Acting Principal's Message

Winter has definitely arrived! I know it can be very tricky as a parent to get your children to wear their winter clothes (jumpers or pants), please attempt to negotiate at least one of the items. Or put the jumper in their school bags and we can attempt to get them to wear them later in the day.

The staff had a school visit day last Wednesday where we toured Merri River and Warrnambool East. This was a lovely opportunity to see how the other schools run their behaviour intervention (School Wide Positive Behaviour Support) and Nurture programs. We had a tour of both schools first, asking questions along the way. We were also able to see some of the focus items in person. We spent some time in the afternoon documenting what we noticed and any wonderings we had. We will revisit these into term three to see what changes we might be able to enact or elements we can put into place after our visit. One item that we are going to enact instantly is how we communicate our SWPBS behaviours. If a student is suspended moving forward, we will provide the student and family a copy of the major and minor behaviours flowchart so students can see where their behaviours are fitting. We will also send home a copy of the expected student behaviours matrix that shows clearly what behaviours we expect to see where. We will also be revisiting a suggestion after a suspension for students to spend some time out of the school yard, completing some emotional regulation learning before returning to regular play timetable. This is still only an idea at this stage, we will continue to work on what this might look like for the future.

Mrs Eales will be on Long Service Leave for the remainder of the school term as well as for the first week back of school. We have some casual staff moving in and out for the coming month. We will be reminding our children to use our school value of Resilience when dealing with this change and showing Respect to our visiting staff. 

Thank you to Megan and our school captains who went down the Reconciliation week event hosted by the local council. The captains represented George street beautifully, displaying respectful listening to the aboriginal elder (auntie) hold a smoking ceremony out the front of the PAC. Well done, Livana and Memphis.

As some of you are aware, the Recruitment process has commenced to appoint a substantive principal of George Street Primary. This job is being led by the school council and school council president. The community will be notified when this process has been completed. 

We have been able to welcome back Mr. Barker. The students and staff have been very excited to see him back amongst the school. He is returning to teaching prep, one and two from Tuesday to Friday.