From the Principal
Benvenuto - Welcome
Dear Parents and Carers,
The last couple of weeks have bought with them lots of opportunity to reflect on the CES Ltd theme for 2024 – ‘Behold, I make all things new!’
It was great to be a part of the La Trobe UniGames initiative this week. We have an ongoing relationship with La Trobe University who come to visit us each year to work with our students in Year 7-9. The visits aim to build awareness of what is available to students beyond school in the local area, what university can offer and sharing some of the experience of what it is to be a university student at La Trobe. We are very grateful to the team from La Trobe for continuing this partnership. We are lucky to have a wonderful careers team here at the college who work closely with our students in understanding pathways, making connections and supporting career planning. If you would like to see more of the work in the careers space, you can check out the fantastic google site the team have put together. This is accessible under the Learning and Teaching tab on the college website. Contacts for careers are:
Naomi O’Connor noconnor@sackialla.catholic.edu.au
Belinda Gleeson bgleeson@sackialla.catholic.edu.au
We had our final session of participating in the One Tree Per Child initiative through the Greater Shepparton City Council. This is a program the council have committed to since 2017 and is a great community and sustainability initiative to be a part of St Anne’s College is committed to building community partnerships and ensuring our students have the opportunity to connect and engage with organisations within the community to build their sense of civic citizenship and belonging in the broader community of Greater Shepparton.
Last Thursday all the Principals and some Deputy Principals from across the Sandhurst Diocese met at the Woolshed to hear and learn about a new initiative for Sandhurst schools over the next four years. Kate Fogarty, Executive Director of Catholic Education Sandhurst Ltd, shared the vision for the next four years - ‘Magnify Sandhurst.’ This is a initiative to address school improvement as a multi-school system, aimed to lift and shift outcomes for all students in the diocese with the mantra of "every student, every teacher, every school, every day". After exhaustive research into the evidence of what works, (and what does not work) the diocese has invested significantly in partnering with five national and international organisations to make a difference to the learning outcomes of our students. The following organisations are part of this partnership:
Learning Made Easy Global (Jared Cooney Horvath) we have partnered with Jared to ensure a significant ‘leap forward’ in our organisations understanding of the neuroscience of learning. Learning more about how the human brain learns and develops is integral to better understanding and being able to effectively respond to the needs of the students we teach and support.
MultiLit in partnering with MultiLit, an organisation with over 30 years of expertise in enhancing reading skills through explicit instruction, we will implement a system-wide Structured Literacy Approach in line with the recommendations of the recent Grattan Report – The Reading Guarantee. In committing to this evidence informed practice, our aim is for students to be more confident, well-resourced and capable learners with a solid foundation of Literacy skills.
OCHRE Education is a non-profit organisation committed to enhancing student outcomes through high-quality, evidence-based curriculum resources. This access to low variance, knowledge-rich curriculum will assist educators to free up time to focus on responding to individual student needs.
Knowledge Society is an organisation working within the space of evidence-based practice in creating positive learning environments. We will be working with Dr Tim McDonald in developing a comprehensive behaviour curriculum bespoke to CES Ltd.
Steplab will be accompanying us on a journey of developing a Sandhurst Instructional Coaching program for educators, led by prominent Australian educational leader, Ollie Lovell.
This is such an exciting time for education in Sandhurst, for me personally, I would have loved the opportunity to lead the community through this initiative and celebrate the success I am sure that it will be in improving learning outcomes for our students, and for students across the diocese. I will be watching with much anticipation throughout the next three years.
There will be a formal launch of the program at the beginning of 2025, but for now there will be some teachers accessing professional learning in preparation for the launch throughout Term 4. Families will also get a communication in the coming days to share some information regarding professional learning days in 2025.
With the weather so lovely today and sunny days ahead for the weekend I hope you all have a lovely weekend. To those who still have teams in finals for soccer, AFL, netball or other sports activities – the best of luck to you all. No JOY left for me in the finals series with Kyabram FC bowing out across the board last week and the beloved Bombers not getting up for a finals berth in the AFL competition, I suppose there is always next year!
Susan Carroll
Principal
