R.E News - Assistant Principal - Mission

Retreat Program

Thanks to our LYM's Taryn, Brydie and Eliza for facilitating an excellent Year 9 Retreat Day that had lots of fun and thought provoking activities that explored the themes of team building, kindness, tolerance and faith. Our LYMs have worked hard to overcome the difficulties concerned with COVID to work in that space. Year 9s enjoyed the day and are hopefully renewed to finish the term off well. 

Catholic Principles and Values

Part of the improvement plan for 2020 included the meaningful embedding and exploring of Catholic Principles and Values.  

Why do we think this is important?  

Bishop Kennedy explains:

"In 2011, the Catholic Schools Office Armidale commissioned an extensive study of the understanding of and commitment to Catholic principles and values through the Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project (ECSIP). The data from the ECSIP clearly indicated that there is a very real and immediate need to move away from an implicit secular values education approach towards a more clearly articulated set of core Catholic principles and values that are known, understood and articulated by staff so that they can explicitly teach these principles and values and use them to discern appropriate resources to support high quality educational outcomes."

So what are the Catholic Principles and Values we are trying to embed and explore?

The core Catholic values which are to be explicitly taught in every subject can be broadly categorised under four principles, firstly the Principle of the Primacy of God, secondly, the Principle of the Sanctity of Life, thirdly the Principle of Fidelity in Relationship and the Principle of the Common Good. From these four overarching principles key values can then be identified. These have been expressed in such a way so that they can easily be expanded upon. They deliberately avoid reducing the core values to single words which can become meaningless. 

How are these embedded and explored?

These principles and values are explicitly taught in each unit of work across the College. Every principle and value will not be covered in every subject area, for clearly some subject areas will lend themselves more naturally to certain principles and values rather than others. Nevertheless, over a stage of learning all the principles and values will be addressed at a level that takes the context of the school community into consideration and allows each student to grow in their understanding of these principles and values so that they can develop a meaningful framework on which to build their future lives.  

Where are we now?

At O'Connor Catholic Principles and Values are embedded in nearly all units across all Key Learning Areas. They are associated with a teaching and learning activity that provides the context, relevance and meaning required to make them real for our students.

Where to next?

One of our goals is to extend the Catholic Principles and Values beyond the curriculum, to make them a part of our everyday vocabulary, actions and intentions. This goal is not just for our students but the whole O'Connor community. To this end expect to here much more in this space and in other areas regarding Catholic Principles and Values.

Saints Mary and Joseph Cathedral Parish

Keeping in touch with what is happening in the Cathedral Parish is easy through their website and Facebook pages.

With such a difficult year it has been harder for parishioner's to give to the parish through the plates, particularly when the church was closed. The Parish account details are available on the Parish bulletin.