Mr Lindsay's Message

Mr. Lindsay's Message

Hi families,

We’re getting to the pointy end of the 2021 school year and in this edition of the newsletter I’m going to announce our structure for 2022 which allows us to continue and refine the work we’ve done this year. 

In 2022 all students will again participate in a range of Discoveries, have weekly specialist sessions and most importantly have structured daily literacy and numeracy sessions that meet the need of all students. 

Excitingly, we will be strengthening our student wellbeing support!

We’ll once again use composite classes to allow teachers to work collaboratively with cohorts of students rather than in isolation. This ensures students get the support they need every day as well as getting to work with a wider range of students over their time at Teesdale Primary.

Next year we have 11 classroom teachers employed. The allocation of classroom teachers is as follows;

2 Foundation Teachers

4 Year 1/2 Teachers

2 Year 3/4 Teachers

1 Year 4/5 Teacher

2 Year 5/6 Teachers 

These teachers will work as a Junior and Senior school, and will run the Discovery Learning subjects of Personal Learning, Inquiry, Language, Digital Technologies and Physical Education. One teacher will be responsible for the running of these in both the Junior and Senior school.

Visual Arts, Science and Performing Arts will be run by our specialist teachers. 

In very exciting news, none of our current teachers will be leaving us in 2022. We have a strong team of classroom teachers and are excited to continue the great work being done.

However, Mrs O’Mealley has made the decision that after 21 years at Teesdale primary School she will retire at the end of 2021. Sue has been a pillar of the Teesdale Primary School community over her time here and has had a huge impact on many students over that time. We will celebrate her retirement closer to the end of term. 

But for now, let’s meet our 2022 team.

In Foundation we have Mrs McHenry and Miss Whyte.

In Year 1/2 we have Mr Smith, Miss Caithness, Mrs Fletcher and we welcome Miss Rose Musselwhite to our team.

In Year 3/4 we have Miss Armstrong and Mrs Clancy

In Year 4/5 we have Mr Maskell, working alongside our 5/6 classes.

In Year 5/6 we have Mrs Kelley and we welcome Mr King to our team.

In 2022, we will have a teacher dedicated to the role providing additional intervention to select students. Mrs Wells will be in this role working across years 1-4.

As our school grows, so does the need for additional leadership. In 2022, our out of class Leadership Team will grow to 3. Mr Irwin will continue as our Principal and I will be stepping into the role of Student Wellbeing Coordinator. This includes working with classroom teachers to support their students wellbeing and co-ordinating the Disability Inclusion Program. We will also welcome Catherine Barnett as our third member of the Leadership team. Catherine will be working with our classroom teachers and is responsible for instructional coaching. 

Our specialist team is Miss Belcher in the Art room, Mrs Clarke in Performing Arts, Mrs Moloney in Science and Miss Kearney will return from maternity leave. Karen Biscan will continue to support our SAKG program on Wednesdays. 

Mrs Elijah, Mrs Hodge, Mrs Swinney and Mrs Santek will continue to provide classroom support for students with additional learning needs. 

In the office Mrs Aitken and Mrs Smith will again be on hand to assist you with all of your enquiries. 

Currently classroom teachers are busily putting together class lists for 2022. There are many factors teachers need to consider when putting class lists together such as having a gender balance, even year level splits, academic ability and social and emotional needs. Your child has already had the opportunity to list peers they would like to have in their class and teachers take this into consideration when putting class lists together.

Teesdale Community Festival

On Saturday 4th December the Teesdale Community Festival is taking place. This is an exciting event for our community and I’d encourage everyone to get along and check out the live performances and Lantern Parade. We also ask for any student who wants to be a part of the Lantern Parade to arrive at the school by 7:45pm so we can allocate lanterns and be ready to walk down to Turtle Bend by 8:30pm. 

Lastly, I wanted to thank the parents who attended last week’s assembly. We’re so excited that we are allowed to have parent/guardians on the school grounds again and it was fantastic to see so many faces at assembly. 

Thank you, have a great week. 

Healthy Lunch Box Choices

For more information go to: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/schools/healthy-lunchboxes