Reflection

This Friday is the Feast Day of Saint Mary MacKillop, Australia’s first saint and the founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. Mary dedicated her life to the education of children, especially those who were poor or living in remote communities. Her famous words, "Never see a need without doing something about it." still guide us today

At our school, we honour Mary MacKillop’s example by living out her values — through our learning, our compassion for others, and our efforts to build a just and inclusive community. Like Mary, we are called to be people of faith, courage, and action.

As a Catholic school, may we continue to:

• Be attentive to the needs of others, especially those who are struggling,
  
  
• Act with kindness, humility, and determination,
  
  
• And place our trust in God, just as Mary did.
  
  

Through the spirit of Saint Mary MacKillop, may we grow as a community that truly lives the Gospel in word and deed.

Saint Mary of the Cross, pray for us.

Father Henry

Fr Henry has commenced a period of annual leave where he is travelling overseas to visit family until the middle of September. In his absence, Fr Mike Knight will be with us. He also belongs to the Divine Word Missionaries, the same order of priests that Fr Henry belongs to. I’m sure you will all ensure that Fr Mike feels welcome in our community and we thank him for his support of Fr Henry. We pray that Fr Henry enjoys his period of leave and travels safely.

School Cyclic Inquiry

As noted on the Term 3 Overview, we are engaging in School Cyclic Inquiry (SCI) in September. The SCI is a collaborative, school-led inquiry process. It generally occurs every four years.

SCI assists us to:

• Celebrate and demonstrate the effectiveness of our school’s long term strategic improvement and growth in faith, learning and wellbeing to the Bishop of Wollongong, the Director of Schools, and to our local community
• Identify a limited number of strategic improvement priorities for our next four year School Strategic Improvement Plan

SCI includes:

• A period of self-reflection where academic data, wellbeing data, staff, parent and student survey data (Tell Them From Me) are all analysed and evaluated using research-based performance characteristics found in the School Improvement Tool and Catholicity Domain
• A period of inquiry and review led by an external panel of educators that will take place on September 3rd and 10th this term. This will involve interviews, observation and collaborative discussion with the school leadership team, Fr Henry, staff, parents, students and the wider school community. This panel will also spend time in classrooms. You will be advised about an opportunity for you to be part of this valuable process in the coming weeks

To further support this process, we have devised another parent survey. We want our next School Strategic Improvement Plan to be aspirational and would like to know what attributes, values and skills you would like to see your child graduate our school with in the areas of faith, learning and wellbeing. We look forward to your responses.You can access the survey here.

Book Week 2025

We are looking forward to our upcoming Book Week Parade. Students are invited to dress up as a character or concept from any book of their choice! The parade will commence at 9am in the Hall.

Bullying, No Way 2025

Next week is Bullying, No Way week. Staff and students will be completing different learning experiences in their classes throughout the week.

100 Days of Kindergarten and the P&F Kindergarten Forum

Last Friday Kindergarten celebrated 100 days of being at school with a dress up day and lots of fun activities culminating in a parade at the assembly in the afternoon.

Parents were also welcomed into the classrooms where they could spend time with their child and help them with a learning activity. This was followed by our first ever P&F and school Parent Forum. The aim of the forum is to continue to build towards ‘Belonging in a connected community’. Our school Counsellor, Sarah Bailey, gave a presentation to the Kindergarten parents who were in attendance. The presentation was focused on early childhood development. The forum concluded with afternoon tea.

We look forward to the next forum (Friday Week 6) which is for parents of students in Years 1 and 2 with a focus on reading. 

In all things at Holy Family, Give Thanks.

Mrs Smith