Across The Principal's Desk

Congratulations to our students, families, staff and our broader community for making it through another period of lockdown in Victoria. We should be proud of the way in which we have collectively handled challenging circumstances. As a school, we had to work very quickly, with very little notice and we are really pleased with the way our staff, students and their families got on with the job and made things happen. 

We have constantly reflected on our processes and practices throughout the period of COVID. We sought feedback and listened to ways to make it work with the understanding that Remote and Flexible Learning will work better for some than others. With each lockdown that we’ve experienced, we have noticed that most people are becoming more comfortable with it at an emotional level – that’s not to say that it is easy. We know that it creates uncertainty and disruption. However, we have all developed skills and strategies to cope with it in one way or another. 

We made some further changes to our Remote and Flexible Learning model this time around and the transition to learning from home went relatively smoothly but there are still things we would like to improve. We sought feedback from the students on their first day back through a survey that was completed in Form Group Meetings. It was brief but gave us a lot of information in relation to wellbeing and learning. I will run a focus group with students to follow up the results of the survey and gain further insight into the Remote and Flexible Learning experience. We are running a workshop with staff this week and will follow up with the development of learning materials that could be used in the event of a further period of lockdown with the aim of making learning accessible to all students. There is a lot for us to learn as we navigate our way through a time like no other – well, not in my time in education, anyway. 

It is vital for everyone to pay particular attention to their wellbeing while we work our way through difficult times. We actively monitor this but we really need to encourage students and families to seek out our support whenever it is needed.

Thank you to everyone for your patience, persistence, resilience and in many cases, determination to make it all work to the best of our abilities – you’ve done an amazing job! We really appreciate the collective care and support from students, families, staff and community – it has enabled us to experience success (which might look different for everyone) in challenging circumstances.