From the Principal 

At St Mary's we hold the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people as a central and fundamental responsibility of our school. 

We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Boonwurrung – as the Traditional Owners of Port Phillip, the land where St Mary’s is situated, and we pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their Elders, both past, present and future.

Dear Families,

Welcome to Term 3, which has already proved to us all how adaptive we have become in our current times.  At our Child Safety Staff Meeting last night, as we gathered in prayer to begin, focusing on Mary MacKillop, I paused and thought of Mary's strength, determination and relationship with God and how each of us can draw courage and inner strength from our relationship with God and each other in 2021.   It is amazing to think that we have only been back for four weeks, with two of those being Remote Learning. I thank the whole community for your ability to pivot between onsite learning and Remote Learning, these two terms were unheard of in 2019! 

School Review 

The first day of Term we had our VRQA component of Review. Our Reviewer Gavin Healy examined each of our policies and Child Safety policies and protocols. A great deal of work in the previous Term went in to updating our policies under our new MACS governance model. The following week Gavin with a shadow Reviewer 'L Plater' Stephen met with focus groups of students, staff and parents/carers to gain insight into the inner workings and culture of our school.  As is our St Mary's 2021 story the obstacle of a lockdown meant that this was all done remotely and of course seamlessly! Mrs Ruth Callery set up and facilitated the mechanics of ensuring every Google Meet worked, whilst not watching or listening.  At the end of each day I met with both Reviewers and they were so impressed with our community and that even remotely our 'St Maryness' was palpable. I thank God every day for the community I am working in partnership with to create the best St Mary's that we can. Our feedback session called Engagement and Dialogue Day is next week, where the Leadership Team and I,  are presented with a draft of their report. This is then delivered to our staff on Friday 29th October where we write our School Improvement Plan and begin our Annual Action Plan. I would like to thank the entire staff for their work on this and especially the Leadership Team; Ruth Callery Mary Craven, Anna Side, Maureen McDonald and Paula Incretolli and of course Erica Nastopoulos.  

ICON

As we thrive on challenge at St Mary's we are also migrating across to ICON at the moment.  The Integrated Catholic Online Network (ICON) is a collaborative program of the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria Ltd (CECV) involving Victorian Catholic schools and the four Catholic Education Offices. ICON aims to support systemic improvement in an evolving education environment. The ICON vision is to “support enhanced student learning and enable school administrative processes to be more efficient and effective by providing a technology platform and support to enable school leaders, teachers and staff to collaborate and bring about new ways of working that optimise student learning outcomes, and optimise school administration”.

Teachers, staff, parents and students can access the ICON applications that are relevant to them through a customised portal.

ICON applications are classified under three main areas:

• eAdmin
• eLearn
• ePlan

Erica is well under way with the 'PreFlight'  stage of this migration and of course is receiving excellent feedback of our data systems being so well organised, which helps the migration process enormously. In our true St Mary's way, if you give us a challenge we will put our heads down and get on with it. Again many stages of this has had to be done remotely from Erica's work area that is an office, staffroom and sick bay.   

Exciting opportunity for Mary Craven 

We congratulate Mary Craven, who has accepted an exciting new role at Mentone Grammar for 2022 and beyond.  Mary has been appointed Head of Campus - Riveria (which is the Year 5 & 6 Campus - new structure from the start of next year).  Mary will also be a member of their school executive.  Whilst Mary is very excited about this opportunity it is with a heavy heart, as she will miss the St Mary's community, that is so incredibly unique, diverse and welcoming.  We wish Mary all the best and know that she will be a wonderful addition at her new school.  We will thank Mary at the appropriate time, but on a personal level I would like to thank her for her work, particularly in Wellbeing and taking up the building Project Managerial role, in addition to Year 4 on a Friday.  It is great to see staff embrace all opportunities as they present and know that this in turn creates opportunities here at St Mary's Primary School. 

Chasing Happiness

Congratulations to Jemima (3L)  for her  - Shared Stories award, more information about this will follow at a later date.  For information about Shared Stories please see the following link.  We are very proud of all our students who produced pieces for this. 

Chasing Happiness 

by  Jemima Lucas

Year Three St Mary’s Primary School East St Kilda

Happiness is two friends laughing together.

The sounds of joyful cries from children.

It tastes like a fresh slice of apple pie out of the oven.

It smells like freshly picked lavender from a garden.

It looks like the horizon rising up from the glimmering ocean.

It makes me feel a warm feeling.

Year 3 & 4 Camp 

Another example of how far we have all come on our Covid journey, was our camp last week.  It was with great delight that I joined our students for their camp at Lake Dewar. On a very short turn around of one day, we got camp happening with staff and families making arrangements to join us. I would like to congratulate each family for raising such wonderful young people.  Each student participated to their very best, embraced each activity with a growth mindset and showed resilience and humour with each activity. The staff, myself include enjoyed it as much as the students. My highlight was sharing the evening meal with my table and getting to know each student on a deeper level. 

Please enjoy the photos and comments from the students further on in the newsletter. 

One tradition that is truly unique to St Mary's Primary School is the hamper, we as staff on camp receive on returning from camp. I had not experienced this until the Year 5 & 6 camp earlier this year. To have the support and appreciation of the families, makes the camp experience even more meaningful. The Ferrari family did enjoy the goodies! 

100 Day 

Yesterday I was quite surprised to see how quickly our Foundation students and their teachers had aged. I was relieved to find out they were celebrating 100 days of school!  A huge congratulations to each student, their families, Miss Jacquie, Melody, Kate and Melissa.  To see how the school gathered as a family to celebrate this yesterday was fantastic.  In addition to the Foundation students' 100 days of school,  we also celebrated Mr Ian Scott's 100 Days as a teacher. I congratulate Mr Scott, and his co teacher Miss Paula, Ms Craven. Miss Anna and Mrs Callery for the support and guidance that is given to our gradate teachers. Mr Scott brings so much enthusiasm and hard work to his teaching and we are very proud to have him as part of the St Mary's team. 

Year 6 Confirmation 

Our prayers are with our senior students as they prepare for their  Sacrament of Confirmation, again starting the unit with an online family faith night, is another example of our adaptability. 

Finally, our prayer and thoughts are with Teresa, Robert, Nicholas(2P) and  Max (F) for the loss of Teresa's mother Gilda Miraglia and with Louisa and Alyssa (F)  for the loss or Louisa's mum Agata (Tina) and her Aunty Angela Pena. Please know that the community feels your sadness.   

Take care and wishing God's blessings and peace upon each of you. 

Mrs Cathy Ferrari