Our Deputy Principal, Mr Rob Marshall provided a heartfelt and uplifting public acknowledgement of the commitment of teachers, students and families during this difficult time with his reflections published in The Age on Thursday 30^th April of this week. Fittingly, Mr Marshall received appreciative notes from colleagues at St Catherine’s, other schools and across the educational sectors. At the heart of it, teachers are in the business of relationships and they, honestly, just desire the best outcome for their students. Mr Marshall’s article is located here.

I provide for your own reading, the kind words of our senior Literature teacher and Year 10 Head of Year, Ms Vicki Spanos, for sharing her appreciation and pride.

Your letter was the first of many documents I have read this morning and it made feel very proud to be part our wonderful School and very proud to be a teacher. It was reassuring to read how our School, like schools around the globe, swung into positive and responsible action in order to ensure that the health and safety of students, staff and families, and by association broader society, is protected. If anything, this new reality of remote learning/teaching is revealing that education continues to a very high level whilst the protection of public health remains a most delicate priority as the health and wellbeing of every individual is ultimately a non-negotiable. Your letter reflected this in its consideration of the challenges that teachers face on a daily basis, as well as in sketching a picture of how our wonderful staff swung into action when called upon to do so – in the name of public health and safety. Kindness, collegiality and a common humanity are core to our work as teachers and these qualities rest at the heart of your communication. Ms Vicki Spanos

As mentioned in my communication to parents earlier this week, the Federal Government announcement offered non-government schools the option to bring forward the upcoming payment of their recurrent school funding. The payment is usually made in July each year, and makes up 25 per cent of a school’s annual allocation of funding. Despite the headlines in the media this week, the Government is not offering any additional funding, only the early payment of funding. As a School, we have been carefully considering the health, safety and wellbeing of our students, teachers and parents, in all decisions we have made about School operations. This will be our criteria for returning students to School, not funding. We are continually monitoring the situation and assessing the advice which we receive from authorities. We are looking forward to a time when we can return to School as normal and will keep you informed regularly. Our priority of return will be Staff, followed by VCE students and our younger Barbreck and ELC students.

In readiness for a return to campus, it is highly recommended students receive a flu vaccination. It is my understanding there is approximately a 1-2 week wait for flu vaccines at the moment, so families are encouraged to seek further advice from their family medical practice.

This week, we have commenced future focused conversations with our staff about not only the logistics of returning hundreds of people to our beautiful campus but how our educational landscape may be forever changed by the Covid-19 experience. Despite the media commentary this week about inadequacy of remote learning in other schools, I believe there is a silver lining to every cloud.

In our Student Survey last week, I asked the girls to share ‘what was working well’ in their academic programs. As one would expect from our girls, their responses were thoughtful and plentiful, and from all ages across the school; this, combined with the feedback I have received from many conversations with teachers this week, reveal there are emerging insights to changes in the learning dispositions of our girls.

An improved sense of autonomy, independence and a greater control over their time is evident. An enjoyment of their new-found self-efficacy, agency and voice. Our girls seem very capable of working independently, rising to the challenge of the Learn@Home programs. I was delighted to understand from one Year 3 Barbreck girl this week, informing her teacher “I can work things out myself, I can do more than I knew”, and the Year 10 student empowered by learning at her own pace with pre-filmed segments that enables her to pause the film, write notes or replay to check for understanding, and the Physics student who commented “teachers have made a considerable effort to let us have some working time in class. For example, Mr Brown my Physics teacher planned his lesson to teach content at the start and also have time to work through problems, and ask any questions. Other teachers have created pods, films and groups in Channels which are very helpful to work through exercises with other girls in the class.”

Our design of classroom routines will be forever changed by this experience and it will be important to build a bridge from where we were to where we are now by capturing the best of the learning that is occurring in our virtual classrooms today.

We continue to encourage all within the St Catherine’s community to embrace the positives of this new way of learning. Online learning will be a way of life for all our students as they progress through school to university to the workforce. Learning the skills of online learning also goes far beyond technology and include the important and learned skills of discipline, focus, determination, curiosity and resilience – soft skills that engage all our values. We want our students to emerge from this crisis with new learnt skills that will enable a life full of learning. Our Learn@Home program is designed in part to deliver that.

On a final note, a reminder that we will be hosting the St Catherine’s Gratitude Lunch on Friday 8 May, 2020. We invite you to join this online Gratitude Lunch at 12.30pm next Friday, you can RSVP here. This event is a chance for our students to say ‘thank you’ to the special women in their lives. All event enquiries can be forwarded to Meredith Taylor, Advancement Executive on 0438 606 137 advancement@stcatherines.net.au.