Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Over the past few weeks we have welcomed nearly all our students back to school and the staff and students are enjoying being a face-to-face learning community again. It has been an incredibly challenging time for many, if not all members of ours, and the wider community, and the impact continues to be felt by all. Our children have been wonderfully resilient during this time in their lives-particularly since many of the important things to them-sports, music, catching up with friends, playing outside etc have been heavily restricted. Similarly, the normal rhythms of school life- assemblies, masses, sports carnivals etc. have been postponed and we have noticed that our children are, in a sense, grieving these losses.

We have noticed recently that some children are finding school relationships just a little more challenging than usual. I want to reassure all families that we, as a school are doing everything we can to create a safe, harmonious and nurturing school environment for the children in our care. We are taking proactive steps in all classes to reinforce our core values of honesty, respect, care and compassion for all, and of never seeing a need without doing something about it. I know our young people will continue to strive to live up to these values!

Last week, Jamie and I visited all of our classes to discuss and reinforce our school wide GROWERS! Learner Dispositions. GROWERS stands for Gritty, Reflective, Optimistic, Wondrous, Engaged, Risk-takers and Self-aware. These dispositions help our young people to be successful learners and and to build productive and healthy relationships. We intentionally teach each disposition to all classes, once a week, on Wednesday afternoons. Have a chat with your children about their emerging understanding of these dispositions.

I hope all families enjoyed our Virtual Learning Walks presented to you via a personalised Seesaw celebration of each child’s learning! We are always looking for ways to share student learning with you-even when we can’t physically invite you into the classrooms! We hope to share another virtual tour later in the term.

School Attendance

While we have been supporting parent choice during this pandemic, we now expect all students who are well and not considered vulnerable to COVID-19 to attend school.

Students are required to attend school unless they are:

• Feeling unwell
• Have a chronic medical condition or compromised immune system and are not able to attend school on advice from their medical practitioner
• Live in a household with others that are deemed vulnerable to COVID-19 and are not able to attend school on advice of their medical practitioner
• Have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or have been required to self-isolate by SA Health

Installation of Patrick O'Regan as Archbishop of Adelaide 

On Monday, May 25, the New ArchBishop of Adelaide, Patrick O’Regan was officially installed. This is an exciting time for the people of the Arch Diocese of Adelaide, as we have been waiting for this moment for 2 years. There have only been 11 Arch Bishops in the history of South Australia and it is indeed a momentous appointment.

As a Catholic school community we warmly welcome Archbishop Patrick and look forward to his leadership, guidance and pastoral care of the Archdiocese.

Please click here to read the Frequently Asked Question document, which includes further information about our new Archbishop.

NATIONAL RECONCILIATION WEEK 2020