Dear Parents/Carers,

The children have settled in calmly to the start of Term 3 and I hope families are getting back into their usual school routine.

Please see below a message from CE;

As you may be aware there was a positive COVID-19 case reported in Goulburn on 13 July 2021. This has not affected our School’s which continue to operate as normal. As always, please continue to follow COVID Safe Practices.

St Michael’s remains a safe place for our students and staff during this time. We remain in close communication with government health authorities and have not been advised of any cases within our school community. Should this change, I will update you via compass regarding any potential temporary closure of our school and provide advice on how this will be managed.

MAINTAINING WELLBEING

One of the keys to good mental health for children, particularly during these unprecedented times is being able to identify feelings and emotions.

Earlier this year I talked to our amazing Arts teacher Jane McKeough about ways we
could help children identify and acknowledge their feelings and emotions. She came up with the idea of steppingstone mosaics with images of emotions, which she designed and supported the students to create. We are putting these stones into the garden as a place to walk and talk. As Michael Grose notes;

“If children and young people are not tuning into their emotions, they are missing a rich vein of information that will assist decision-making, learning and importantly, their wellbeing. It’s relatively easy to tune into behaviour and our thoughts, but much harder to detect our emotions.”  (https://www.parentingideas.com.au/blog/maintaining-kids-mental-health-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/)

I would like to publicly thank Jane and acknowledge Rivoland Tiles for donating the tiles, Bink Pavers for their generous discount and Adam Ciuffetelli for his advice and free glue. 

COMPASS UPDATES

We have discovered an issue around remote sign out. While on the parent portal you can sign your child out remotely before picking them up, however the system then records a full day unexplained absence. We have let the Compass team know and they have advised that until it is rectified parents should not sign out the child remotely but use the compass kiosk in the Front Office to sign them out when collecting the child from school.

A reminder that all student absences need to be recorded through the Parent Portal, we still have quite a few unexplained absences in the system.

TRIVIA NIGHT

Save the date for a fun-filled night with our community at 6pm on Friday 13 August, in the hall.

Thank you for your continued support,

Many Blessings

Judy Egan