We have had a great fortnight and I have been very sad to have been made to do offsite training away from school! I have missed out on seeing some great things happening this week which the staff have been kind enough to send me photos of!
Virtue of the Fortnight : Responsibility
This fortnight we have focussed on responsibility. We have lots of examples in the bible of people who God entrusted with great responsibilities: Noah, Adam and Eve, Moses, Mary and Joseph, and Jesus’ apostles. All these people took on the responsibility to help others and live in the best way possible. We can be responsible when we care about what goes on around us, and the opposite of responsibility is carelessness. We have learned that at school our students can be responsible by caring about others, standing up for their friends, doing their work to the best of their ability, following our school rules and playing sports and games fairly and honestly. We see so much of this in our students as we walk around the school throughout the day so this is yet another virtue that our Holy Rosary kids are great role models for! This week’s merit award winners are perfect examples of responsibility!!
National Apology Anniversary and visit from Uncle John Ross
We commemorated the 12th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations on the 13thFebruary, when the Australian government made a formal apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples whose lives had been devastated by government policies of forced child removal and assimilation, which has resulted in loss of family connection, culture and language for many Aboriginal families in our Holy Rosary community, and is therefore an important day for our community.
We were extremely lucky to have Uncle John Ross come speak to some of our students, and he spoke of his experience being taken to Beagle Bay mission as a small child. Please take the time to watch the video here and read this article from SBS News “Twelve years since the National Apology, Australia’s ‘journey of healing’ has a long way to go”.
To learn more, read this article on the NITV website: 10 things you should know about the National Apology.
Visit from Leah Umbagai
Our students were also lucky to have Leah Umbagai, a Worrorra woman living in Mowanjum visit them and talk to them about art and culture. We hope to have Leah back soon and work with the students on some art.
3 Year Old Kindy
I’m very excited to announce that our full day 3 year old Kindy is almost full for the year, and urge anyone who’s child is going to turn 3 before June to reserve their place in our 3 year old kindy before these last few places fill up. Our 3 year old kindy is a great way to introduce your little one to our Holy Rosary environment and get them ready for ‘big kids’ kindy next year!
Unfortunately due to the extremely low cost ($9 a session!) and our 3 year old kindy not attracting government funding (unlike all our other grades), this service is something the school runs at a financial loss, and its main purpose is to enable us to prepare our future students for attending Holy Rosary School. To ensure our school resources and staff are used for the best benefit of all our students, we are therefore only able to offer these last few spots to people who are genuinely intending to enrol their child at Holy Rosary next year.
We voted for our Student leaders for Semester 1 last week! We will be announcing our leaders and presenting them with their badges next week. We have some amazing role models in Year 5 and 6 for our younger students to look up to. In all schools it is the older students that set the tone for the whole school, and our respectful, responsible and caring Year 5s and 6s are the reason why Holy Rosary is such a great learning environment!
Annual General meeting
Next Wednesday at 6pm we will have our AGM in the Multi-purpose room. Please submit an expression of interest if you are interested in nominating for a position on the P&F executive committee, there are spots for president, treasurer and secretary. If you are unable to get to the meeting we can still nominate you for a spot. The Catholic School Parents Association who supports the P&F also have a conference in June in Perth which they are keen to fund some of our parents to attend!!! The link to the P&F EOI is here : Parents and Friends Association, otherwise please email or call the school, Yvette.clifton@cewa.edu.au.
Best wishes,
Yvette Clifton
Principal