Wow, what a week we have had celebrating Catholic Education Week! The theme - ‘Communities of faith, hope and love’ is particularly lovely as I feel it represents our school community very well. On Monday evening, Aleesha Rockemer, our Learning and Teaching Advisor was recognised for outstanding contribution to catholic education at the Spirit of Catholic Education Awards. Aleesha has been an integral member of our leadership team, especially in developing our approach to learning and teaching at St Benedict’s. Aleesha is a relational, committed, collaborative and critical thinker in all that she does and staff and students have all benefited from her measured approach. Aleesha has worked tirelessly to develop effective partnerships with her colleagues; working productively together to effect change that has built confidence in our teachers and determined the learning culture of our school. We are so blessed to work with such a passionate, professional educator.

On Tuesday we had a number of our students who completed their Sacraments this year, attend the Diocesan  Catholic Education Week Mass which was actually the Qld State Launch so we were able to meet the Arch Bishop Mark Coleridge as well. On Wednesday we had a number of students participate in the Challenge Games with a number of our staff providing support. These children were so supportive of each other throughout the day truly demonstrating our St Benedict’s Catholic School spirit and care for each other.Our Prep students celebrated one hundred days of school on Thursday and Friday has been our big finale with our St Benedict’s Feast Day and Benny’s got Talent, always an annual highlight.

This week you would have received an email from me regarding toys at school and our preference for these to remain at home. Please be aware that our school is well resourced for sporting equipment and sensory tools for students and therefore there is no need for anything additional to come to school. We also prefer that students don’t bring any other toys, including keychain toys for bags etc as these are not necessary and can cause distraction or issues with other students. Our students are able to have their own choice of school bag so we believe this is enough for them to have some expression of personal interests (at least in terms of ‘stuff’). We do have one exception to these expectations and that is that students  can have cards to play with in the morning session at school. We appreciate your support in helping us reduce the issues we are dealing with regarding all these unnecessary things being brought to school.

We still have much to look forward to this term so please keep up with our communications. We have excursions, inter-school athletics, Science Week, Book Week Parade (dress up for all our new families), Ecofest and Eisteddfod to go along with all the fabulous learning experiences our students have yet to enjoy too.

Have a fabulous week.

Cheers

Penny