Principal's Message

There’s no better feeling than a sense of some normality of life returning for our entire Ripper Community. We would like to commend our students on their positive return to school, especially settling back into classroom routines, adjusting to full days at school and rekindling those friendships so dearly missed. Some of our students will continue to be supported with this transition, whilst for others, it’s full steam ahead and a bounce back from the challenges of lockdowns and remote learning. 

We thank our teachers for supporting the return of our students and once again putting our student needs at the centre of their work. Sometimes as we travel through classrooms, down corridors and during play we can almost forget the world around us in our very own little Ripponlea bubble. We barely have five weeks of this term left, yet we are going to provide our students with missed opportunities and experiences to remember. 

Our teachers are mindful and focused on student wellbeing, supported by our current Arts Therapy program, lots of outdoor learning opportunities, re-engagement and review of learning, peer collaboration on inquiry units and deepening social connections.

Learning tutor support and our intervention and integration programs are in full action and we even have an additional volunteer returning to Ripponlea who regularly supported our Year 3/4 students in previous terms. We welcome back Michele Selby who will be working with our Foundation and Year 3/4 students. Further to this, we welcome Talia Leggett to our integration team. Talia brings an extensive education background to the integration role and has been enjoying getting to know a number of students across the school (and they’ve loved getting to know her too!).

WATER SAFTEY & SWIMMING PROGRAM

Year 3/4 students and our Year 5/6 students jumped straight into a week of intensive swimming and an open water learning course at Elwood Beach. Some of our teachers and students remarked that boarding the bus felt strange again and despite the tiredness they all remarked how much they enjoyed the week. Swimming experiences are a crucial component of the Health and Physical Education curriculum and despite two years of no swimming lessons, our Year 3/4 students relished the opportunity to swim daily and enjoy the social aspects of having fun in the pool together. 

We can be assured that our Year 5/6 student are equipped with skills in water safety over this coming summer. Despite the poor beach conditions, most enjoyed the beach atmosphere and just being together. We thank Ms Massey once again for her great organisational skills in managing to plan and coordinate these activities at such short notice after restrictions lifted. 

The school will hold a swimming carnival in early Term 1 2022 and all Year 3-6 students will have the opportunity to participate and try out for the annual district competitions. 

REMEMBRANCE DAY

As a school we marked the significance of this day with Noah B in Year 5/6 reading a special story about his mother’s great uncles and great grandfather titled ‘Seven Brothers Went to War’ over our PA system. We lowered the flags as the bugle played The Last Post and together we observed a minute of silence, pausing and reflecting to commemorate the sacrifices made by our service men and women during wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. We hope next year we can all come together in our Barrbunin with our families to mark this important occasion. 

YEAR 3/4 CAMP

We are so excited to be sending our Year 3/4 students to their first ever camping experience! We know just how valuable it is to experience this independence away from home and family so we are delighted to support our students to travel to Iluka Retreat on the Mornington Peninsula. Surrounded by beautiful wildlife and the bay, they will be enjoying paddle boarding, orienteering, ropes course, beach walks and much more. Once again, our staff are stepping up to spend two nights away from their own families and volunteering to take our students on this experience. Joining our Year 3/4 teachers will be Mr Griffiths, Jordane, Fred, Mark, Natalie P and Mrs Rose. 

SCHOOL PRODUCTION

Remaining positive, steady and resolute has been difficult this year – just ask Mr G and the many people who have assisted in keeping the School Production up and running! 

Our students have been blessed to enjoy the shared vision of Jess Asz and Erin Juers and with just a few short weeks to go, we’ve been equally fortunate to engage past parent Fiona Harris to help keep the many preparations chugging along. Many of you will recall Fiona Harris’ work with RPS on our past three school productions and we welcome her return to support rehearsals, blocking and stage directions. 

Along with Mr G and a dedicated crew of volunteers, Fiona will play a part in ensuring Jess Asz’s original script – Albert’s Amazing Time Travelling Gizmotron - is brought to the stage this December. We can’t wait!

PARENT PAYMENTS

Families recently received information regarding the 2022 Curriculum Contributions. The drastic changes over the last two years in the Department’s Parent Payments policy has many school haemorrhaging important funds to support their students. We proudly acknowledge that almost 90% of our families choose to pay these voluntary contributions to support our students and in 2022, we again seek this support and your generosity. 

We can also share the news that the recent tax-deductible Building Fund has been accumulating payments to the value of $10,000. This means that an additional two split system conditioners will be installed at the school during the summer holidays. One in the Year 5/6 classroom and one in the Italian/French room also used to provide Outside School Hours Care program run by Their Care. 

Further to this, every classroom in the school has been set up with its own classroom library with a selection of a broad range of fiction and non-fiction titles. Students have enjoyed choosing from these quality texts in the classroom and been enjoying these, particularly whilst our own library could not be in use during recent restrictions. 

FOUNDATION 2022 STEPPING UP TRANSITION PROGRAM

We have commenced our transition sessions with our 2022 Foundation students and families. Last week families were introduced to our 2022 Foundation teachers: Ms Jane and Ms D. Next year we are keeping things small and only committing to two small classes in Foundation. Whilst we’ve had to keep these sessions virtual, we are more excited when our new students and families join us onsite in December. 

Foundation Transition Sessions Onsite

Thursday 2nd December @ 2:00pm 

Friday 10th December @ 2:00pm 

Families and students will get an opportunity to finally tour the school, see their classrooms, meet and spend time with their teachers and of course we will ensure this is all conducted in a Covid-Safe way to protect all members of our community. Density limits continue to apply in all buildings and only vaccinated parents are able to enter our classrooms and buildings. 

We are also facilitating a very special session with psychologist Carly McGuaran for our new Foundation families. This seminar will focus on how to help your child successfully start school. We open this invitation up to all Ripponlea families to access this valuable opportunity, especially if there are even younger siblings still to come in future years and perhaps there may also be some great tips for the start of school for all younger students next year. 

SCHOOL FUN RUN- TUESDAY 23RD @2PM

Can you believe all the times this was rescheduled and can finally go ahead? Brenton may have lost count of the number of reschedules he has organised but he is telling you all to get your white T-shirts ready and is also looking for some parent volunteers to help colour bomb our students and staff across the outdoor obstacle course. 

This community fundraiser has earned our school a total of $6,000. Our Student Representative Council led by our School Captain Teddy ran classroom circles in Term 2, where all students had the opportunity to identify how the money will be spent. Unanimously the whole student population felt it was important to upgrade the Junior Playground just like we did a few years ago with our senior playground and to also increase more shaded areas in the school. With this in mind, Mrs Rose applied for a Minor Capital Works grant to the value of $50,000. We have also applied for the Shade Sails grant for outdoor learning opportunities. Fingers and toes crossed on all levels as we await to hopefully receive some good news in December. 

VIRTUAL ASSEMBLIES

We love that we can keep connected through our virtual assemblies but to be really honest with our families, over the last couple of weeks our students have been intent on being connected “IRL” (‘in real life’) and not keen on having assemblies via Zoom. There are so many things our teachers are working on with students that we simply have not felt it appropriate to apply this additional pressure on them or on Mr Leech.

We will recommence our assemblies later this month once our students are comfortable again and have been given the opportunity to prepare. We’ve had production rehearsals, Indigo Art therapy classes, sports, kinder transitions, swimming, excursions and our students have voiced that a little break is in order until we can all gather in the Barrbunin. We anticipate further lifting of density limits in schools after 25 November when Victoria reaches 90% double-dose vaccination rates. We will continue to stream our assemblies to families via Zoom and predict that we may be able to soon invite families of a particular year level in the yard to watch the assembly from the playgrounds. 

100 DAYS OF SCHOOL

The strangest occurrence happened last Friday when some curious 100-year-old students and teachers came to school along with lots of dressing up in all things 100! Ms Dom, Ms Jane and Ms D had been keeping a watchful eye on their calendars to exactly mark the hundredth day of school for our amazing Foundies. Whilst this 100 days of school celebration came later in the year than usual, it didn’t deter our fabulous students (and staff) from enjoying the occasion immensely. 100’s and 1000’s, maths games, crowns and dressing up in all things 100! We are so glad that we could celebrate this day onsite and we thank all the families who got into the spirit of the day and created some wonderful costumes. 

SCHOOL REVIEW

This week our school will host some special visitors: the panel members of the school review team. We welcome them into our classrooms to observe our teachers teaching and to have rich conversations about our school improvement journey over the last four years. Tarryn Holland, our School Council president, Department of Education representatives and other principal colleagues will be our challenge partners. They will meet with students, parents, our teachers and ES staff in focus groups and will seek opinion and input from all involved to help validate some of our achievements and frame our future goals and directions in student learning and wellbeing. 

FINAL MESSAGE

A huge shout out to our families – you have been incredible in supporting the school and being respectful regarding all current restrictions and practices. Thank you for keeping your children home when unwell, collecting children promptly from school when called for, having your children tested when needed, encouraging mask wearing among our students, patiently entering our school office and waiting one at a time, and maintaining collection and drop off points promptly. You are doing a great job at helping us stay Covid-Safe and it’s truly been so lovely to see you all at our gates waving your children off with positive messages of encouragement and love. 

We are kindly requesting one more thing from all our families. We know all our families respect the hard work of our staff and are keen to keep them up-to-date with informative and clarifying emails (especially while face-to-face interactions are tricky). Yet we need to alert you to an important aspect of emailing staff…

Our staff dedicate their hours at work to focus on your children. They will generally respond to your emails within 48 hours as they balance their numerous commitments as employees of the Department of Education. Recent studies have shown that Victorian teachers and support staff work well in excess of the standard working hours as they address their numerous and varied professional obligations. 

The Victorian Government Schools Agreement (which governs the work of staff in government schools) does not include working overtime after hours or on weekends. This time spent by our staff is voluntary.

We urge all families to be judicious when sending emails to our teachers any time after 5pm or on weekends. Whilst this might be convenient for your hours, it must be understood that many of our staff access the email system at their chosen hours as our email system is a gateway to Department services and our internal communications. So sometimes when on a Sunday afternoon or a late Wednesday evening when we might remember to log some data via our system, it becomes impossible to “un-see” emails sent out-of-hours. 

Therefore, we urge that parents/carers write emails at a time convenient to you but send these during regular weekday working hours. Please either use a delay delivery function or place your email in draft form ready for the next day. Our teachers are reporting increasingly numbers of emails occurring very late in the evening and throughout their weekends. We feel strongly that there is no urgency that ever warrants this approach. 

An email in morning or a phone call can help get any message across at the appropriate time. Please remain respectful of all our teachers and education staff (and their families) by directing any urgent emails to the school’s official email address if they must be sent out of hours and not directly to our staff members. 

Until next fortnight!

Natalie Rose Principal

Jess Grey Assistant Principal