From the Principal

Dear Parents, Staff & Students,

“Trust me on this: There’s a good chance that, years from now, you will feel a bit sentimental for these weeks spent in social isolation. We’re built for challenging times. We are writing the stories we will tell our children and grandchildren. Driving down a suburban street waving to elementary school children may not have the historical gravity of landing on Omaha Beach or working on a wartime assembly line. But when the children of the pandemic are old and grey, they will reminisce about the time the schools were closed. It will be a warm memory, even though so many people got sick, lost their jobs, and were afraid. They don’t have the vocabulary today to describe it, but the lessons will stick and become clearer in the retelling. It’s about social cohesion, love and loyalty, and how good people step up when we need them to.”

Robert Pondiscio in “The Lessons That Last in the Time of Pandemic” in Education Gadfly, April 8, 2020

ANZAC Day

On Saturday (April 25) we commemorate ANZAC Day – a national day of remembrance and anniversary of the day of the first landing of Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli. As a community we unite to express our gratitude for the peace and security we enjoy that was obtained for us through the courage, dedication and united effort of the women and men “who served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.”

Tomorrow morning at 8:50 am we ask all students to participate in the College’s ANZAC Day 2020 service by following the instructions provided by Deputy Principal, Mr Paul Lewis in his email sent to our school community members yesterday. Although we can’t “physically” gather together as a whole College this year we can be together remotely.

While we are not at war, we are currently facing very concerning risks to our lives and our futures due to the coronavirus outbreak. I acknowledge the personal and professional challenges resulting from this very uncertain, challenging and difficult situation. I hope families are well and are managing despite the changes and restrictions we are facing. In this time of adversity, we have seen the wonderful response of so many members of our community. We applaud and appreciate the efforts and dedication of our health care professionals and other essential service workers and volunteers and all the unsung heroes who are helping us get through this situation. Times of crisis can strengthen us and foster a sense of unity.

Looking forward, I hope this feeling of unity will be sustained when the threat subsides. I hope so because the strength of our College comes from the united efforts of us all. How we work together will determine for all of us how bright our future will be.

College response to the Coronavirus outbreak

I am very aware of and grateful for the extraordinary efforts of our College staff to enable the transition to remote and flexible learning and teaching. I am also very thankful for the continuing support of parents for what we have put in place to enable our students learning continuity. It has been a big change and challenge for families to manage and support their daughter(s)/son(s) to undertake classes remotely. We have gratefully received feedback from many parents and students. Most feedback has been very positive or constructive and some concerns have been raised. I encourage parents and students to continue to send their feedback to the appropriate person as indicated in the document “Remote and Flexible Learning: Information for Students & Parents” that was emailed to all parents and students by Deputy Principal, Mr Michael Timms at the beginning of the term.

To coordinate and manage the College’s response, we have set-up a network of teams coordinated by the Critical Incident Management (CIM) team which I regularly convene. The purpose of each team is to assess, anticipate, act and refine action for its designated area – ICT, Curriculum, Student Wellbeing, Staff/Operations & Administration or OHS. Our overall aim is to ensure learning can continue remotely and the focus of each team is to trouble shoot, problem solve and support our teachers and students with their work. Feedback about how we are progressing with remote & flexible learning is discussed by the appropriate team. So feedback from parents, students and staff members to the appropriate team is vital.

Two areas of concern that have arisen are the amount of work and the amount of screen time for some students. The CIM Team has discussed both of these concerns. This team has obtained teacher feedback and advice about these concerns. The consensus is that in general, we should not expect the same amount of work while students are undertaking remote learning compared to regular day-to-day lessons at school. The general guidance provided to teachers is to reduce the amount of work. Obviously, this will be a ‘balancing act’, and considerations will include the variety of student differences (e.g., home circumstances, individual student learning needs, progress and application), the type of work and the year level, to mention some. Teachers have also been given guidance to provide off-computer time where possible. We will continue to monitor this, and our management of remote teaching will evolve as we become more familiar with this new way of working. As most parents are already doing, we acknowledge the guidance you are providing your daughter(s)/sons(s) as you monitor how they are managing remote learning.

Another College response to the current situation for which I ask you to please consider supporting is as follows. Mr Paul Lewis has written to our school community (email letter) to inform everyone that we are preparing meals here at school and providing them to St Ignatius families who are in need of such support in these difficult times. To further promote this initiative, I provide the follow excerpt from Mr Lewis’ letter.

Depending on how many meals we can make and how many families need our support, we will also investigate if we can offer similar support to other local charities.

If you would like to donate food items that can be used as part of this community support program that would be wonderful. If you are driving for an essential reason and it happens to brings you past school, you will find a container just inside the Front Office where you can leave your donated food items.

It may be that you wish to support the program but won’t be out and about driving past

school in the near future so you may like to make a financial donation. As we are an essential service, we are permitted to purchase quantities of most food items from the supermarket so we will use the financial donations to purchase food for this meals program.

Financial donations to the program can either be paid directly in to the College account, details as follows: 
BSB 063-512 
A/C 10124719 
Quote Ref “Meals Program” 
or via credit card at Reception.

We certainly realise that these are very difficult and challenging times for many people and for some their employment situation may have recently changed and as such we completely understand that making a financial donation to this program may not be possible for some families.

Support for student wellbeing continues to be a priority for us during this time of remote and flexible learning. Our Student Wellbeing Team are remaining very active and are available. The team have developed a wellbeing resource module that students can access via Canvas. I encourage parents to check this out. The team members are also available to be contacted by students or parents and their contact details can be found in this module.

To promote our community members’ wellbeing, I provide the following advice from Mick Walsh for your consideration. (You can visit Mick’s website for more information: www.learningcurveathome.com)

There is no silver bullet to caring for and growing your own and your children’s wellbeing. Just like the dashboard in your car, no single gauge tells you how well your car is running, but rather it is a combination of all of the important information you possess. The gold standard model for wellbeing is PERMAH, and your own and your children’s wellbeing relies on a combination of all of them. A shortfall in one adversely affects the others, and in these current uncertain times, this could easily occur should we all not be vigilant. As James Baldwin said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” Let’s have a look at simple things you can do as a family to ensure each of the elements of PERMAH are healthy.

P – Positive Emotions + Gratitude: it is the frequency of positive emotions, not their intensity, which has the greatest influence on growing your own and your children’s wellbeing. For everyone, social connection is the best way to achieve this. To self-generate positive emotions, try these things: exercise first thing every morning, text a friend who is struggling, aim to do three kind acts every day and Facetime grandparents.

E – Engagement + Mindfulness: your own negative mind chatter, which causes you to experience fight or flight responses will probably be the biggest thing for you to control and overcome. Remember your children are likely to imitate you. To focus yourself try: create positive I can and I will self-talk statement to combat the negatives, colour in for ten minutes and breathe deeply and slowly.

R – Relationships + Empathy: other people are the best antidotes for life’s ups and downs. Use Zoom, Skype and Google Hangout for you and your children to see happy and smiling faces, break out Uno, Scrabble and other fun games to generate laughter, have fun cooking up hot cross buns, and do Wellbeing Fitness Challenges together.

M – Meaning + Purpose: in these times, feelings of vulnerability are perfectly normal for both you and your children. To relieve these feelings, having a strong sense of purpose to focus on something bigger than yourselves to devote your energies to, will assist. As a family, make cards to drop in the letterboxes of elderly people in your street, make fun family videos, and as a family follow and learn about a caring charity.

A – Accomplishment + Optimism: to cultivate feelings of optimism in your family that together you can influence your own futures, set a goal at home every day. Try starting a vegetable garden with your children, paint a room or piece of furniture, do one extra sit up or push up, encourage your children to complete one thing at a time from their teachers or an online wellbeing activity.

H – Health + Strengths: to keep your own and your children’s immune systems strong, focus on the big five – healthy fresh eating, one hour’s exercise, at least 8 hours sleep, drinking plenty of water and looking on the bright side of life. An uplifting family activity is to identify your top character strengths by doing the free online Strengths Survey at www.viacharacter.org. Everyone puts their strengths on the fridge and tries spotting them.

Best wishes,

Michael Exton Principal