A special thanks to our school leadership team, Ursula DeCorrado (Deputy Principal/Learning & Teaching Leader), Kathryn Forbes (Maths Leader), Marialisa Mandarino (Religious Education Leader), Jo Stoica (Learning Diversity Leader) & Stephanie Gorman (E-Learning Leader) for their wonderful presentation last week. We were invited along with two other Catholic schools in the Eastern Region to share our professional learning journey with Dr Lyn Sharratt and our Catholic Education Regional Office. Lyn Sharratt is based in Canada and so our presentation was over a Zoom link. Lyn was very impressed with our maths lesson design model and encouraged us to share our exemplary practice with other schools. We have a highly skilled teaching team who are led by expert curriculum leaders. I am proud of our teaching team and our wonderful leaders for this exemplary work.
I start this week again with an incredibly grateful heart. As part of my daily practice I always reflect at the end of each day and make note of what I am grateful for. I continue to be in awe of the efforts families are making to educate their children at home. We face many uncertainties as a community as we now come to terms with the new Stage 4 restrictions. The changing nature of this pandemic meant that we started this term in the hope that school may resume to onsite learning before the conclusion of Term 3. We now know that these new restrictions will require us to continue remote learning for the remainder of the term. Whilst we can’t be certain about the changing nature of the pandemic, we can be certain of the commitment of students, parents and staff to ensuring our school continues to be a vibrant school community which places the people at the centre of all we do. We can’t be together but we can pray for each other. We can’t be together but we can make a phone call or send an email of support. I thank families in our community for reaching out to others. I thank our staff for noticing when a child seems to be struggling and they reach out and try to solve whatever their difficulty may be. I thank our students for checking in on their friends and asking the question, are you okay? Let us keep being connected to each other, supporting each other and reminding each other of the many blessings that come our way as a result of being part of the St John the Baptist family.
