Principal's message
Dear families
We are now in week nine of Term 1 and there are two more weeks to go until our students and staff have a well-deserved break! Schools haven’t had an 11 week term for some years, let alone had a term where we didn't yo-yo between being on-site and off-site. This means that fatigue can set in so we need to be more aware that the energy levels of our school community are waning.
The return to usual school arrangements have seen school activities such as school camps, excursions, carnivals, interschool sport, lunchtime activities, aerobics practice, production auditions and rehearsals and the House Performance program reappear on the school calendar. Each of these school activities requires a high degree of organisation and compliance by our staff to ensure they can happen safely and take into consideration Covid-safety measures as well as the usual safety measures. When the students participate in these activities it may not be apparent to them how much work has gone into the planning and preparation for the events and so I share this with you all so that I can shine a light on the hours of work that teachers devote to organising these wonderful curricular and co-curricular opportunities.
Students will be feeling a degree of fatigue at this stage of the term and the last day of the term may seem like it is very far away. A recent review of the sleep habits of middle and senior year students in the UK revealed that the majority of students reported having less than the recommended nine hours of sleep per night. Nearly 60 percent of students reported sleeping around six hours or less per night which falls in the clinically significant range for sleep deprivation. This is likely to be similar for young people in Australia and the simple act to go to bed at a reasonable hour will help them to manage their in-school and outside of school commitments such as part-time employment and sporting commitments.
This week our teachers met with parents and students for the second Parent Teacher Student interview session this term. The anecdotal feedback I have received so far has been that it ran very well in the online format. I thank all of the teachers for changing their hours to 1pm until 8pm to accommodate families who are only available after usual business hours.
Cultural Diversity Week and Harmony Day activities have been taking place this week and the launch of the week was marked with over 40 students sharing delicious dishes from countries around the world. I would like to thank Si Feng, Yinan Zhang and Jocelyn Chang for their organisation of the events and thank the teachers and students that joined in to support this wonderful week. Activities such as this show that we are truly a school that appreciates the cultures of all of our school community.
We have also had The Addams Family cast revealed and now the rehearsals will begin for this event. We are warming up for the Athletics Carnival that will take place next week as well.
The MGSC School Community is really a vibrant place to be at this time of the year.
Warm regards
Linda Brown
Principal