Dear St. Joseph’s School Community,

I would like to thank families for your support and help last week. I acknowledge the resilience of each student of our school and their ability to embrace this new reality. I also ‘tip my hat’ to staff for their commitment, enthusiasm and sheer determination to create remote learning for everyone. Together our school community’s determination, creativity and commitment to learning has been simply remarkable.

To help us all navigate this new environment I will present three themes to help guide our thinking and actions in this new world. These are only my thoughts and opinions; everyone is entitled to their own views too. I am privileged to have this forum to share my thoughts and appreciate your support and interest in what I do share. Further, the purpose of sharing is to inform, explain, create discussion and hopefully give a perspective to your family discussion. In this new world of remote learning; we are all stronger, together!

The themes I’m sharing below especially consider community; the notion and creation of community is a fundamental tenant of Catholic social teaching. Community is also critical to the purpose of our school. The themes, with examples for St. Joseph’s I share below.

Theme 1: Live with Joy

Our Parish confirmation program will start up this term in the homes. More will come over the coming weeks but it is a program for Grade 3 students. This sacrament celebrates special moments in our lives and will connect young people to their school and parish community. Through the ritual and symbols in this program, the presence of Jesus will touch our lives. In a remote learning environment, the connection to a greater purpose, belonging to a school community and the support of a loving God helps young people connect with purpose and identity. As all our families are aware ‘The Resilience Project’ team are engaged with our school, see a recent YouTube video message from their directors, Hugh van Cuylenberg and Martin Heppell about important aspects of looking after each other and building supportive communities.

A wonderfully creative idea presented to us by a school family lead to a great community outcome. We contacted past Grade 6 students seeking if they would be interested in making their old workable Chromebooks available to support families currently at the school who are short on devices. We have had a wonderful response. Our ICT team are working through the school survey and will provide device support to whoever needs this help. A special thanks to Matt and Sally Conheady for sharing this idea.

Theme 2: Live without Fear

Barry Cassidy, semi-retired ABC journalist is supporting the current ABC program “One plus One.” In the current 2020 series, Episode 2 Barry interviews Australian men’s team cricket coach, Justin Langer. The focus is leadership; Justin particularly took over after the “sandpaper” debacle. In the team at the time there was fear, worry about performance, shame and confusion. Langer supported the team and faced this fear, his story is an insight for us all. The interview can be found on ABC ‘Iview’, see link below.

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/barrie-cassidy-s-one-plus-one/series/2020/video/NC2029H002S00

Theme 3: Live with New Eyes

In this unusual educational time resourcing to support family remote learning is growing with some outstanding help available. The following ‘Art Classes for Kids’ has made it to the Age and Sydney Morning Herald, link below. Tracey Monigatti (School Parent) is the author of this outstanding free site which supports home art in this new world we are living in. The article is below as well as the Facebook link. This is a site that can help with extra-curricula work from home.

Other Important Notes

School Library

To support the remote learning program we have been able to open the library for borrowing. Details will arrive in homes over the next week. The borrowing system will include compliance with strict health protocols, including returned books going into quarantine for a period of days before being available again.

Resource Access

As all school families are aware the school app is invaluable to access school information and support. Two new titles have been created to help with quick access to critical Term 2 information. One called ‘Learning Plans’ gives direct access to the teaching plans to guide the remote learning program and the other called ‘Term 2’ links. This location has everything of a general nature we have sent out for this term. This will alleviate families having to scroll through old emails to track down documents. I thank Kellie Mentha and our office team for this innovation and the set up to support us all.

Google Meets

With our ‘google meets’ program for older students, connection with learners is progressing well. A reminder that care and supervision are required to ensure this powerful tool is used only for learning. The focus this week, after startup last week, will be embedding routines for home remote learning programs. Over the next weeks, the community connection aspect of the google forum will be expanded to help the students connect with their classmates. All this work will come from classroom teachers and our learning plans.

Student Achievements

Life-Saving Warrnambool: Many St. Joseph's students successfully participated in the Lifesaving Victoria Junior State championships over the Labour Day weekend in March 2020. This year the carnival was extended to three days, attracting 1,800 competitors from around Victoria.

For the Warrnambool Nippers, it was the culmination of almost six months of training. All participants were indeed proud of their achievements. At the state level, medals are hard to win. Our students claimed 7 medals.

Congratulations to: Edward Northeast and Hannah McMeel who achieved medals in running events. Well done also to Casey Carlin, Sam Joseph and Will Ralston who all claimed bronze medals in the board relay.

Healthy Moves

Friday 13th March is normally considered a spooky day, but in 2020 it was National Ride2School Day. It was a very successful day at St Joseph’s as 70% of people rode, scooted, bused or walked to school.  All of the students who walked or rode got a sticker.  It was rewarding to see the excited facial responses of the students when they received their sticker.

This was a pleasing result because it included our Foundation students, but it also means that 30% did not walk or ride. One way we could improve the number of students walking in the future is for the students that live far away, to get dropped off on the way to school.

The Coronavirus has stopped all team sports, so walking, riding and scooting may be the only exercise we can do at the moment. This article has been written by our Healthy Moves Ambassadors: Bridget G and C, Kayla and Harper.