Principal's Report

Busy times at St Joseph’s Glen Innes over the past few weeks! With the Welcome BBQ, Student-Led Conferences, and student wellbeing surveys happening, our energetic commitment to our kids and their learning and wellbeing have been in full flight!

Enormous thanks to those families who managed to join us on-site at the Welcome BBQ. I am not sure who was more proud of our children enthusiastically showing their parents around their classrooms and learning spaces; me, the staff or the families!? I trust that everyone who attended felt a genuine feeling of mutual partnership between family and school as we continue our learning and positive wellbeing journey together? Along with the P&F Association (which met for the first time in two years last Wednesday night) we intend to have many more engagement opportunities during 2022.

The next family opportunity on-site is the Easter Hat Parade beginning at 1:40 pm Friday 8 April with a BYO picnic on the school grounds. Similarly, there is an opportunity to win some great Easter prizes by purchasing tickets in the Easter Egg Raffle! As an initiative begun by the Student Representative Council (SRC), I respectfully ask all families to send in at least one easter egg between now and Monday 4 April so the SRC can bundle up the prizes ready for the big draw on Friday! Check out the posters in this newsletter!

And what a demonstrably generous community we have at St Joseph’s! After the devastating floods in Lismore and the national appeal launched last week by Bishop Homeming, our families and students managed to raise $805 of which $161 came from generous families at the Welcome BBQ. That is a phenomenal donation considering the size of our school. Thank you all very much on behalf of the Lismore Diocesan schools.

Over the past week, students have led their parents through informed learning conversations about their Reading, Writing and Spelling goals, as well as their Numeracy focus. As a school committed to student voice and ownership of their learning and wellbeing, this mode of school-family partnership encourages students to leverage their personal pride in their learning growth to ensure a consistent focus on improvement from term to term and year to year. Similarly, the point-in-time conversation with parents and teachers builds a positive school-family learning partnership founded on knowing where a student currently sits in their learning and their ‘next steps’ to improve. If families happen to miss out on a conversation with their daughter or son’s teacher please drop them an email to find a mutually convenient time to catch up.

Similarly, as we continue our whole school, unrelenting focus on students understanding the Living Well, Learning Well framework -

It is essential that we listen to student voices and opinions about “how are we going”? Consequently, we surveyed all of our stage 2 and 3 students this week via an online survey that our strong team of skilful, helpful adults will analyse and reflect upon to determine trends amongst the student opinions. That real-time student data will allow us to modify our strategies to continue to build positive student perceptions about safety, respect, care, value for each individual and a positive orientation to learning.

Finally, it is with obvious sadness that I communicate Mrs Malby-Miller's resignation as a staff member of St Joseph's Glen Innes. Kirsty will be taking up a middle leadership role at the local high school from the beginning of Term 2. We thank her for her quality service to our community, especially the Stage 3 children with whom she has formed excellent learning and wellbeing relationships. We will more formally farewell Kirsty in the coming weeks. A recruitment process has been put in place quickly.

May God go with you.

Geoff McManus

Principal