Hi everyone,

This week we have received an email from a Grandmother of our school expressing her happiness at how her grandaughter has flourished since being at St Benedict’s. She had wonderful accolades for our staff and it was a lovely message to share especially knowing the challenges this young lady faced when she first started here. We have had so many success stories with children here at Benny’s and we only expect to continue that journey. We take our vision for St Benedict’s quite seriously and do aspire to meet the ideals detailed within that vision. It can be quite challenging at times with the very diverse families, learner and behaviours we experience when at school and some progress is quite visible and some is not known so readily.

Over the next few weeks we will be reviewing our Annual School Improvement Plan for 2019 alongside our Mission and Vision in preparation for making our goals for 2020. I am due to receive the data and feedback you have provided as part of the recent RADii survey next week and will use this information to help formulate  our next steps forward to create the learning community we aspire to be. I welcome any feedback you would like to offer especially if it’s constructive. It is always helpful to reflect on what is going well and what could be improved.

Building Progress

Our new classroom blocks and staffroom extension are tracking long nicely and we should see them reaching lockup stage within the next fortnight. Ceiling fitouts have already commenced and we are hopeful that the wall between our current staff area and the extension will be knocked out soon.

Book Week

Next week we have  our Book Week Parade on Tuesday 20 August where the kids can come dressed as their favourite book character. Mrs Whalley has some wonderful interactive things planned for the actual parade and it is an event not to be missed if you can make it. It starts at 9.00am. The kids are able to wear their costume all day if they can function well in it, though they will need school shoes for play.

School Disco

Our P & F have got plans well under way for the upcoming disco on Wednesday 28 August. Please come along and enjoy a fabulous family night getting our groove on.

Have a fabulous week. 

Cheers 

Penny

We have now reached the half-way point of the term and what a busy term it has been so far!  Looking back, we have celebrated St Benedict’s Feast Day, Mulkadee Youth Arts Festival, Catholic Education Week, School Camps, science week and the list goes on!  Just writing this list can be exhausting! However, I think here at St Benedict’s, the contemplative nature of our school puts us in a great place to deal with the ‘busyness’ of life.  At times the busyness is unavoidable, however, through contemplative practices that take place in our school such as Christian Meditation, we are equipping our students with the skills to be able to cope and deal with this.  These practices give our students the time out of the day to be still, silent and alone in their thoughts. This is truly a life-long skill and one that as adults we definitely benefit from as well.

I would like to leave leave you this week with two short pieces of writing.  The first taken from a paragraph of “Put Into the Deep”, an article by Ernie Christie about the contemplative approach to improving wellbeing for students.  

The path of meditation is a path of self-knowledge. To fully know ourselves we must go deeper, beyond the images today’s culture paints for us of the perfect being. We must seek peace in ourselves first. Teaching children to meditate, giving them the safe space to learn and experience this prayer of the heart is deeply transformational. I implore you not to let the speed of the world wash over us and our students. We owe it to the next generation of youth to lead them to the slow path: to the joyous insights of the contemplative pilgrim on the journey of life, to lead them to another way of knowing: another way of being. 

E Christie - Article originally published in Principal Connections (Ontario, Canada), Fall 2017, Volume 21, Issue 1

Access the Full Article Here: http://www.meditatio.co.uk/a-contemplative-approach-to-improving-well-being-for-students/ 

Finally, I would like to leave you with a prayer written by Michael Leunig about finding the “slow path”.

Have a great week and God bless,

Nick

St Benedict’s 4B Club

To coincide with Book Week, here at St Benedict’s we are launching a new club, the 4 B Club.

What is 4B? 

4B equals =  Benedict's , 1 Book, 1 Bed, 1 bunch of kids

As families we all live very busy lives.  Fitting in time for reading can be difficult.  However,  reading is the basis of every child’s education.  It is one of the singularly most important things you can do for your child.  Here at St Benedict’s we are passionate about reading. 10 minutes a day in whatever form is important to all children.  So we are asking you, our parents to grab 1 book, sit on 1 bed and read to all your kids at the same time once a week. 10 minutes - done.  Remember big kids love being read to just as much as the smaller ones. 

We would love some photos of you altogether to share with our school community!  Please send one photo only to the email address below. At the end of August we will pull one family name from the draw and that lucky family will win a terrific hamper pictured below. 

jwhalley1@stbenedicts.catholic.edu.au

Just a reminder to parents about the pedestrian crossing on Bishop Putney Ave just as you turn off Dalrymple Rd.  This is a designated pedestrian crossing and parents/carers are asked to approach this crossing at a slow speed and be aware of children and families crossing especially at busy drop off and pick up times.  There have been reports of cars turning off Dalrymple Rd and continuing through the crossing area at high speed.  We understand that during this time of construction there is more foot traffic using the crossing and just ask that parents/carers be patient for a little longer until the new car park out the front of the Kindergarten is completed.