PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Principal - Erin Wright

Please note: The School Council has approved postponing the student free curriculum day that was planned for Friday 15th May until Term 4 of this year. Remote learning will continue as normal on this date.

STRIVE

What a term this has been so far, and definitely a term like no other that any of us have experienced, or hope to again, in our lifetimes. Although the need to engage in remote learning as part of the government’s response to stopping the spread of COVID-19 has brought many challenges for us all, it is important to look at the ‘silver linings’ where we can.

I am SO proud of all community members for your resilience, optimism and willingness to work together for the community. We have had minimal students being supervised on site which indicates that our families are heeding the government’s advice and doing all that we can to stop the spread through social isolating. The few students that we have been supporting on site whose parents cannot work from home or leave their child unattended, have been wonderful and we have formed some lovely connections to them as staff and they have to each other in their time here.

Our staff have all been working so hard. They care about the young people they work with deeply. They have shown nothing but a willingness to step out of their comfort zones, learn new things and adapt their home environments so that they can still engage with their students and do their jobs as best they can.

Our students have been engaging well with their morning mentor check-ins, submitting work and being positive about the new skills that they are learning and adapting to in this way of accessing their learning.

UNITE

Recently, we sent out feedback surveys to all students and parents in our College community. We thank you for the great response that we had, with over 430 students and 120 parent/carer surveys submitted. The College leadership team and wider staff have begun to consider this feedback and put into place some improvements based on suggestions that have been made. We truly do want to ensure that we are responding to the needs of our young people as best we can at this time. Please also remember to contact your child/ren’s mentor teacher directly if you have any concerns or need support. We have also been working on some nice ways to keep students and staff stay connected to each other and the community. Staff having been engaging in ‘COVID Cooking’ and physical activity challenges each week to keep ourselves connected and morale up. We have also commenced collecting donations for food through our local supermarkets and work in collaboration with Salvos Connect to use our kitchens to cook food for families in need. Social distancing, hygiene and cleaning requirements will of course be adhered to, but we are proud that we can use our facilities to give back to our community at this time.

RESPECT

It is important at this time to reinforce the importance of being respectful online when communicating with others. Our students have been exemplary in the manner they have been conducting themselves generally, but below are some resources that you may find valuable if needing guidance about appropriate use of online tools in your conversations at home. Students are still expected to be abiding by their SCSC Digital Learning Community User Agreement in this remote learning climate.

Bully Stoppers – supports parents, teachers and principals in working together to make sure schools are safe and supportive places

The eSafety Commissioner – the Office provides a range of up-to-date information and resources, coupled with a complaints system to assist children who experience serious cyberbullying and image-based abuse.

FLOURISH

The majority of our families and students are very fortunate to be able to support our young people to learn from home with internet and comfortable working environments. I would like to acknowledge the work of Acting Assistant Principal Andrew Brown who has been working with families who are in need of internet access support. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the families in our community that donated wifi dongles that you had at home but were not using so that others could benefit from them. It is still proving challenging to be able to order equipment to support additional internet access so these have been a huge help to supporting our families in need to have access to WiFi internet. DET have this week provided some additional resources, so Andrew will be in touch soon with any families that have not been provided with resources yet. If you do need support with accessing internet, please email Andrew at Andrew.Brown.2@education.vic.gov.au.