Assistant Principal / Leader of Pedagogy

The Importance of School-Home Connections

My article for this newsletter is all about the importance of school and home working together.  This includes reports, information nights, informal gatherings, emails, phone calls and shared agreements.

Today, the first report for each student in Years 7 to 11 will be released via Compass.  These Progress Reviews provide a quick snapshot of how each student is working in each class.  It is not an academic report that gives an indication of the achievement level for each student.  Rather, it gives an idea of how they have settled into a new school year in terms of their effort and behaviour.

Here is an example of a progress review.

Here is a link to this image.

In addition, we have just about finished the schedule of parent Information evenings for each year.  We have had a parent information night for each of the year groups, including Year 6 Parents.  In total, there have been six meetings.  The Year 10 Information evening has been rescheduled this week (Week 8).  It has been replaced with a Whole School Community Evening this coming Monday.  This is a new event for us where we invite the extended community to come into the college for tours.

I would like to thank all the staff and parents/carers for taking the time to get together for each and all of these meetings.  Every bit of information has been well received, and the conversations between teachers and parents have been so powerful.

There are many reasons why we run these information sessions.  Some parents may not see schools as welcoming places. We acknowledge that. “Parents, as well as many students, often view school as uninviting. This is particularly so for vulnerable families. There is an opportunity to build and strengthen the relationship in the current environment; helping families learn the language of learning will support ongoing connections.” (p. 18, Howes, Tse, Dawson and Quach. 2020).  At O’Connor, we work hard to build positive connections with parents and carers.  

The research is clear on this, when schools and parents/carers are on the same team, the learning outcomes for young people are high.  This is, of course, true for all types of learning: faith, academic and wellbeing learning.  When schools strengthen relationships with families, they can tap into the environment that has the greatest impact on students. This environment is where these young people spend most of their time in their early years: Their homes!  Thankfully, at O’Connor, this impact is almost always positive. Much of this positive impact comes from the values and attitudes that parents/carers have towards education. (Victorian Department of Education and Training. 2018)

Last year, we implemented a new student support framework called “Living Well, Learning Well”.  It is an outstanding document that holds some key values at its centre. One of these is the importance of all school staff maintaining a “universal and unconditional positive regard for children and young people.”  

Here are some of the images from the document that we hope symbolises the students at O’Connor.

We have all worked on “Rules for Living” in various year groups, KLAs and classes.  This can be extended to the homes and extended community environments of our students.  Here are the “Rules for Living” for families as partners in Catholic School Communities.

From page 19. Living Well, Learning Well.  A Student Support Framework for the Diocese of Armidale.  CSO Armidale. 2020.

Thanks for your support.  We, the staff at O’Connor Catholic College, love working with you as parents/carers.

Slides from last week's information session: Year 12 Senior Success.

 Thank you to those who took time our of their schedules to participate in  Week 7's information session for HSC Senior Success.  Here is the link to the slides.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oSroCg0iENPbd6RwyOI_9sKXW_euZzzQ/view?usp=sharing

There are many links in the slides.  Please spend some time looking through to gain the best understanding of what success looks like for Year 12, 2022.

References

Howes, B., Tse, J., Dawson, G., and Quach, J. (2020). Supporting Vulnerable Children in the Face of a Pandemic. Centre for Program Evaluation Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

Whelan, R. Et al. (2020). Living Well, Learning Well: A Student Support Framework for the Diocese of Armidale. Catholic Schools Office, Armidale

Victorian Department of Education and Training (2018). Priority: community engagement in learning. Retrieved from: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/management/improvement/Pages/priority4commengagement.aspx

Mr Stephen Chapman

Assistant Principal - Leader of Pedagogy

Never stop learning; for when we stop learning, we stop growing  - Jack Lewman