Mrs Ryan's Fortnightly Reflections

At the end of last week St Mary’s closed along with eight other schools from the Northern Plains Cluster. The eight Catholic Schools from Sandhurst gathered in mass, dinner and learning to celebrate our Catholic story, connection and purpose as educators. Gathering in faith and spirituality is an integral component of our professional learning and completing it together allows us to be supported by high quality facilitators and CES staff to nurture our faith formation. We focussed on the CES theme of, Behold, I make all things new (Revelations 21:5). We were invited to think about and engage daily in the opportunity to be all things new, reset all things new, start all things new. It was a relevant message for all. I would like to thank you all for the alternate arrangements you made to allow the staff such a  rich learning experience. 

Over the term St Mary’s has been extremely grateful to have such a generous following of support from our families, parents and carers. It is truly a reflection of the value and partnership in education when our families come to school to celebrate our many successes. This has been evident in the number of parents, family members and carers that attend our liturgies, masses and assemblies. Thank you for your engagement and commitment to our learning community. As in all learning communities, and learning experiences, they are not always successful, nor run to the plan. Last week our assembly was less than wonderful and an area where we as a whole school are striving to improve. There are many factors to consider when our learning experiences do not go to plan, however I wanted to assure you all that we recognise the mistakes as learning opportunities and are striving to better our interactions and behaviours while in such big settings. 

Following on from explicit teaching and support when we are striving to improve behaviours, St Mary’s has a weekly focus as a whole school, called ‘Ramp It Up.’ Our Ramp It Up focusses, are for the whole school and are identified as a need from the collective staff. Moving forward, we would like to share our Ramp It Up focus with our parent and carer community, to further strengthen the partnership in learning and to explicitly share with you our expectations and focus areas. Over the past week, we have had a Ramp It Up on our uniform, reminding our learners what is acceptable and what is not, and how to wear it proudly. Next week, our focus will be our language and how we speak to one another. All staff support the focus, reminding and affirming greatness with collective house points.  This information will be shared with our families weekly on the St Mary’s Weekly Update shared on Compass. We look forward to family support and cooperation in this initiative. 

For the last two days our Year 5 and Year 3 learners have eagerly tackled NAPLAN. They have so willingly had a go at Literacy and tomorrow Numeracy! The classrooms have been settled, calm and well attended. It is only a moment in time in our learners lives however as a school we do use and value the data that it provides and we use it purposefully. This year our learners again completed the testing online, this will allow a faster turn around in data. Families and the school should expect data around July this year. We will keep you well informed. 

Yesterday the leadership team spent the day taking a deep dive into whole school data sets. We explored and analysed school engagement, student voice, social and emotional well being along with literacy, numeracy and overall Victorian curriculum progression points. The learning, focus and alignment to school goals was hugely beneficial and insightful. St Mary’s whole school direction, resourcing and professional learning all supports school improvement and progressive learner outcomes.  Early next term our School Advisory Board will be educated on our explicit improvement agenda, as well as you the school community! Exciting times ahead. 

A reminder to any remaining families yet to complete and update their child’s medical profile via Compass. It is imperative that we have current and up to date information annually. Also, if families have any other personal information to update such as; change of address, contact details or permission to photograph, please send your changes to info@smechuca.catholic.edu.au at your earliest convenience. 

In the following pages you will find our invitation to our Welcome to 2024 Family BBQ, please complete the RSVP for your attendance. We will have some fun activities available for the children, prizes from our Easter raffles and a visit from the Easter Bunny. I look forward to seeing many of you there! 

Take care & God Bless, 

Jasmine Ryan 

Principal