Dear Parents

Carols on the Oval  

What a wonderful community night! Our annual 'Carols on the Oval' brings the community of St Monica's together to share the Christmas spirit. Congratulations to Alissa Pearson, our Creative Arts teacher, who led the preparation for our evening gathering and inspired our little ones who performed the Christmas play - The Shiniest Star. The children were adorable. Thank you to Evelyn David Hoole who coordinated our BBQ and the many volunteers who assisted throughout the evening.  

Reports home next Wednesday 12 December

Reports will be distributed next Wednesday.  I am currently reading all 403 reports and they are a real celebration of the children’s learning. I hope that you find your child’s Semester Two Report beneficial in providing information related to their learning and progress at school. Thank you for working in partnership to support your child’s education. This partnership between home and school will be healthy and enhance our children's learning if it is fostered in a positive way. 

We are not holding formal parent-teacher interviews this term. Parents and carers are most welcome to make a time to meet with your child’s teacher if you have any queries following the report. Please contact your child’s teacher, next week, if you would like to make an appointment.

Thank you also to the staff who have literally spend hours and hours over the past few weeks writing reports. They are a very committed and dedicated group of people.

Student Attitude

Recently it’s become more and more apparent to me that many young people are not very good at taking responsibility for their actions. Too often, students are not prepared to take the consequences for their misbehaviour or for when they break the rules. At worst students with this type of attitude can be argumentative, even belligerent and resentful. It’s the small minority of students who respond like this, yet their attitude affects people, particularly when they go home and tell their parents a version of events which colours things in their favour. Unfortunately, teachers (and myself) are then a target for those parents who are defensive and overprotective of their children. Such a bias is unhelpful for the child and for the effective partnership, required by the school and home, for the children to grow and develop into fine young students of character who accept when they’ve done wrong and take the consequences of their actions.

Young people do not just become people of character when they turn 18, nor because they one day decide they want to be that way. Rather we know that, through the challenges of life, growing up comes by learning from the many varied experiences that confront us as we grow.

'Kids will be kids' but I know families send their children to St Monica's because they like the standards, the rules and the care we give. We work hard to be fair. Our rules are well known by the students. Yes, at times there is inconsistency in how teachers enforce rules but we work hard to ensure there is consistency. We remind the students regularly of school expectations. They are explicitly communicated verbally and in writing.

If we are going to do the right thing by our children, if we are going to help form them into great teens and adults then it’s something we must do together. School and home must work together to teach children how to be responsible.

One area we can focus on and teach our children is to teach them to make the right choices, take the responsibility for those choices and ensure they know that if they make a mistake, there are often consequences to assist them for next time.

Holiday TLC for our school gardens 

Special Prayers

Please keep the Lawless family - Eden (1E), Jye (4H) and Skyla (5F) in your prayers as their grandmother passed away. 

Please keep the Newman family - Maddie (6E) and Emma (2RD) in your prayers as their great grandmother passed away.

Baby News

Congratulations to the Houliaras family - Nikolas (1E) on the arrival of Stefanos born last week.

Citizenship

Congratulations to the Kolesnikova family who all recently became Australian Citizens. This was a very special occasion for the family. 

May God's blessing be with you 

Carmel Maguire

Principal