Coronavirus Response
Keeping our students and staff safe and well has been our key focus since the emergence and accelerated spread of the Coronavirus in Australia. The information flowing in on how best to manage both education delivery and the wellbeing of everyone in the school has been immense, and it has required swift adjustments by staff and students alike to adapt to this changing environment.
All of our students have now chosen to 'learn from home' and we have been working hard to ensure continuity of learning for everyone. On Monday 23rd March when it was announced that students would be encouraged to 'learn at home', two of our staff immediately began calling a parent/carer from every student's family to check on the student’s wellbeing and to gather information about the availability and type of internet connectivity, technology devices and other learning requirements.
Where internet connectivity is limited or non-existent or students prefer to work from printed lesson material, our teachers and support staff have worked around the clock to get hard copy lesson packs prepared for these students. We are committed to support every one of our students while they are learning from home. If your child decides they prefer to also have printed lesson material in addition to their online material, please just call the school on 02 67954477 and a work pack will be created for you to collect from our dispatch window.
Processes have now been established to manage the loan of school laptops and more support from the Department in this area will soon be forthcoming. We are working as quickly as possible to prepare laptops for each student on our laptop loan list. If your child is awaiting a loan laptop, one of our front office staff will call you when it is ready for collection. Both the student and a parent/carer must attend together to collect the laptop and sign the loan agreement form.
During our calls to parents and carers, we made sure each family was connected to the SkoolBag app. Our school app is the most rapid and efficient way of getting messages directly to parents and carers. This is essential given the rapidly changing environment.
Our teachers and Year Advisors are in daily contact with their students via Google Classrooms, Microsoft Teams, email and phone and are committed to making all students feel supported. More than ever, routine and continued learning are so important in maintaining a positive state of mind, personal growth and development.
Our timetable has been modified slightly. We are currently still operating the normal timetable for five periods a day on a two-weekly cycle, but have temporarily suspended our daily literacy/numeracy lessons. The daily student attendance role is still being marked. If a student isn't demonstrating they are attempting to engage with and complete their work, they are marked as having an unexplained absence.
Currently, most of our staff are working from home, with a “skeleton staff” operating at school in order to minimise interpersonal contact and maximise social distancing requirements. All staff are currently on-duty during normal school hours, and all attend daily online staff meetings at the start and end of each day. We are preparing for the point where all staff must work from home and ensuring that this is as seamless as possible.
Although the current situation has been thrust upon us, with virtually no time to prepare and a great deal of uncertainty for all of us, I am heartened by the resilience and resourcefulness of our students and staff. If the leaps forward made by everyone in the last week are any indication, the world of education will be an entirely different and exciting one when this crisis finally passes, as all crises eventually do.
My advice to students to help maintain your resilience – eat well, sleep well, keep up your daily routine, stay in touch with your teachers and friends and WASH YOUR HANDS!!!
I encourage parents and carers to contact the school if you have any questions or concerns.
Yours sincerely
Annabel Doust
Principal