Welcome Back

It has been an exciting three days of 'Welcome Back’ – each day with a different group of students and a slightly different set of hopes, expectations and anxieties.

We hope that you enjoyed seeing all the colour and smiles in Monday’s video (click here) as we welcomed back our Preps and Senior School students… so many happy faces, socially distanced catch-ups and air high-fives.

On Tuesday we were excited to have the return of Years 1/2, 5/6 and 8 classes. The Year 8s enjoyed the fact that they were the ‘top of the tree’ for the day.  Year 5/6 visibly relaxed seeing friends ‘IRL’ (In Real Life!) and one comment from a Grade 1 student was “I’d forgotten that Mr Read looks different than he does in Zoom… but I got used to it.”  We also filmed some of the morning festivities and included them in our instructional ‘Welcome Back Tips’ video (click here) – with increased student numbers it is really important that we all understand protocols and safety during pick up and drop off.

Wednesday morning we were out with cameras in hands to document the return of Years 3/4 and Year 7… plus the Preps again too. We hope that you enjoy the photos in this newsletter – just another way that we have been able to capture the small moments in such a large event for our school community.

Parents, can I encourage you to do something in a few months time? Hopefully, when all of life settles back into something more certain and your family feels comfortable with ‘normal’ (however that will look), can I ask you to sit down with your kids and re-look at some of the videos and photos of this time. As a school we have been very purposeful in creating these as little ‘time capsules’ – specific and positive ‘ways in’ to what has been a pivotal and disquieting moment in our world.

Whether it is our ‘Messages of Hope’ snippets, our ‘Whole New World’ parody, teacher bloopers on Class Dojo, or the excitement of ‘Welcome Back’… please use these ‘time capsules’ to start conversations, to highlight the resilience of our community, friends and families, and to know that our loving God can work in us and through us no matter the circumstance.