient Children

Last Wednesday evening, we had an overwhelming turnout to Maria Ruberto's presentation. A full Community Centre, including staff and parents from St John's were completely captivated by her warm and wise presentation. Maria discussed the rise of anxiety in children aged 6-19 and the increased disengagement levels in school, and what worries both parents and children in 2024. Maria conducted a thought-provoking exercise asking parents to consider what we would like our 27 year old children to become.  Our collective hope for our adult children is captured below:

She also spent time talking about 'The Mood Meter' and explaining that if your child can verbalise, describe and label what they are feeling, they are less likely to act it out. 

Maria also stressed the importance of failing and learning from it, experiencing and growing from adversity and fostering mental fitness in your child.  It was great to have some useful strategies regarding self-regulation and co-regulation, and plenty of things to think about in regard to how we parent our own children. I commend the large number of parents who made the effort to attend this valuable session. 

St James Art Show

The Art Show will commence on Thursday 12th. Viewing days and times are as follows:.  

• Opening Ceremony 
  • Thursday 12 September 2:30pm 
• Viewing Times
  • Thurs 12 & Fri 13 Sept,  3 - 4pm
  • Fri 13 & Mon 16 Sept, 8.30 - 9.15am
  • Sun 15 September, 10am - 12pm

Tickets for the Art Show can be purchased via the CDF Pay App. Tickets are $5 per family. 

Please continue to look out for further Art Show information via the school newsletter.

Parent - Teacher Learning Conferences

Our Semester Two Parent and Learning Conferences will take place on Thursday 19th September from 3:40pm - 7:00pm and Friday 20th September from 8:30am - 10:00am in-person and 10:30am - 11:30am online.  Learning Conference bookings and information will be sent to parents/guardians this week. Please keep an eye out for this.

Volunteers Needed Please

We still need volunteers to cover some library books. Jo has prepared book bags in the library. Everything you need to cover them is included, so you can cover them at home and drop them back. If you have some time, please grab a bag of books to cover. It would be greatly appreciated.

School Hats & Sun Smart 

Hats are back on! From September 1st, all students are expected to wear their school hats when outdoors during breaks and learning times. Please ensure that your child's hat is labelled. Our 'No hat, no play policy', ensures that students are protected from the sun's rays if they don't have their hat at school to wear. 

Book Swap

Our annual book swap has been moved to tomorrow, Tuesday 3rd September, so those children wanting to participate can still do so.  Children can bring their books to the library and place them in the levelled tubs. 

Marathon Club

Please note that Marathon Club will not run for the rest of the term. Rest up and be ready to lace up those running shoes in the 2nd week of Term 4.

MACSSIS Surveys

Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools – School Improvement Surveys (MACSSIS) will be conducted during 28 August – 15 September 2023. We are asking all families to take the 15 - 20 mins required to fill out the survey and provide us with feedback about many aspects to our St James school community. To encourage all families to complete the survey, we will be offering children a free Friday treat (paid for by the school) on the final Friday of Term Three. 

Emir will send home a link to the surveys with an individual family login code tomorrow, Tuesday 3rd September. 

The surveys are totally anonymous and while we can see the completion rate we cannot see individual results at all.

Parish Fete

Have a great week,

Dave