Dear Parents and Carers,

This morning we held a liturgy led by our Year Six liturgy team. It was held to celebrate the feast of Mary Help of Christians the patroness of Australia. Mary Help of Christians was chosen as the Australian patron because it was the devotion to the rosary that sustained the early Catholics in Australia before they had priests arrive.  Mary’s prayer is very relevant to our current situation in Australia: 

...Through her prayers and under her protection,  may the light of Christ shine over our land. And may Australia be granted harmony, justice and peace. Grant wisdom to our leaders and integrity to our citizens.

It is such a delight to see full classrooms again. Our children look very happy to be here and our teachers are thrilled to be teaching face to face again.

Unfortunately we are not allowed to have parents on site as yet and so our infants classes are really missing their parent helpers. We have an “all hands on deck” approach at the moment and so the leadership team and Mrs Miller and her team are very busy helping our students settle into their class routines. I have spent my mornings in Kindergarten this week helping with reading groups; Mrs Edwards is helping with literacy assessments and Mr Brierley is facilitating our extension groups. We are all enjoying getting back to our core business of teaching. 

Thank you for your patience with our staggered finishing time. Despite the rain we were able to get all children home in just over half an hour. Mornings still present a long queue of cars which seems to get very busy about 8.30am. My observation this morning was that many parents were getting out of their cars to retrieve bags from the boot and say goodbye to children. I think the line would be much quicker if children had their bags on their laps or the floor of the car and got out of the car independently. I'm sorry we cannot allocate staff to do this as all staff are currently doing at least twice the duties usually allowed in schools.

Earlier this year I presented our future learning plan. It had four key elements to it that we believe have played a key role over the last few months in trying to create a successful online environment for our students. The four elements were:

Learning Partnerships

As schools closed around the country the Learning Partnerships between teachers, teachers and parents and parents and students changed dramatically. We have great respect for our parents who were such important collaborators and partners in their children's learning.

Leveraging Digital 

Never has such a steep learning curve for so many been seen. Many teachers, parents and students have new skills that they have developed only recently. At the beginning of the year, who would have thought we would be working solely on an online platform and posting our work solely online! 

Learning Environments

Our learning environment changed to be at home and digital over the past few months. While learning from home we supported our students and encouraged them to take responsibility for their learning and in collaboration with others.

Pedagogical Practices

Reflecting on our time online is an important part of our current work. It will be good to see what parts of our online journey bore fruit and which parts were not as helpful. With our huge leaps in digital professional learning it will be an interesting time ahead as we shape the future of learning.

Regards

Julie Caldwell