At this week’s P&F Meeting we addressed a number of issues that have been brought to the attention of the school. Please sit down with a cuppa as this is a long spiel :)

Car park

The car park continues to be an area for discussion and concern amongst parents. Many families are using the drop off and pick up area, increasingly due to requests to avoid additional adult presence on school grounds as much as we can during Covid-19 restrictions. While the line up at 3.00pm is ridiculous and causes issues for cars wanting to park in the available spaces, we do have to acknowledge that our carpark is generally clear by 3.25pm (that’s about 20 minutes for over 250 students to leave the school grounds). Often from 3.15pm, the traffic is actually intermittent for the last 10 minutes. I continue to be pleased with the way our parent community generally communicates about these issues raising valuable ideas on our parent FB page.

Please note that I have again raised the suggestion of a second entrance just for those families wanting to use the drop off and pick up space so that they are separated from the general parking area with TCE and we will discuss it in depth soon.It will not be a short term option. We have proposed this previously and it was rejected at the time but I am not sure as to the reason for this other than it would be costly. There would not be funding available for a project like this so it would have to be school-funded. It is worth further investigation and I will get back to the community on that in good time. 

In the meantime, I continue to ask for patience and for parents to not arrive so early. Children are never dismissed from class before 3.00pm and it generally takes a couple of minutes for them to make their way to the front of the school. Lining up from 2.15pm as we have seen all this week,  simply creates issues for other families trying to access the carpark and is quite frankly ridiculous. If you are arriving this early for pick up, please use the carparks and park so we can avoid the pick up line extending out to Bishop Putney Avenue. . 

Sports Carnivals

It has been brought to my attention that there are concerns around when our school will have formalised athletic carnivals. Currently we have an Athletics Carnival in Term 3 each year that includes running races for Kindy children up to our Year 6 children. Our children from Year 3 to Year 6 can also participate in a 200m and 800m running event as well. The middle session is generally a rotation of athletics type activities but are not formal athletic events due to the number of children in our school in the lower years. 

I would anticipate being able to include more traditional athletics activities from next year that will include adding both long jump and high jump at this stage. I’d be more than happy to establish a sports committee with some parent and staff volunteers who could help with the planning involved for these carnivals. 

Up until now, our PE teacher has been able to identify, through the carnivals we have had and through PE lessons, the students who would be eligible for representative levels and they have had the opportunity to compete in those competitions eg. Redtrack though that has not been an option this year. Our carnival this term will be a modified carnival given there are no representative events following on from it this year, ie.  more fun activities than competitive activities.

Rewards and awards

Through our last Board discussion, we identified some misunderstandings and inconsistencies with our school values around rewards and awards. The Board was discussing a number of things in terms of developing the Learning Partnership part of our Community Engagement Framework. We discussed this at our Leadership Team Meeting and our Staff Meeting. I was advised on Tuesday that this has also been raised with the P & F.

During our Formation year in 2017 a group of parents and interested stakeholders for our school used the ‘Hallmarks of Benedictine Education’ to make decisions around our Mission, Vision and Values. We did decide early on that we wanted to develop or instill a sense of value in our students about the dignity of work and the effort applied. We wanted our students to understand the joy and satisfaction of a job well done was reward in itself as this was the Benedictine way. These discussions led to decisions to not have Student of the Week type awards as we saw these as quite meaningless to children ie. children were not motivated to achieve these awards and most schools and children saw them as ‘whose turn is it this week?’ type awards. These discussions also led to decisions like not having participation ribbons for every child for our Athletics and Swimming Carnivals. We only give Participation ribbons to children in Kindy and to those who don’t place in a final.

We do recognise however that we do give prizes or incentives in other aspects of school life including Run Club, 4B Club and classroom rewards. It is here that we need to consider the depth of what we are working towards in terms of our school values.

Our Run Club prizes are given to those students who participate and achieve set goals. The beauty of our Run Club prizes is that they stop at 1000 laps. By then though children who have reached this level so far have become intrinsically motivated by their participation and have continued without the need for rewards- exactly what we would hope for.

We do recognise that the next steps part of our discussions are to consider are ‘How do we acknowledge student success?’ and How do we create opportunities for families to celebrate student success? The easy option is to create rewards for a series of different areas but I would hope we could explore things a little more deeply in terms of what messages we are giving our children and what kind of character traits we want them to develop first. 

Headlice

Please note that we are having some issues with headlice across a number of different classes. Please ensure that you are checking hair daily and if you become aware of the presence of headlice, that it is treated effectively as soon as possible. You will also need to wash hats, hairbands and bedding to make a real difference. The quicker and more effective we can all be in our response to this, the less time we will have to deal with this. It can become very repetitive and frustrating for families when children keep getting head lice (as well as being very uncomfortable).

Please continue to make safe health choices over the coming weeks. Have a fabulous week. 

Cheers

Penny Collins

Principal

Welcome to the end of another week!

Thanks to the Year 5 Turtles who shared their assembly with us this week.  Their assembly was about the Assumption of Mary (the mother of Jesus).  Their assembly looked at how we can all work in Mary’s shoes to be people of faith and hope, willing to trust in God.   

Our students were thrilled this week to see our Nexus Arts performance by ‘Wild Man’ Phillip Green.  He spoke (with great enthusiasm) and provided a hands on experience to our students about traditional technologies used by indigenous people across the varied environments of Australia’s deserts, mountains, rivers and sea shores.  

We also wish our Year 5 and 6 students all the best next week as they head off to camp at Mackay Action Challenge.  They will be away from Tuesday - Friday and will undergo a range of different activities and challenges.  We look forward to hearing all about it on their return! 

   Pax

Nick

Contemplative Corner 

Over the next few weeks, I intend to give a range of different mantras and sayings  which you might like to use in your daily life.  The ideas are that these mantras and sayings are for you - read them, sit with them, take what you need out of them.  You might see something that you love and sticks out in your mind - it might become your theme for the week.  YOu may choose to pray with it or say it to yourself each morning before starting the day.  Enjoy.

“Knock, and the door will be opened for you” - Matthew 7:7

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Year 1 Echidnas have been very busy reading all term. We have created our own books for Olga the Brogla and The Little Corroboree Frog. Discussed character profiles for the main characters in Napangardi’s Bush Tucker walk and Olga the Brolga. Enjoyed the old favourites from Roald Dahl. We are getting ready to read The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek next week. 

If you are collecting your students after lunch on Friday, could you please let the teacher and office know so we can try and make it easier for collection.  As this is sport day and classes are spread all over the school grounds.