Principal Report

Message from the Principal Term 1 Week 1

Welcome back to what is going to be a very exciting year for our school. 

I hope despite the challenges we faced with COVID-19 over the summer break, you have been able to spend quality time with your families and are feeling refreshed and ready for the 2021 school year. 

It has been a wonderful calm and settled start to our school year. Each year we begin with Wellbeing Week. The focus this year has been on developing relationships and building a strong sense of connectedness and community spirit. At St Columba’s we place a great emphasis on the development of children’s Social and Emotional Skills. Our Wellbeing weeks are specifically designed to reinforce skills of resilience, empathy, relationships, positive emotions, mindfulness and gratitude. These skills all help to create a greater sense of connection and belonging. They are foundational to and underpin the key building blocks of the learning process for each and every child. For we know when children are settled and happy they have the confidence and courage to pursue learning.

This week and over the coming weeks, the children will have multiple opportunities to engage with not only their fellow class members but with children and staff from all levels. At our school, every child knows all the other children in the school and each staff member knows each child by name. Our very successful St Columba’s Kids Wellbeing Program will continue in 2021 thus helping to establish from the outset a strong sense of belonging and connectedness to our school and to peers.

It is a very exciting year for our school.  This year we are undertaking a School Review and IB authorisation. And already there is a sense of anticipation and excitement around the school with this being our School Musical year.  It is actually getting quite hard to contain all the speculation from staff and students as to what it might be.  I look forward to announcing this year’s musical in the next few weeks.

We warmly welcome our new families and staff to St Columba’s and I hope that 2021 is a wonderful year of community spirit and learning for all in our community.