From the Principal

Our Gospel this week comes from Luke and gives us the most well known, spoken or sung; incantation, the Our Father:

“When you pray, say: ‘Father, bring it about that your name is held holy’…Ask,and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Luke 11: 1-13

 The many different articles that can be read looking at the ways in which this scripture is examined, have enabled us to understand that the Our Father calls us to live a life in greater harmony with God. The prayer given to us by Jesus offers us some prayer for self; for the basic needs of our existence; however it also entices us to ensure that we live in harmony with God; that we must let go of anger or hurt and instead turn to forgiveness and healing. This prayer is so valuable today. We do have fundamental need to sustain self, however, our contemporary societies drive to accumulate goods comes at such a vile cost to our environment that Jesus would be appalled at our care for the gift of our earth. If we all do as Jesus call us too; to live a life where prayer is for other, not for self, where hurt is replaced by forgiveness, and that this is done by inviting God into our daily lives, then our societies and our world would have peace and be able to enact justice for all of humanity. The Our Father calls us to do this- to bear witness to our faith and to ensure our actions are done for the betterment of other. 

It has been a wonderful week here at school; the sun has been shining for much of the week and many students and classes have spent time outside enjoying the vitamin D and being in fresh air. We have actively encouraged staff and students to be outdoors as much as possible to aid in the prevention of transmission of Covid and colds or flu. We are incredibly grateful to all students who have done a great job in adopting mask wearing when inside, our number of Covid cases at school are tracking very well and we have not noticed a significantly high increase in transmission here at school. We have a number of alternative strategies to implement should our case numbers increase however at this stage things are tracking well and we will continue with our current mitigation plans. Should there be any changes to this we will communicate with all families via Edsmart.

My particular congratulations this week go to Emerald Nguyen who has been recognised with a Premier’s VCE Award for her outstanding academic results in 2021. Emerald was joined at the award presentation by her teacher Ms Lynne Diep who worked so closely with Emerald last year. The photo below depicts Emerald with the Minister for Education and Women in Victoria, The Hon. Natalie Hutchins. Read more about this exciting achievement in the latest news section of this newsletter.

Finally I would like to inform parents that we will be conducting a uniform blitz in the coming weeks. With the advent of Winter we have noticed a very significant number of students wearing non-uniform items, this includes 'puffer jackets' and 'hoodies'. These items are not to be worn with the College uniform. Students have the choice of a number of uniform items and can certainly wear warmer style undergarments to keep warm. We will be speaking with the students over the coming week in regard to this and following a week of education we will be implementing a detention system for students who continue to disregard College rules. We are grateful to all of our parents for your support with this matter.

Sally Buick

Principal