Dear Families,

Welcome back to Term 1 2023. I hope everyone managed to have a restful break. We are looking forward to a fantastic year this year and hoping that the challenges of the past three years are behind us.

We start this new school year with some sad news with the death of Fr Neville Drinkwater. Fr Neville was the founding priest for St Thomas Aquinas, only retiring a few years ago. I called Cameron Johns on Sunday to let him know of Fr Neville’s passing and Mr Johns spoke of how much Fr Neville supported the school. He was passionate about ensuring the children had everything they needed to learn well. He gave a great deal of his time to supporting the teachers within the school and was a constant presence in and around the school building. He will be greatly missed and his legacy both here at the school and within the whole parish will be felt for many years to come. Fr Neville’s funeral will be at the St Thomas Aquinas Church at 11am on Tuesday 7th February. A number of staff members have already indicated that they would like to attend his funeral and so I will inform families of supervision arrangements via COMPASS.

It was a little unusual starting school on a Tuesday this year. Yesterday our Teachers, CSAs and Educators from both the primary school and the ELC attended a whole System day at the Canberra Convention Centre. As many of our existing families know, the Catholic Education System in this Archdiocese has been changing the way we teach. Yesterday, we learned more about the Science of Learning and the best ways we can support all of our students. The line-up included researchers and advocates for the Science of Learning from across Australia. One of the highlights was Noel Pearson. Mr Pearson is the founder of the Good to Great Schools based in Cape York. He spoke passionately about the importance or explicit direct instruction, particularly for students who speak another language of dialect at home, students with Dyslexia and those students whose parents cannot read and write. We also heard from our Director, Mr Ross Fox about the great work we have already done and the work yet to be done. St Thomas Aquinas featured in a number of slides throughout the day, acknowledging the great work of our teachers here.

This morning we welcomed our newest students and a number of new families. There were a few tears for new and current students, but everyone had settled well before first break, and it was wonderful to see students playing, catching up on holiday news, including asking me about my break. Our ELC students have also settled well. I joined the full-time class for morning tea break and the beginning of the week class for morning play. I look forward to meeting the end of the week group on Thursday.

This week, teachers will be working through the orientation program with students. Here at St Thomas Aquinas, we explicitly teach the behaviour we want to see. These behaviours are there to ensure that learning is a priority and children have the best opportunity to learn. One of the things I talk about regularly is silent corridors. While we are blessed to have a beautiful open library space, the library is also a classroom and it is important students in this space have an opportunity to learn. Students have been wonderful in keeping to this rule and visitors to our school are often amazed at how silently our students move around the school.

Staffing

We welcomed a few new staff members this morning. Miss Monica Culas, Miss Hannah Dewey, Miss Brittany Ford and Mr Matt Moore were introduced to the school community at this morning’s assembly. Miss Jessica Cassidy and Ms Bronwyn Newth will also join us in the primary school later in the week. The school has a new counsellor as well. Vrushali will work at the school every Monday, Tuesday and every second Wednesday (odd weeks). We welcome Monique Gartner and Indira De Silva to the STA ELC team. We also welcome Maribel back to the ELC. I know many families were very excited to hear that she was returning and were very happy to see her in the ELC rooms.

I look forward to meeting many of you next week at the Meet and Greet.

Take care and God bless

Yours in Faith