Acting Principal's Report 

I acknowledge the First Peoples of our nation and the traditional custodians of the land on which our beautiful school stands, The Wathaurong people. I pay my respects to the Wathaurong people and acknowledge their contribution and care of the land and waters on which our school community works and lives. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge and thank all First Nations people within the Miners Rest School Community.

Welcome back!

A warm welcome back to all of our students and families. I trust that you all had the opportunity to rest and relax and enjoy some extra family time over the break. The students returned on Monday very positively and were quickly settled in class catching up with friends and establishing their learning environments and expectations with their teachers - a great start to what I see as a very positive term ahead.

A welcome return...

We welcome back two of our treasured staff members this term. 

Claire Fletcher (nee Smith), who will be working with Emily Pellegrino in S3. Claire returns to us after spending time with baby Sam at home. With four children around the age of our 5/6 students, Claire is looking forward to joining the team in the Senior Learning Centre.

We also welcome back Megan Polson. Megan is well-known throughout the school community as our Performing Arts extraordinaire. Megan has been spending time at home with baby Willoughby and is returning to us 2 days each week. Megan will be developing our Social & Emotional Early Development Space (SEEDS), to provide authentic and targeted learning experiences to support learning in the Foundation to Year Two area. More information will be provided about our SEEDS program in next week's newsletter.

School Values

The Junior School Council have completed a power of work this year with Mr Mitchell, Rebecca and Miss Hannah supporting their work. They planned and implemented a thorough consultation process school-wide to determine our new School Values. The Junior School Council were then invited to presented attend the General Meeting of the School Council, where their presence and input was warmly received, to share the decision about the Miners Rest Primary School Student Values. Staff have also worked through an extensive consultation process this year to determine the values that reflect our actions and behaviours. It was decided by staff that the three identified values by our students also resonated with our staff. 

Kindness, Respect and Courage are our School Values. The Junior School Council will now be involved in the process of developing a plan to embed these very important values throughout the school.

Road Safety

A reminder about road safety around our school. We are mindful of safety on our roads around the school, particularly related to pedestrian safety, cycle safety and lawful pick-ups and drop-offs. Please ensure that you are abiding by the road rules and traffic laws to keep all of our children safe before and after school.

School Grounds after hours

It was with great disappointment that school staff were required to clean up mess and graffiti towards the end of last term and throughout the holidays. We are so very lucky to now have the facilities we have at Miners Rest Primary School, and we aim to protect and maintain these top class facilities for our students. Consideration has been given to locking all gates that access the oval to mitigate misuse. We are hoping that we do not have to resort to this action to protect our facilities as we feel proud to offer these areas to our school community.

Student-led Conferences

These informative meetings with students, families and teachers present, will take place on September 6 from 12:00 pm until 7:00 pm. Bookings will be made through the School Interviews website later in the term. Please note: students do not attend school on this day, but are expected to attend the student-led conference with their family.

What else can we look forward to this term?

World of Maths Family Night, Responsible Pet Program for Foundation and Year 1/2, Year 3 Camp at Cave Hill Creek, Book Week celebrations and the Creswick Brass Band entertaining us at Assembly, just to name a few.

Assembly

Keep an eye out on Sentral for the code to join our school assembly. We hope that you can join us either in person, or via WebEx.

Enjoy the rest of the week,

Kylie Nissen

Acting Principal