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Dear Parents,
The first two terms of this school year have brought challenges to teaching and learning that no education system has faced before. The first few weeks of Term 3 have been no different. Our teachers and staff have risen to those challenges and worked hard to ensure the continuity of learning at home, while looking out for the wellbeing of students under their care. Where difficulties have arisen, they have worked to find innovative solutions to complex problems in short time frames. None of this would have been achievable without the support of parents. While we are aware that this experience has been different for each family, the school–parent partnership has been strengthened by the remote learning experience.
Last night, the staff of St Paul’s lit a candle in their homes as a sign of our support for all our families. Know that we are praying and thinking of you all.
Just another week of Remote Learning:
- 10 staff supervising onsite students
- 13 staff plus 18 classroom teachers conducting google meets each week
- 24 students receiving extension coding classes
- Admin staff working day on day off from home and school
- Leadership rotation onsite and working from home
- Specialists providing online learning and google meets
- 18 Classroom teachers providing online learning
- 40 packs have gone out to support intervention
- Literacy intervention, maths intervention and extension provided online
- 87 chromebooks and 21 ipads have gone out to families
- 21 families have submitted work permits (thankyou)
- 5,477 new items posted on Seesaw and 3,498 comments last week
- Daily feedback provided to students learning online
- 40 car loads of resources taken home by staff
- Team meetings, leadership meetings and federated meetings conducted each week
- Regular welfare checks in place
- ICON (Integrated, Catholic, Online Network) has gone live! The ICON technology platform will provide new ways of working for schools that optimise student learning and school administration. Anna, Mary and Michael Juliff have engaged in many hours of training this term to get our systems ready to move to ICON.
What an amazing accomplishment! My gratitude and thanks to everyone who contributes in so many ways.
Mrs Molino's Home Classroom
A few reminders:
Protocols for google meets
Contacting Teachers/Staff
Parents needing support with home/remote learning can contact teaching staff during normal school working hours ie Monday- Friday between the hours of 8:00am and 4:00pm. St Paul’s staff access their work emails normally between 8.00 am-4:00 pm and will endeavour to respond to emails within 24-48 hours. However, staff are not expected to respond in this timeframe during weekends, public holidays and term breaks.I need to consider the health and wellbeing of staff and ensure they take appropriate break times away from the demands of their busy schedules. Thanks for your support with this.
All classroom teachers are now working from home. Occasionally there may be issues with internet connections or power outages. If any tech issues occur from our end we will send an email to families who are affected.
If a staff member is unwell and not able to engage in Remote learning, I will endeavour to replace them if it is longer than a day. I will email parents either way.
Take care, stay safe and God bless.
Catherine
The place of work in life
Once upon a time, the ancients tell us, a disciple said to the rabbi, “God took six days to create the world and it is not perfect. How is that possible?” “Could you have done better?” the rabbi asked. “Yes, I think I could have,” the disciple said. “Then what are you waiting for?” the rabbi said. “Go ahead. Start working.”
The story raises three questions about the nature and place of work in life that plague humankind yet: Is work a human punishment for sin or an opportunity to grow in the spiritual life? Is work something to be avoided or something to be embraced? Is work the opposite side of the spiritual life or the ground of the spiritual life? They are important questions.
If work is meant to be a punishment, then managing to get out of it must be the ultimate sign of spiritual development and God’s blessing. If work is one of life’s unfortunate burdens, then work is to be avoided so that life can be lived well and perpetual leisure is a state of life to be strived for. If work is the enemy of the spiritual life, then people whose lives are full of children and business and the struggle to make ends meet are condemned to spiritual infancy or, at most, to the theology of good intentions: the notion that a person can be saved if they are too busy to pray. But they can never come to real holiness that way. Scripture, though, is very clear about the place of work in human life. Human beings were put into the Garden “to till it and to keep it.” Genesis is explicit: We work to complete the work of God in the world. Work, then, may be the most sanctifying thing we do.
But Western culture has not treated work kindly. We have lived in a capitalism that bred brutal competition and unequal distribution of goods as well as inventiveness. We are watching the poor get poorer even when they are working, and the rich get richer even when they aren’t. Work has been badly warped, badly misused in our society, because success has become more important than value, and efficiency has become a god that will accept the sacrifice of people for the sake of profits.
Indeed, the sanctity of work must be reclaimed if humanity is ever to be reclaimed in a world wounded and imperiled by sins against the co-creative dimension of work.
The implications of a spirituality of work are clear, it seems: Work is my gift to the world. It is my social fruitfulness. It ties me to my neighbor and binds me to the future. Work is the way I am saved from total self-centeredness. It gives me a reason to exist that is larger than myself. It gives me hope.
Work is meant to build community. When we work for others, we give ourselves and we can give alms as well. We never work, in other words, for our own good alone. Work, too, is our commitment not to live off others, not to sponge, not to shirk, not to cheat. Giving less than a day’s work for a day’s pay, shunting work off onto underlings, doing one coat of paint when we promised to do two, are not what was meant to “till the Garden and keep it.”
Work is our gift to the future. It is our sign that God goes on working in the world through us. It is the very stuff of divine ambition. And it will never be over. The philosopher wrote, “Do you want a test to know if your work in life is over? If you are still alive, it isn’t.” As the rabbi and the disciple both well knew, God needs us to complete God’s work. Now.
—from In the Heart of the Temple, by Joan Chittister (BlueBridge)
