Principal's Report

Welcome to Term Two

I trust that everybody had a happy and holy Easter and that the Term holidays were restful and relaxing despite the challenging times in which we find ourselves living. How quickly things have changed. Just under a month ago, I wrote the last newsletter for Term One expecting to be on a plane a couple of days later and enjoying some six weeks of travel during my Long Service Leave. Instead I find myself working from home (Long Service Leave cancelled) and planning for a second Term which will be like no other I have previously experienced. Nor has anyone else.

As we begin this Term of remote and flexible learning, I am proud to look back over the last four weeks and acknowledge the significant amount of hard work and planning that has been done by College staff members to prepare for this significantly different way of learning and teaching.

I wrote the following to staff last week: “We are on this journey together, we will make mistakes together, will have wonderful victories together, we will celebrate many successes together, we will carry each other through difficult times together and at the end of this journey we will celebrate all that is good with joy and gratitude together.”

I extend the same comments to families and students as we start this Term together. I have to admit there have been times over summer and in recent months where I felt that the word "unprecedented" was well and truly overused and quite frankly, I was becoming tired of hearing it. I am not, however, becoming tired of hearing the word "together", because I believe that it is a word that Jesus would have liked us to have been using more and more frequently as our response to his call to ‘Love one another as he has loved us’. It is perhaps fitting that these new ways of teaching and learning are implemented in the week following the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection; who knows what learning and teaching will look like on the other side of this pandemic?

Whatever it looks like, and whatever our successes and failures over the coming weeks, I can assure you that each and every staff member at St. Joseph’s College is committed to doing the very best that he or she can, to ensure that quality teaching and learning continues to take place. We are determined that when we look back and review Term 2 2020 that we will look back with as much satisfaction as possible that we got it as right as possible with the gifts, talents, knowledge and resources we had at the time.

We are determined that we be able to review Term 2, 2020, positively and that one of the highlights was how staff, students and families worked TOGETHER to make it successful.

Best wishes everyone.

God bless

Michael Delaney

Principal

From the Director Catholic Education Sandhurst, Mr. Paul Desmond.

An excerpt from one of his regular bulletins to schools

Realistic Priorities for this First Fortnight of Term 2

The school day schedule (at home) cannot and should not look the same as a day onsite. Home and school environments are much more variable at the moment and these variable environments and pressures require realistic expectations by leaders, teachers, students and parents.

Realistic expectations are needed in this first fortnight of term as all adjust to the transition. This term will likely move more slowly, engage with less curriculum, involve less and different assessment and reporting,

Students will be engaging with learning in a manner that may be less equitable and / or with greater variability in their immediate learning environment. Hence our expectations of ourselves as teachers and our students and parents need to be responsive and realistic about the pace and type of learning in the weeks ahead.