Dear Parents,

Advent Season and End of Year Mass

Advent is a time of hope and joy, a time of patience and waiting. It is a time in our Church where we wait to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

The four candles represent the four weeks of Advent, and one candle is lit each Sunday. ... The second candle, a purple candle , represents faith. It is called the “Bethlehem Candle” as a reminder of Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem.

Last Friday we held our end of year Mass and Nativity.

It was a wonderful celebration of faith for all of our community. Occasions such as these surround our children in a culture of spirituality deep in the traditions of our Catholic story being shared with in a positive, hope- filled and joyous way.

Thank you to our wonderful Parish priest Father Michael Miles for his ongoing support and spiritual leadership of our school community.

Thank you to all the parents who participated. The positive culture we build in our community sends a very strong message to our students that they are loved, that they belong and that their education is of utmost importance in life.

A special Congratulations and thanks to our wonderful Preps for the Nativity. It was simply brilliant! They were supported by the 1/2 community. Something different has been happening in the grade 1/2 area each Friday. The children and their teachers have been enjoying singing, dancing and making music in their classrooms with Mary, a visiting Music Mentor.

St. Joseph’s is lucky to be one of the very first Catholic schools to participate in Richard Gill’s National Music Teacher Mentoring Program (NMTMP).

We have been so lucky to have Mary at our school this year to facilitate the program and mentor our teachers.

Student Leadership 2020

At St Joseph’s we promote our students being leaders their learning and developing agency where they can live out our vision, social expectations and values at St. Joseph’s and develop into the best version of themselves, growing, changing and shining.

We value building belief, trust and agency by providing our students with as many opportunities as possible to lead, shine and inspire others. We do this through a strength based approach. Our year 4/5 students participate in a leadership inquiry in term 4 each year reflecting on what disposition they need to lead and inspire others.

From this reflection students apply to be a part of a leadership team. All year 5 and 6 students have been placed on a team where they can work for the common good being respectful, encouraging and inspiring to others. We congratulate our 2020 leaders. Each team has an appointed leader who will encourage and inspire their team to collaborate to bring about a positive change in their school.

End of Year

We are heading towards the end of the 2019 school year. With many activities and end of year celebrations occurring it is timely to remind parents to place the following dates in the calendars and to try to come along and join in on all of the end of year celebrations.

Tuesday 10th December- Orientation Day - all students spend time in 2020 classes in the afternoon.

Wednesday 11th December- Junior Beach Water Safety Day

Thursday 12th December- Senior Beach Water Safety Day

Thursday 12 th December - Whole School Colour Run in the afternoon at school

Friday 13th December- Year 6 Graduation 1.30pm- everyone welcome

Last official day for students in 2019 class groupings

Monday 16th December - Fun Day for students in multi age groupings and Clean up Day

Tuesday 17th December- Fun Day for students in multi age groupings

Students finish at 1pm for the end of the 2019 school year.

2020 News

In our Parish we have three Primary schools and one Secondary campus. We work in collaboration with all of our schools. As the saying goes “Alone we are strong, together we are stronger!”. We are always there to support each other and at times this will mean jumping in to lend a hand when required.

St. Mary’s Hastings have a change of leadership in 2020 with both Principal Jason Micallef and Deputy Principal Treasa Barwick being appointed new roles in other schools. We congratulate Mrs Lisa Galvin on her appointment of Acting Principal. Currently all of our three Parish schools are implementing a new administration package. Consequently, I will be supporting St. Mary’s school one day a week for Term 1, 2020. Peter Whyte will be leading St. Joseph’s on a Tuesday for Term 1.

Prep News....