Message From Our Principal

Welcome To 2023

The feeling around school over the last two weeks has been a lovely mix of calm and excitement. It has been heart-warming to see all of the smiles on faces and listen to stories of exciting adventures that occurred during the break. It’s also been amazing to see how quickly the students have slipped back into the morning routine of school, including reading to an adult. 

On the return to school, all the children were met with engaging, comfortable and vibrant learning spaces to help them quickly feel at home and ready for a new year of learning. Thank you to all staff who have spent lots of time prior to school beginning to ensure the learning spaces were inviting and ready for the children’s return.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to our sixteen new Foundation students, which includes 8 new families. We hope they will quickly feel part of our school community. We look forward to getting to know you all better and welcoming you into this special learning community. There is something about being part of this small community that can’t really be described until it has been felt, but it is both a joy and a privilege to be part of St Patrick’s community. 

There will be no school on Monday the 13th of February. This is a Curriculum Day for teachers to be involved in Literacy professional development. 

Introducing St Patrick’s New Staff

This year we welcome two new teachers and three Learning Support Officers to St Patrick’s primary school. Here is a little information about each of our new staff members (from left to right in the photo):

Dani Dodman joins our school community as a Learning Support Officer. This is the first time she has had employment in this field and she is super excited. Dani is the mother of two small children and residents in Moama.

Miss Jaleigha Hart  joins St Patrick’s as a graduate teacher. She is a familiar face to the school community as she has worked as a Learning Support Officer for the previous two years. Jaleigha’s greatest passion is to encourage students to strive to be their best, as well as being a great role model to students. This year Jaleigha is teaching Grade 1-2.

Nikeya Haw is a local Tonny girl who has recently completed her high school education. This year she is completing a traineeship through The Apprenticeship Factory. 

Kate Nicholds joins St Patrick’s as a graduate teacher. This year Kate is teaching Sport as a specialist teacher. She is super excited to be teaching sport and working closely with our visiting coaches through the Sporting Schools Program. 

Mrs Annaliese Crosbie has been working at Mansfield Autism School for the last four years. She comes to us with a wealth of expertise in the area of autism. She also comes to us with decades of teaching experiences across all of the primary school levels. This year Annaliese is teaching Grade 3-4.

Abby Van Haaster is a familiar face to the Tongala community as she has worked at the Tongala Kindergarten for the previous couple of years. She has worked in the field of early childhood education for over 10 years. She is a mother of two teenage children. Abby joins our school community as a Learning Support Officer. 

I know that we are all really excited to welcome all of these amazing women into the St Patrick’s community.

It's been lovely to see so many students wearing our new school uniform, it looks fantastic!!

The Grade 6 students at St Patrick’s Primary School are celebrating an exciting year ahead! With one more year of primary school to go, these Grade 6 students are showing great leadership skills for the younger students of the school and a determination to continue to learn in preparation for Year 7. To celebrate the Grade 6 leaders, they received their specialised Grade 6 t-shirts.

This year we have an exciting buddy program happening at St Patrick’s. The Grade 5-6 students are developing their leadership skills through this program. They gave their Foundation buddies a toy sloth, helped their buddy name it and made a name tag for it. The buddies will use the sloths throughout the buddy program this year! These fluffy sloths will be company for the Foundation students during their first year of school. 

Our staff, students and families  were excited to get the 2023 school year underway, especially due to the newly renovated classrooms and revitalised gardens. A special thanks to the team at  Heads Up Irrigation & Landscape and the amazing staff who spent many hours preparing our school for the 2023 school year. We are really lucky to have such amazing education facilities in Tongala. 

Over the past 12 months St Patrick’s Primary School has developed a strong partnership with Catholic Care Victoria. This term we have continued this partnership with the implementation of the DRUMBEAT program. The name DRUMBEAT is an acronym for Discovering Relationships Using Music, Beliefs, Emotions, Attitudes, and Thoughts. DRUMBEAT is a structured learning program using music, psychology and neurobiology to reconnect with ourselves and others. This program will be implemented once a week for the whole of Term 1. 

Thank you to all of the families who attended our Welcome BBQ on Wednesday. It was wonderful to see so many families in the school yard. We are definitely a very social bunch, which was obvious in the interactions and overall buzz within the group. Our next planned whole school gathering is our beginning Year Mass, celebrated on Thursday February 16th. We look forward to see you all there!

Call for nominees for our School Advisory Council…

Are you interested in taking a more active role in our school? 

Are you keen to offer advice, support and engage in strategic planning with the Principal of our school? 

Are you committed to ensuring that our school is a place that is open, inclusive and welcoming? 

Are you able to help build community amongst our parents and the local Tongala community and advocate for our school? 

Do you have some great ideas for school improvement, future planning and school review? 

Do you have gifts, talents, passions or skills to share? 

Are you willing to support the Principal in the operational leadership of our school? 

The School Advisory Council operates as the main consultative and advisory body in the school. We meet once a term and gather at a time of day that suits most members. We can be flexible. We share ideas, something to eat and drink as we work together to ensure that our school remains the amazing place that it is, now and into the future. 

If you are interested, please contact Jackie or Kieran Brennan, the School Advisory Chair. We will be meeting for the first time this year in the coming weeks and we will notify our community of our 2023 Advisory Council Members in the next newsletter. 

The teachers have begun preparing for their PSG meetings and Learning Conversations in a couple of weeks time. This is a great opportunity to meet with your child’s teacher and discuss how your child has settled into the new year. It is also a chance to work together to establish specific learning goals for your child. There will be an email in the coming week regarding booking a meeting time. For those families having a Parent Support Group (PSG) meeting please reply to the email that Emma will send next week.

These learning goals and the strategies that will be used to achieve them will be recorded on PAM/SIMON Everywhere. This in turn means that families will be able to access this information about their child using PAM or the SIMON Everywhere App. We will notify you when you are able to see your child’s goals.