School Council
PRESIDENT'S REPORT
I am sure you all wholeheartedly welcomed the return to school last week after the long period of home learning. It felt, in some ways, as though it was the beginning of a school year, with a mixture of excitement and nervousness in our house.
As president of the School Council, and on behalf of the parents, I wanted to formally thank Lynne Foster, Chellee Plumb and all of the staff for the incredible job they did in pivoting to remote home learning, getting up to speed with new technologies in a very short period of time, running Webex classes each day after having to adapt their class lesson plans from what they had planned to do in a classroom to teaching the lesson plans online, regularly checking in with the children on their wellbeing, and managing to adapt, as needed, for children who found home-learning and video classes difficult at times.
Although my time on the School Council had already enlightened me on the enormous degree of research, planning, work, changing approaches when needed, based on data, guiding and engaging that goes into teaching each and every child and class at our school, and having to help my son with his tasks, was a real eye-opener.
The amount of work involved for the children and teachers, and the depth and breadth of work required for the International Baccalaureate units of inquiry, add up to a very enriching learning experience for our children.
So, profuse thanks to the teachers for all your incredible hard work, for putting in all those extra hours as you reviewed tasks that had been uploaded, for the fun dress-up days that gave the kids something to laugh about, and the enormous effort you put in to connecting with the children in your class, despite them not being in the room with you.
As for our School Council, we have continued to operate, but our meetings have been online now for the past five months and will continue in that format through to the last meeting in December.
Despite the children not having been at school for some months, the School Council and sub-committees are still dealing with, not only the typical matters that usually arise for us to consider, but the new challenges posed by COVID 19.
Our School Council and sub-committees’ work covers all sorts of things, such as renovation and repair work, including the building of our wonderful new playground, to the recent Trivia Night fundraising event to figuring out how the children can order food from our canteen whilst keeping it COVID-safe.
Along with our monthly school council meetings, our Finance, Facilities, Education and Policy, Canteen & Uniform and OHSC sub-committees also meet each month. If any parent has any questions about what we are doing on School Council, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via the school office.
I hope you and your family enjoy Term 4 and being back at school, especially with the wonderful new playground and the flourishing, well-tended kitchen garden we are so lucky to have.
It certainly feels how it should be, to see the children back at school, racing through the gate with excitement in the morning, to see their teachers and classmates.
Stay healthy and safe!
Sandra Maxfield
President of School Council