From the Principal 

Thank you to each of our families and carers for your support, positivity and flexibility in regards to the snap circuit breaker lockdown called by the Premier Daniel Andrews last Friday. For our families celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year, I hope you were able to share it in some fashion before the lockdown commenced.  I would like to highlight the amazing staff that we have here at St Mary’s who without missing a beat, supported students, planned work, volunteered to supervise students who were onsite, all whilst juggling their own families and pressures. As communicated, Google Classrooms are ready to go and eLearning policies and permission forms have been sent out via Operoo (the old Care Monkey) for 2021. 

What is truly remarkable is how we adapt and keep learning as we move forwards. 

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2021 Lenten season, with Ash Wednesday. The students will be exploring the Catholic traditions of Lent, within a 2021 context, this term. This is an important time in our Church year, where we reflect upon our relationship with God, ourselves and others and move back towards our God who loves us unconditionally. Through our Lenten promises we can turn back towards God. 

The heartbeat of schools are people and seeing the children, families, carers and staff where they should be this morning, was a delight. Our senior students were able to complete the Golf Coaching clinic in Physical Education today. We wish our swimmers all the best for tomorrow’s Holt District Swimming Carnival at the Oakleigh Pool and thank Mrs Thompson, Mrs Kidman and Mr Scott for preparing the team. 

On Monday 22nd February,  the Year 5 and 6 students have the wonderful opportunity of working with members from the St Kilda WAFL and AFL football team. As leaders of our school, the students will be learning about themselves, leadership, collaboration and inclusivity. We look forward to them sharing this session with our community.

On Wednesday 23rd February after school all staff will be attending our annual First Aid training. This ensures that we can take care of each of your children, to the best of our abilities as first aiders. May I ask for all students to keep their peanut butter sandwiches or lunches with nuts in them at home for afternoon tea. In this way, we can keep those anaphylaxis members of our community safe.

Next week on Friday 26th February, our Year 6 students with their Foundation buddies will celebrate Mass together with Fr Jerome. We look forward to sharing these celebrations with parents as Covid restrictions lessen. Sharing the Eucharist with each other is at the heart of our Catholic faith. 

Please be advised that our annual Sports Day on 4th March will move to the times of 1-3:15pm, rather than the traditional twilight carnival.  We hope to have parents helping and attending next year, but for the time being this needs to be an ‘inhouse’ event. 

Finally a huge congratulations to Ivy in Year 5, who not only celebrated her art piece ‘Solid Rock’ being selected for the Catholic Education Art show, but she will soon be a published artist!  Ivy’s work has been selected to be included in a coffee table book that will be gifted to MACS (Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools) Board members. Ivy was invited to write a response to the questions of;  'What she likes most about arts and creating art and why it is important to her'. This was her response which will be placed next to her art work in the book. We are all very proud of you Ivy.

“What I like most about the arts and creating art is that it gives me the opportunity to be free and creative. I get to express my feelings in any way, shape or form. 

Art is important to me for so many reasons but mostly because it is so satisfying! I love the way art makes me feel. And I love creating art for others and seeing how my art has affected them.”

Take care of yourselves and each other and I look forward to lots of chats before and after school. 

Mrs Cathy Ferrari