Welcome back to Semester 2, Term 3. I trust that you have all enjoyed some time with your families and a break in routine at least if you weren’t able to have time off. It was so lovely to see the children return to school, some dragging their heels still in holiday mode but then so happy upon seeing their friends. They have all mostly settled back into the routines of school and have an enjoyable week with NAIDOC celebrations.

Mr Christie, along with a small committee planned some interesting activities to engage our students in the traditions and stories of indigenous people and even further explored our House names which embrace indigenous language to describe water- Gumoo, trees- Dthulla, Yalga- country (earth) and light- Dulgan.

This year’s theme ‘Because of her we can’ celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. As pillars of our society, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have played – and continue to play - active and significant roles at the community, local, state and national levels.

For at least 65,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have carried  the dreaming stories, songlines, languages and knowledge that have kept culture strong and enriched as the oldest continuing culture on the planet.

They often did so while caring for their families, maintaining their homes and breaking down cultural and institutionalised barriers and gender stereotypes.

There were pioneering women like Barangaroo, Truganini, Gladys Elphick, Fannie Cochrane-Smith, Evelyn Scott, Pearl Gibbs, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Celuia Mapo Salee, Thancoupie, Justine Saunders, Gladys Nicholls, Flo Kennedy, Essie Coffey, Isabel Coe, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Eleanor Harding, Mum Shirl, Ellie Gaffney and Gladys Tybingoompa.

Today, they are trailblazers like Joyce Clague, Yalmay Yunupingu, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Nova Peris, Carol Martin, Elizabeth Morgan, Barbara Shaw, Rose Richards, Vonda Malone, Margaret Valadian, Lowitja O’Donoghue, June Oscar, Pat O’Shane, Pat Anderson Jill Milroy, Banduk Marika, Linda Burney and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks – to name but a few.

Their achievements, their voice, their unwavering passion give us strength and have empowered past generations and paved the way for generations to come.

Because of her, we can!

Next week we have a number of senior students heading off to Mulkadee along with Mr Christie for an amazing Arts experience, working with specialists in choir and drama to create a showcase of talent. The performance will be on at the Entertainment Centre and I encourage you to check it on Friday night.

This week I have been away for the last half of the week, participating in a training session with other Principals from our all of our Catholic Schools in the Townsville Diocese around reviewing our Governance obligations and gaining a deeper understanding of ethical decision making. It has been fairly heavy stuff but highly valuable and I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

Best wishes for a fabulous week.

Cheers

Penny

Firstly, I’d like to welcome everyone back to what I’m sure will be a very exciting Term 3! There are so many exciting events coming up, it will certainly be a very busy start to the term!  

Already we have had our NAIDOC Week celebrations as a whole school, where students participated in a range of activities which celebrated Indigenous culture.  Some of these included: learning about the origin of our house colour names, Dulgun, Yalga, Dthulla and Gummoo, weaving bracelets and headbands, painting stones and learning about Wulgurukaba and Bindal creation stories, reading a variety of indigenous stories, writing their own stories and creating their own pictures.  Students appeared to enjoy the various experiences and hopefully learnt something new about indigenous culture!

In Week 3 we will be celebrating our St Benedict’s Feast Day! We will start the day at 9:15 with a whole school mass.  Unfortunately Fr Dave is away on holiday, but we are very fortunate to have Fr Terry Lyons stepping into his place to lead us in mass.  All families and friends and most welcome to attend the mass, we would love to see you there!

As a part of our feast day celebrations, we will have a member of Vinnies Youth Townsville come in to present to students about all the work that the St Vincent de Paul society does in out community.  Specifically, they will be touching on ‘Youth Homelessness Week’, which runs from the 6 - 12 August. We will be asking our St Benedict’s community if they could please bring in some non-perishable food items that we could donate to Vinnies Youth to help support some struggling youth in Townsville.  If these items could be brought in by Monday 30th July, we can then present these to the Vinnies Youth members presenting to our students on that day. Please see the flyer below.

Have a great week, and God Bless,

Nick

Parents, you may be aware of the website My School which is a resource for parents, educators and the wider community to find out information about Australia's schools.

The body known as ACARA (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority) works with all Australian schools and school authorities to collect the data underlying the broad range of school information that is published on the My School website each year.  All schools are contacted and requested to provide student background information.

ACARA provide a privacy notice as seen below, which states that parents have the option to opt out of this data gathering practice.  If you do not want our school to provide this background information to ACARA, please advice the school within the next week (7 days).