PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

A Message from the Principal

Lachlan Foott

 

Dear Parents/Carers,

 

A reminder that next Tuesday, 23rd June, is an early finish. All students will be dismissed at 1pm due to parent teacher interviews. 

 

This will be the last newsletter for the term; and what a term it has been.

 

It is the perfect opportunity to stop and reflect on the challenges that we have faced and those we have overcome since the middle of March. If you cast your mind back, there was significant fear and anxiety around the arrival of the ‘peak’. The government and wider community were in crisis mode, hoping to ‘flatten the curve’. There were astonishing scenes as people were flocking to supermarkets to fight over flour and toilet paper. All the while, school staff were busily preparing for a variety of possible scenarios related to Covid-19 school closures.

 

Since this time, education has undergone the most significant change in over 100 years. With very little notice and minimal preparation, teachers undertook unprecedented adaptation and innovation, to ensure that education would continue during the most difficult of times. It wasn’t perfect, but there were many successes which we must stop to celebrate. Teachers were recording lessons from living rooms and driveways to upload to SeeSaw  and Google Classroom and connect with their students. There were twice-daily whole class video conference sessions happening with teachers and students from Year 3-6, maintaining relationships and ensuring continuity of learning. Students, staff and parents were having meaningful conversations regarding the learning of the children at least once a fortnight. We had multiple whole school assemblies, with students sharing learning, celebrating successes, dressing up and connecting with one another. Through all of this parents were superb partners with the teachers in guiding the children through what was a particularly difficult and uncertain time. From where I sit, the strengthening of these teacher-parent partnerships is an enormous positive to be taken away from remote learning. I’m sure the strengthening of these relationships will benefit our students, as they continue on in their educational journey in the years to come.

 

I wish to thank everyone in the school community for their commitment, engagement and support during remote learning. Specifically, I would once again like to thank our staff - Teachers, Learning Support Officers and Administration - for their dedication to the children during remote learning. We had all of our staff working together in a variety of ways to support the students and in my view, their work was outstanding.

 

Now we have all of our students back onsite and settled into classroom learning once again, during tonight’s staff meeting, our teachers will take time to reflect on the successes experienced and opportunities to be seized out of remote learning. Catholic Education Melbourne have put together a survey for parents, students and staff to complete in relation to remote learning. This will be sent out to families as we receive it and we welcome your feedback.

 

Semester One Reports

This semester, we will be delivering reports in hard copy and they will also be accessible via the nForma Parent Portal. On Friday afternoon, hardcopies of reports for all children in your family will come home with the eldest child, in an envelope addressed to parents. On Friday, you will also receive an email from noreply@nforma.com.au with login information for the nForma Parent Portal. Please ensure you check your Junk/Spam folder for this email if you cannot locate it in your Inbox. You can also use the following link:

https://parent.nforma.ct.com.au/app/index.html?schooldomain=sahighett#/login.

For families new to St Agnes in 2020, it is highly recommended that you use a computer to access your child’s reports for the first time on the parent portal. Subsequent logins can be made on a mobile device if preferred. I encourage families to log into the Parent Portal and download a digital copy of the report for your records, as they are often required when moving onto secondary school. If you have any questions or issues, please contact the office and speak to Matt Cherry.

 

Minds that Matter Psychology

St Agnes’ is very lucky to have access to Minds That Matter Psychology, who provide mental health services for children in schools. They provide on-site counselling and assessment services, which are available to all families. This allows for greater collaboration between psychologists, parents and schools to ensure the best possible outcomes for children. 

Some things Minds That Matter can help with are:

  • Worry and anxiety
  • Friendship difficulties
  • Grief and loss
  • Sleep difficulties
  • Self-esteem
  • Bullying
  • Family separation or divorce

If you feel your child or children may benefit from having someone to talk to please contact our Wellbeing Leader Anthea Georgiou (ageorgiou@sahighett.catholic.edu.au), or speak to your classroom teacher. We can then arrange to forward further information about Minds That Matter. This year we will be working with a new Psychologist at St Agnes’ and her name is Bridgette Caruana.

 

Parent/Teacher Interviews

A reminder that we will be holding Parent/Teacher Interviews on Tuesday 23rd June, for all classes except Year 1K, whose interviews will be in Term Three. Please ensure you use the link below to make a booking with your child’s classroom teacher. If you are having a PSG Meeting with Mrs Janine Moulton this week, you will not need to book a Parent/Teacher Interview. Booking details below:

https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/code?code=ucrj5 (Booking code ucrj5). 

All students will be dismissed at 1pm to enable the staff to setup for their interviews.

 

Sacramental Programs

Both the Eucharist and Reconciliation Sacramental Programs have not gone ahead due to the restrictions and at this stage we are not sure when they will take place for 2020. We are currently working through scenarios with Fr John to make this happen. I will hopefully have more details relating to this early next term.

 

Year 4 Bike Ed Camp - Maldon

We are still holding out hope that our Year 4 Camp will go ahead in the week beginning Monday 10th August. We will be guided by Catholic Education Melbourne and their guidelines for schools as to whether or not this proceeds. There is some speculation in the media recently that school camps will be given the go ahead as of next week. We wait in anticipation. Should this be cancelled, the cost will be credited to parents school fees accounts.

 

Extend Before and After School Care

Extend have rebooted their before and after school care services in our school, with Covid-19 safe practices in place. This is an excellent service offering for our families to utilise and if you require this service you can make bookings online directly with Extend. There are flyers and information available in the school office.

 

End of Term

On the last day of term our Social Just team are organising a Shine the Light Social Justice Dayto raise awareness for homelessness, for further details please refer to the RE Section of the newsletter.  

The last day of term is Friday 26th June, students will be dismissed at 1.30pm.

 

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to a successful final two weeks of Term Two.

 

Kind regards,

Lachie