PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
Dear Parents, Carers, Students, Staff, and Friends of Sacred Heart,
Welcome to Week 2.
I trust that your preparations for Mother’s Day are progressing well. As I said last week, Mother’s Day is such a wonderful time to reflect on the mothers, grandmothers and all those who act in the place of a mother in our lives. It is also a time to reflect upon the mothers who have left us, and cherish the fact that they are very much still here inside us and reflected in the people that we have become.
God of Sarah, Ruth and Rebecca; of Elizabeth, mother of John; of Mary, mother of Jesus: listen to our prayer.
Bless all who ‘mother’ and bring new life in any way, these ‘mothers’ who teach and guide, who encourage and heal.
Invite them to the table of your eternal feast, these ‘mothers’ who feed and nurture the life that has been entrusted to them.
Embrace them warmly in the intimacy of your love, these ‘mothers’ who embrace with affection those who are helpless and dependent.
Bless them today with all good things: with health, with laughter, with joy and with love, with pride in their ‘children’ and the support of many friends.
May all ‘mothers’ who have nurtured life in others be themselves nurtured one day in your strong embrace, there, for all eternity, to rejoice with their families and friends.
Amen.
To celebrate, all are welcome at our Mother’s Day breakfast, open classrooms and Liturgy this Friday from 7.30am. We are grateful to Jennifer Wilkins and Jacinta Tynan for their diligence, time and organisation of the breakfast, and Claudia Portale from McGrath Estate Agents, Mosman for the donation of the coffee cart for all attendees.
Our school will become a very quiet place for at least an hour a day most days next week as Year 3 and Year 5 students sit for their NAPLAN assessments. We are grateful to all the teachers and support staff who have prepared the students to do their very best. As you can imagine this can be a stressful time for both the students and the teachers, so please keep them in your prayers this week. Of course, we wish them all the best for their assessments.
National Families Week (May 15-21) is on the horizon and we have some exciting events planned. There is a special SHM screening of a sing-along version of Disney’s ‘Encanto’ at the Hayden Orpheum on Friday 20/5 @ 4.00pm for families of Sacred Heart. To book, see the QKR app for more information. We also aim to replicate our trivia efforts to host a special trivia night on Tuesday 17/5 with more details to come.
Our Parent Engagement Series of videos for our parent community continues to be a success with a number of parents joining us for yesterday’s session about ‘Keeping your child safe online’. We hope to have a resource established soon to present all of these videos to parents ‘on-demand’. Stay tuned!
To complement this most recent Parent Engagement Series session, I’d like to direct parents to Associate Professor Wayne Warburton’s upcoming session at Marist Catholic College on Wednesday 11/5 @ 5.30-7.00pm. There is the option to attend in person or via Zoom. The school has asked that all attendees RSVP here.
Enrichment in Numeracy and Writing is just around the corner. Between COVID, difficult assessment periods and staff absences, it has been difficult to get off the ground recently, but we aim to recommence Enrichment for a small number of students in Years 3-6 once assessment has been completed by classroom teachers in coming weeks.
We would like to congratulate Pollyanna Bruce in 6Blue as has been offered a cast role in the upcoming ‘School of Rock’ musical presented by Sydney Catholic Schools with students across 150 schools vying for a major role. There was a lengthy audition process, through which Polly’s talents have clearly shone. A wonderful achievement and we look forward to the musical premiere in Term 4 this year.
Finally, we look forward to Mrs Julie Caldwell rejoining us next week after a well earned period of rest and valuable family time.
Mr Nick Brierley
Acting Principal.
Upcoming dates
Friday May 6th @ 7.30am: Mother’s Day Breakfast
Tuesday May 17th @ TBC: National Families Week Trivia Night
Friday May 20th @ 4.00pm: Private SHM screening of ‘Encanto’ at Hayden Orpheum
Saturday May 28th: School Disco