Meet our new Assistant Principal

After teaching a class at SKiPPS for over ten years it has been a somewhat different start to the school year for me this week. Commencing my role as Assistant Principal at SKiPPS is really exciting and will allow me the opportunity to further support students, teachers and parents/carers throughout the year.

For those that don’t know me my name is Matt Cook and I commenced at SKiPPS in 2010. I have taught across many year levels commencing in 5/6 then gradually making my way down to Foundation and working as a leading teacher for the last 3 years. I have enjoyed my time in the class watching students grow and achieve success in their learning. My role this year as Assistant Principal is to build teacher capacity and support teachers in developing their practice to further drive better outcomes for our students. I will be working alongside teachers by ensuring that teams are working collaboratively in planning meetings and using this time effectively to ensure data-driven conversations are central and evidence-based teaching and learning is planned, delivered, and reflected upon.

Our teachers at SKiPPS are doing an amazing job and I am really looking forward to working with them this year.

I couldn’t think of a better school to start my educational leadership journey in. I have loved my time teaching in the classroom and the connections I have with our supportive community. If we haven’t met please come and say hi. I am on yard duty every morning chatting to kids and parents/carers and I welcome this opportunity to meet our new SKiPPS families.

Michelle Bove will continue in her position as Assistant Principal but has reduced her time fraction to 3 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) and will focus this work on our Inclusion practices, including the implementation of the new Education Department 'Disability Inclusion' model. We will provide more information on this exciting project in coming newsletters.

2022 Staff

With the new school year beginning, we wanted to update you on our staff for 2022. Whilst we are lucky to have many familiar faces across the school, we have also welcomed some new staff members to SKiPPS.

We will provide a full profile for all of our new staff in our next newsletter but Jess Bethune (Foundation B) and Meg Garland (1/2M) have started as class teachers having recently worked in our school as pre-service student teachers in recent years.

Over the summer holidays we were also sad to hear that Frances Passuello, our Italian teacher had moved out of education for an exciting role in the pharmaceutical industry. In her place, we are pleased to announe the appointment of Palmina Iacobelli. Palmina has worked at a number of schools across Melbourne teaching Italian and Literacy to Primary and Secondary students and is excitied to join our community and work with our woderful students.

Year level	Class Name	Teacher
Foundation	Foundation J	Jane Bennetts
Foundation	Foundation B	Jess Bethune
Foundation	Foundation M	Jac Morphy

Year 1/2	1/2A	Ange Golden
Year 1/2	1/2L	Louise Moore
Year 1/2	1/2M	Meg Garland
Year 1/2	1/2N	Natalie Gallucci

Year 3/4	3/4J	Joe Gardiner
Year 3/4	3/4L	Lil Wymant
Year 3/4	3/4PC	Prue Robbins & Cath Sullivan
Year 3/4	3/4A	Amy Salter

Year 5/6	5/6L	Luke Jones
Year 5/6	5/6M	Mel Borella
Year 5/6	5/6H	Stephanie Hamilton
Year 5/6	5/6S	Susan Bishop & Lisa Richards

Specialist Subject	Teacher
Visual Arts	Chantel Jose
Performing Arts	Stephen Stanisic
Italian	Palmina Iacobelli

Admin Team	Staff member
Neil Scott	Principal
Matt Cook	Assistant Principal
Michelle Bove	Assistant Principal
Kat O'Brien	Office Manager
Nova Whitehead	Business Manager

Integration Team	Staff member
Integration Aide	Wendy Chan
Integration Aide	Carolyn Hill
Integration Aide	Prue Donaldson
Integration Aide	Amy Rumble
Integration Aide	Bianca Langenberg

Curriculum day next week

A reminder that next Friday (11th February) is a curriculum day for our staff. We will be spending the day working with George Telford, an external expert, on quality teaching and the use of challenging questioning and dialogue in our classrooms. This work supports our key strategic work around improving learning outcomes.

Team Kids will run a full day program at the school on the 11th. please book in with them at https://teamkids.com.au/venues/st-kilda-park-primary-oshc/ if you need support with childcare on the day.

Draft annual privacy reminder for 2022

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website http://www.skipps.vic.edu.au/assets/uploads/2020/03/Collection_Statement-primary-school-1.docx

For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in ten community languages:

* Amharic

* Arabic

* Dari

* Gujarati

* Mandarin

* Somali

* Sudanese

* Turkish

* Urdu

* Vietnamese.

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