Principal's Report 

Dear Parents, Carers and Friends of St Brendan’s,

It is with great pleasure that I reflect on these early weeks of our new school year. I have really enjoyed getting into all classrooms and seeing our students happily settled and working hard to achieve their best. I want to acknowledge our teachers and learning support officers for the wonderful way they are working to create settled, learning focused classes.

I am grateful to the many parents who made appointments and came to share information about their children as they settle into these early weeks of the new term. It is important to remember our theme for the 2023 school year: Every person at St Brendan’s is a learner.

I would like to share with you the elements that help to ensure that we are focused on our theme at all times during the year.

1. Strong Leadership - the Leadership Team at St Brendan’s is working with all staff to ensure that teaching is relevant, timely and differentiated to meet the needs of our students. Leaders attend teacher planning sessions, visit classrooms and design professional learning sessions to continually develop teacher knowledge, pedagogy and skills.
2. Strong Teaching Teams - the year level teams plan together each week to ensure that they are covering the curriculum content appropriate to the year level, readiness and needs of the students.
3. Effective Classroom Management - Teachers ensure that their students know and follow school rules. With their students, they design what their classrooms will look, sound and feel like. They hold Democratic Class Meetings to ensure that all student voices are heard.
4. Strong Wellbeing Focus - we hold fortnightly wellbeing meetings to share and discuss relevant information/concerns about students. Staff professional learning team meetings are dedicated to learning more about student well being and how to effectively address the Social Emotional learning curriculum.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to your child’s teacher or to our Deputy Principal, Bernie Turner or to me if you wish to know more about a particular aspect of your child’s learning.

Dr Jodi Richardson - ‘From Anxiety to Resilience’ Tuesday February 21st 6:00 - 7:00 pm

St Brendan’s Multi Purpose Room

We are proud and excited to welcome Dr Jodi Richardson to St Brendan’s to address parents and teachers about how we can help children and ourselves better deal with and ‘dial down’ our responses to anxiety, and how we can develop greater resilience in the process.

I would like to acknowledge and thank our Wellbeing Leader; Tess Haddock, for her hard work in organising this special and informative event. 

I look forward to welcoming you all.

St Brendan’s School Council Meeting 

Next Tuesday, February 28th the St Brendan’s School Council will meet for the first time this year. At this meeting, we will elect a new chairperson to lead the council. We will welcome two new members; Paul Bryant (Catherine 5/6 ) and Sam Bright (Molly 3/4 ). I will address the council on matters that have carried over from 2022 and we will set the direction of the council for 2023. I will update our community on the outcomes of the meeting in our next newsletter scheduled for March 7.

Class Representatives

Each year at St Brendan’s, we seek class representatives from our parent community. These wonderful people are a point of contact for the parents of the children in that class.  We would like one or two representatives for each class. They do things such as:

• Remind people of upcoming class events (If they wish)
• Organise a birthday gift/Christmas gift for the teacher
• Inform people of the birth of a baby or a bereavement in a family from the class

If you can team up with a friend and help us with this role, we would be extremely grateful. Please drop into or call the office to let us know that you’d like to be a class representative. 

I thank you in advance for your support.

We are currently seeking class reps for the following classes:

Social and Fundraising for 2023

I am looking to meet with people who are interested in suggesting, supporting or running social and fundraising events in 2023. If you would like to come along to a meeting to hear what’s planned, suggest an event or volunteer to help with or to run something at school, we would be delighted to welcome you to a meeting. Please email me to express your interest in attending. Please let me know your name, your child/childrens class/classes and the best time for you e.g: after school drop off or before school pick up and which day/days are best. I look forward to hearing from any interested parents. Thank you.

My email address is scarr@sbsomerville.catholic.edu.au

Have a great week.

Sue Carr