Footy Colours Day

This Friday we will be running our traditional 'footy colours day', complete with a remote assembly parade.

We would love all of our students and families to show their footy colours, take a photo (or a video) of them supporting their favourite team and send this in.

We will then include these in our assembly this Friday morning and see which team has the best support. Please save your photos or videos to drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BamiZOSGglC0mpVsIBwmuOBIWpGPtAFI?usp=sharing

Make sure you save your photo into the correct team's folder.

Go Saints!

Building Works at the school

With the school a lot emptier than usual, we have been taking advantage of the situation to move forwards with a couple of larger jobs.

Our heritage listed 1882 school building currently has thermal fire detectors and a fire safety panel that were installed around the time of the school's centenary. Upgrading this system is a complex, costly and neccessary task.

Over the upcoming school holidays the fire panel will be upgraded and all 115 thermal sensors will be replaced with smoke sensors. While finding the money to complete these works has been challenging, we have no real option and it will ensure that our wonderful students and beautiful main building are protected and safe.

We will also be proceeding with our long-overdue upgrade to our staffroom and the creation of a new meeting room in the admin area of the school. This is a project which we have tried to make happen for years, during which time, the staffroom has become increasingly dilapidated and unfit for purpose.

The new design will create the calm and modern staffroom that our staff deserve, perfect for lunch breaks and staff meetings. We will also create a new meeting room for staff and community use, something which we have never had before.

I need to thank Paul Yates and members of the Buildings and Grounds sub-committee for their work to help us plan and prepare for these works to commence. They will make a huge difference to the working day for our staff members.

Introducing Jen Davies - our new Student Counsellor

Jen Davies will commence at St.Kilda Park Primary as the school student counsellor to support student well-being. Appointment times are available on Tuesdays between 9.00am – 3.30pm.

Jen originally studied psychology and her interests later expanded into art and meditation to further explore self-expression and wellbeing in a thorough manner. This culminated in postgraduate studies in counselling and psychotherapy. Jen’s qualifications include:

BA (Psych)Melb
BA (Vis.Art) Latrobe
Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy Cairnmillar
Interactive Drawing Therapy Foundation course
Australian Counselling Association member

For over 20 years Jen has worked effectively with both adults and children/young people in various community and school settings. In recent times and in recognition of her work , Jen was awarded a scholarship from the Department of Health & Human Services in psychotherapy. Jen has a special interest in working with children and young people and is impassioned by the power of contemporary interventions to provide opportunity for real and lasting life enhancement and resilience.

Jen’s approach

Jen is fundamentally humanistic/person-centred in her approach. This means that she is focused on the therapeutic relationship and provision of a trusted space for reflection, emotional expression, processing of experience, meaning making and finding ways toward growth and change. Jen understands that each person has innate capacity for growth and healing and her overall goal is to provide the conditions that foster that through self-understanding and self-acceptance. She draws from a range of modalities to respond in ways that best suit each individual’s unique needs – expressive therapies, play therapy, mindfulness skills, Acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT). These interventions are well supported by research and attune well with the developmental needs of children and young people.

Jen will be available each Tuesday to support students at school. For further information please contact Michelle Bove

Year 7 transition support

With the end of the year fast approaching, we are preparing to say farewell to our wonderful group of Year 6 students who will soon be making the step-up to secondary school.

We know that this transition is a big one and can be a cause of anxiety for students. During term 4 the ear 5/6 teachers will be supportin this process and we hope that the statewide transition day can proceed on December 7th - when Year 6 students et to spend a day at their new schools.

To support this ransition work, we have again booked Amanda Lecaude to work at the school with the students on 'taking the leap to secondary school'.

She will also be running a parent session on the same theme to help you understand how you best support your child to make a smooth transition to the next stage in their learning.

This event will be taking place on Wednesday 13th October at 7pm.

Please register for this session at https://organisingstudents.webinarninja.com/live-webinars/7015388/register?in_tok=13d8b67c-7ad3-4660-9ec4-d4ee7031adb9

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