Dear Parents / Carers,

I am pleased to inform everyone that Mrs Bamford underwent surgery on Tuesday morning and is on the path to recovery. The many messages of support from members of the school community have been truly appreciated by Mrs Bamford.

I am sure families will join me in welcoming to our school, Ms Catherine Ford, who is undertaking a Principal shadowing placement at Rowville Primary School.

We are really excited to have our Coles Stud Park store partnering with Rowville Primary School and look forward to seeing the great things to come out of our partnership.

Coles Stud Park has provided our school a donation of $5,000 which will go towards the installation of a glass house for our Stephanie Alexander kitchen. On Wednesday morning, our student leaders attended the store launch and were presented with a novelty cheque. In a forthcoming edition of the Friday Program, our students will be interviewing the sustainability team at Coles to learn about the Coles sustainability journey.

This morning we officially thanked Mrs Jodie Wood for her contribution at Rowville Primary School. Jodie was appointed ten years ago, to help establish the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program at Rowville Primary School. Over the last decade Jodie has welcomed hundreds of parent volunteers into the kitchen and has instilled in our students a love of cooking. Jodie has been on long service leave since the start of the year and her family are planning on moving interstate. We wish Jodie and her family all the very best for the future.

We are pleased to welcome Mrs Kari Haddon to Rowville Primary School. Kari is both a qualified Chef and Teacher. Our students are thrilled that our cooking classes will be recommencing next week.

Please find enclosed the latest edition of the Friday Program for you to enjoy with your family. This is a program where the content is developed by our students.

https://youtu.be/2haPiLPzLzo

Teachers have reported that by the end of tonight the majority of parents will have participated in the parent teacher interviews that were conducted via WebEx last night and again tonight. What contributes to student success in academic learning? Our students have learning goals that have been co constructed with the teacher. If we are to learn something, then we need to be motivated to learn about it in the very first place and one way of creating this interest is to be involved in setting the goal. There is no short cut to success. We need to practice and work hard at whatever goal we have set for ourselves.

When we see success in others, it is often tempting to attribute this to just natural ability. For example, the classical musician named Mozart could transcribe a piece of music after only listening to it once. This success came after many hours of practice. By the time he was six, Mozart had played 3,500 hours of music. His father was his mentor who guided and encouraged him to practice.

High achievers have an internal drive to succeed. They have fire in the belly to go above and beyond the minimum and to be great. They have sheer determination and passion for what they are doing. Our role as educators and parents is to encourage our children to do their very best and provide the type of feedback that instils a sense of self belief in them as a learner and builds their skills as a moral and ethical citizen.

Anne Babich

Principal

Rowville Kids Cafe