Assistant Principal's Welcome Message
Dear Parents, Carers and the St Joseph’s Community,
“Loving God, today marks the beginning of a period of inner reflection and examination. Father, the days stretch before me and invite me inward to that silent, holy space that houses Your Holy Spirit. This special period invites me to examine my life through our Lord Jesus Christ’s eyes and the truth and reality of your love embodied. Father, give me the grace to enter the atmosphere of these days with anticipation of our meeting. Lord, when I open my heart to your presence, let your loving kindness flow over me and seep into the pockets of my soul. I ask this for the sake of your love.”
Today we celebrate Ash Wednesday, the first day of the liturgical season of Lent, a time of fasting and prayer. In this season, we prepare ourselves to celebrate the high point of our Christian life, Easter. Ash Wednesday comes from the ancient Jewish tradition of penance and fasting. The practice includes the wearing of ashes on the head. The ashes are made from blessed palm branches, taken from the previous year’s Palm Sunday Mass. While the ashes symbolise penance and contrition, they are also a reminder that God is gracious and merciful to those who call on Him with repentant hearts. However, we must not forget that we are called to live as a representative of Jesus every day – even when the ashes have been washed away. So how will you live Lent after the ashes are gone and take up the Cross in the coming 40 days?
Parent-Teacher Interviews
A reminder that Parent-Teacher Interviews are being held next week. This is an opportunity for teachers to discuss how your child has settled into the new school year and for you to share any important information about your child with teachers. If you have already had a formal meeting with your child’s teacher, there is no need to attend an interview.
Please follow the below link to make your booking. Bookings will close at 12 pm this Friday.
Parent Teacher Interview Booking Link
Social and Emotional Learning
This fortnight my focus in the classrooms in on emotions and the brain. I will be introducing students to Dr Dan Siegel’s ‘Hand Model of the Brain’ and looking at how our ‘feeling’ brain can impact our ‘thinking’ brain to cause us to ‘flip our lid’. The below link is a 2 ½ minute YouTube video that explains this hand model notion in our emotional dealings of day to day life. I will be encouraging students to identify ways that their body experiences stress and teaching them a variety of breathing techniques to help regulate their feeling brain.
Hand Brain Model Video Link
Morning Supervision
A reminder that supervision for the school day commences at 8:20 am. We have noticed an increase in the number of children who are arriving at school before this time. Please note that parents and carers are responsible for their child/ren outside the times of school supervision.
Catholic Education Online Survey
Catholic Education, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn (Catholic Education), will shortly release an online survey to better understand your opinion of the value Catholic schools like ours provide and what that means for you and your children. The findings of this research will be used by Catholic Education to improve the offering of Catholic schools.
The survey will be sent out to parents via email in the coming week and should take less than 15 minutes to complete. I encourage all parents to respond to the survey.
Privacy and confidentiality - Please note that Catholic Education has engaged JWS Research to host the survey, collect the data and analyse the results. JWS Research is an independent, fully accredited, Australian research agency (see www.jwsresearch.com for further information). Survey results will be reported in the aggregate with individual responses remaining completely confidential and treated in accordance with the relevant privacy laws, including the Market and Social Research Privacy Principles and the industry’s code of professional behaviour.
Walk to School Morning
This Friday is our first Walk to School morning. We will be meeting at O'Connor shops at 8.15am and walking together to the school. All students and families welcome.
Enlighten Festival Cake Stall
St Joseph's are running a Cake Stall at the Enlighten Festival this Friday evening. Thank you to all those who have offered to bake for the occasion or help out on the stall. The money raised from the stall will be going towards purchasing new readers for Foundation and Year 1.
Please see the flyer in the P&F section of this week's newsletter.
Canteen Manager
Pleasingly we have now appointed a new Canteen Manager, Tihana Ravanparsa. Tihana joins us with a background in cafes, and is looking forward to becoming part of our school community. Tihana will begin in the Canteen next Monday, 2 March, getting things ready for a full reopening of the Canteen on Tuesday 10 March. For the remainder of 2020, the Canteen will operate Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday each week. Over the coming week, Tihana will be calling for volunteers and also seeking feedback from parents and students about menu options for the remainder of Term 1.
I hope you have an enjoyable end to the week.
Yours in Christ,
Amy Doszpot
Assistant Principal