Across the Principal's Desk

It has certainly been a term like no other I have experienced during my time in education. We started with our students transitioning to remote learning, which was a very steep learning curve for everyone. Our staff did an amazing job and worked around the clock to make this happen for our students. It was challenging for everyone – staff, students and parents. It was never going to be easy but we worked hard and listened to a representative group of our students who provided us with regular feedback through ‘Student Voice’ sessions. We were able to feed their thoughts and advice back to the staff, which gave us the opportunity to make informed changes to the way in which we were delievering the remote learning. It suited some students well to learn this way but others found it difficult.

It was a pleasure to have the staff return on-site part way through the term, followed by our Senior Students the next day and our Years 7–10 a fortnight later. The transition of returning to school worked well with our major focus on wellbeing for students and staff. We made a point of checking in with students to see how they were travelling before we had the academic conversations. Our students seemed very keen to reconnect with their peers and our staff. We have always been proud of the strong relationships we have within our school but we may have even seen that strengthened throughout this challenging time.

Life isn’t back to normal just yet but I would like to thank everyone for the support that has been given and received over the last few months by our entire school community – in particular, staff, students and parents. It has been a journey that we have taken together and the care we have demonstrated for each other has been evident in the positive way in which we have made it through to the end of this term – relationships and spirits intact! It is a strange end to Semester One but I wish everyone a well deserved break and look forward to a refreshed and rejuvenated return after the holidays.