Principal's Message

Dear OLA Families,

As teachers and leaders in a school we have many moments of feeling great pride as we all do as parents. I was honoured recently to be a guest at Kilbreda College’s first Assembly for 2022 where achievements of Scholars of Distinction from 2021 were recognised and the commissioning of 2022 school leaders were celebrated. OLA came out shining and I couldn’t have been prouder to be connected to the OLA community.  It really is a wonderful acknowledgement of those who have gone before us and those who are with us now.

Our past student Alice Merchant was elected Co-Captain for 2022 and past student of OLA Emily Gamble presented Alice with her School Captain blazer. OLA past student Ellie Carter who was Co-Captain in 2021 was also recognised for her academic achievement. 

Additionally we were also delighted that past student Kara Miwa-Dale was College Dux for 2021. Kara achieved an outstanding ATAR of 99.15 in the Victorian Certificate of Education.  Both Alice and Kara made brilliant speeches that focussed on kindness, gratitude and always giving your best. 

Damian Smith, Kilbreda teacher for 30 years was recognised for his years of service, amazing teaching and sense of humour!! He too is a past student of OLA!! 

Thank you Kilbreda for the wonderful connection you continue to have with your local parish primary schools. We couldn’t be prouder! 

A new year, a new project!

We have taken great joy in seeing our 2022 building project commence this week.  We are making way for more space in the playground for our students at OLA by selling and removing the portable classrooms.  This is part of Stage 3 of our Master Plan and we are so grateful for the Victorian Government Capital Funding Grant of    2 million dollars to make this possible.  The portable classrooms will be split in half and removed on the weekend of 19/20 March.  We will then lay astroturf and create a bright outdoor learning space with things like a stage, water taps, electricity, shade and tables and chairs. All ideas that have been suggested by students, staff and parents.

Welcome to Jardon Group

This Tuesday we officially welcome the successful tenders for our building project, Jardon Group, onsite to begin works on the Community Hub that includes a new Library, STEM Room, Community Space and Teacher Resource Room.  The team is excited to have secured our project at OLA and we look forward to collaborating with this passionate team.

Swimming

Captured here are a few of our OLA early morning risers taking up the opportunity to swim at Mentone Girls Grammar School over the last couple of weeks. The students enjoyed a mini carnival for their last session where many reached personal bests and received ribbons. A team will now be selected and they will go on to represent OLA at the Cheltenham District Swimming Carnival. THANK YOU to all families and children for making this happen and to our brilliantly committed staff Mrs Thompson, Mr B, Mrs Arthur, Mrs Dooley and Mrs Taig for organising and supervising this great event and for creating a fun atmosphere. We received a lovely note of gratitude from one of our parents:  

“I wanted to say a huge thank you to Liz, Mark, Caitlan, Ann, Sarah and Richard for making the OLA Swimming Squad mornings possible. I am sure that you all have many many other things you could be doing with your time, but I am very grateful that you enabled the morning sessions to go ahead… So basically a huge thank you for making it happen 😊.”

Grade 6 Leaders

We congratulate our 2022 Grade 6 School Leaders who were presented with their leadership badges at last Friday’s outdoor School Assembly.   We look forward to our Grade 6 leaders working alongside the staff and children to further develop our school community. We thank our parents for joining us for this special occasion where we acknowledged and celebrated this milestone.  It was lovely to come together to honour our senior students and to also celebrate our SRC leaders from Prep to Grade 6.  It is wonderful to see these students wearing the badges with such pride.  For those children who could not be with us, please be assured we named you and look forward to giving you your badge when you return to school. 

Enrolments 2023 are OPEN!

It has been a pleasure to welcome families this week for our first School Tours.  We were so proud to showcase our school and special thanks to our School Captains who so proudly and capably spoke about the school that they love. If you or your friends missed this tour we invite you to register and join us on the upcoming tours which are advertised on our new kindergarten flyers.  We are sending a flyer home with each child today to deliver to an interested neighbour or friend or to display on your fridge!  We thank our 6 new Prep superstars and our Prep teachers for willingly being in front of the camera in capturing this moment.  Enrollments are open and we ask that siblings coming to OLA in 2023 enrol now.

Word of Mouth

As we all know, word of mouth is the most important tool for sharing the successes of our school in our local community.  We invite our community to leave a Google Review of OLA like the example below.  Thank you to the generous families who have already left a review in this space.

1. Make sure you're logged into your Google account

2. Click on the link and leave us a review

Our son started in Prep last year at OLA and we could not have asked for a better start to his schooling life. He has absolutely thrived, grown in confidence and has loved going to school everyday. The OLA community is just amazing and it is such a happy place to be. We could not be happier!!!

Cyber Safety Webinars

We hope that your children have come home over this last fortnight talking about the fantastic Cyber Safety webinars that they participated in.  These sessions were led by Marty McGauran from Inform & Empower - Cyber Safety Education.  The staff also participated in a webinar with Marty, where they were informed of the most common sites that our children were accessing and how we can best support our children as active digital citizens.  

Parent

Last night Carley McGauren led both parents and staff of OLA in a Parent Webinar focussed on ‘Managing Big Feelings’. Carley encouraged all parents and carers to be kind and gentle to themselves.  She acknowledged how great we are at celebrating and paying attention to the ‘amazing-ness’ of our kids but encouraged us to take good care of ourselves and see our own ‘amazing-ness’. Carley is well known to our community through her involvement in Prep presentations previously held on the topic of - Starting School, how you can thrive, not just survive.  Carley is the brother of Marty McGauran who this week presented Cyber Safety workshops to our children. We hope the presentation helps you to feel more informed and empowered. More information is provided in the Student Wellbeing section of this newsletter.

Help needed... for mini Working Bee

On Wednesday 2 March, 5.30-7.00pm we are running a mini Working Bee to spread some piles of mulch and sweep up some leaves.  If you are able to help we would love you to join us.  Please bring along a wheelbarrow, broom and shovel if you can, otherwise we have some equipment at school to help. Please email me at principal@olacheltenham.catholic.edu.au if you are able to help.  

We will have Working Bees in Terms 2, Term 3 and Term 4 and we look forward to welcoming more families to these.  Parents are requested to sign in at the desk outside the school office on arrival and to sign out when you depart.   

Celebration of Learning

Thank you to our Grade 5/6 children for your visit this week to showcase your understanding and knowledge of our local, state and federal governments. It is so important in our current climate that our students learn about the importance of being good global citizens and the role of good governance. It was also lovely to visit classrooms and see 3D objects being made in Grade 5/6 with chickpeas and toothpicks and chess being played too.

We also loved watching and listening to our new OLA family of native birds feed from their parents and safely take flight from their nest and we have save a family of lizard from under the portable classrooms.  Nature putting on a show in our school yard.

Congratulations

Our PE teacher Mrs Liz Thompson and her husband Justin announced the exciting news that they are expecting their third child in June. We wish Liz, Justin, Jack and Harriet all the very best and we know Jack and Harriet will love being the bigger brother and sister to your new little baby.

We look forward to…

We are so grateful to the team who have been responsible for moving the contents of our library from its original home to it's temporary home in Exodus Hall. We are days away from children being able to borrow books again. We all love reading at OLA and can't wait for the building to be completed and for the heart of our school being our well resourced library.

Next week we look forward to pancakes to celebrate Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent and we also look forward to our Parent/Teacher Meetings where we get to learn more about our student’s passions, talents and interests. 

Thank you all for helping to make OLA the best school in Cheltenham.

Enjoy the weekend.

Richard Jacques

Principal