Dear Families,
It’s come to the point of the term where I feel it is important to take some time and write a longer more reflective piece to our community. This will be a bit of a read, but I hope it continues to give our parent body and the wider community that SFOA is led strongly, is a place of welcome, a place of learning, a place of community and most importantly a place for all. I’ll start with the nice ongoing work, but please read to the end as I tackle some more complex areas of Australia’s education system, and the impact of that here at SFOA
Culture
Last term I shared some of the cultural norms that we continue to make progress with as a school. A focus on listening, entering spaces quietly, greeting and accepting awards and certificates, how we interact with adults, visitors, and guests. Small things on paper, but large things in reality that are so valued in our community. Much of these norms are now standard. Driven by our staff but lived by our students.
At our Whole School Mass on Friday the reverence shown by our students was exemplary. The students who read in Mass were confident and prepared, the responses from our student body strong, and the singing continues to improve week on week. I reflected with our Year 6 students after Mass that they will never be too old, too cool, or too proud to sing at Mass. A quote that is traditionally attributed to St Augustine is ‘ To sing is to pray twice’. My wish is our graduates carry this with them when they leave our school at the end of the year.
Winter is here
I was fortunate enough to be teaching 6H on Friday. While this took me away some form ‘Principal’ work, it was refreshing to be with our leaders, and I had such a great day. The reason I was in class through is that our community is not immune to the early impact that is being experienced in South Australia with a combination of Flu, various virus’ and COVID impacting student and staff attendance and health. We see this in the media with the impact it’s clearly having on our health system and hospitals. As a school every precaution is taken however sometimes sickness means sometimes as a staff we are stretched. We continue to ask for your understanding and ensuring that if your children are unwell they remain home.
Teaching and Learning
The next five weeks internally begins some exciting work in a teaching and learning front. I have referenced in previous newsletters this work so I won’t go into detail, but over the next two staff meetings we will receive expert training in an explicit approach to teaching, before having this modelled to us in the classrooms. This asks our staff to be vulnerable, to reflect on their own instructional methods and to continue to improve. This is reflective of work done in most industries. You would expect your medical professionals, your mechanic, your hairdresser to be constantly improving their practice. That’s our drive as a school.
Communication and Conflict Resolution
All this is nice of course. It’s what you would expect to read in a newsletter, perhaps with a bit more detail than some. But I thought I might tackle some of the trickier elements of being in leadership. Because what we know about Primary Schools is that they are not always harmonious places of teaching and learning. They are places that ask young people to be in relationship with each other. Children from different contexts, backgrounds and often countries to form friendships and working relationships. To be in the same room with each other for 200 days of the year, 6 hours a day.
The reality is, it’s not ‘if’ there will be students fall out of relationship with each other, it’s when. When that happens sometimes there is conflict. Sometimes it’s visible as we know sometimes kids will be frustrated and push, or ‘niggle’ each other. Sometimes they struggle to win or lose. Sometimes it’s sharing. Sometimes it’s more subtle with exclusion. Sometimes it’s the use of words and language. We know elements of this probably happen in our own workplaces at times. Or between our own family members. We know because the majority of those reading this article have children. It’s not easy.
As educators we know we must repair these relationships and ensure as best we can that this conflict is resolved. A huge part of this is communicating with you as parents. Under my leadership we will continually share as much as possible as we can in the hope that in partnership with you, we can help educating our children in how to resolve conflict.
But the absolute hardest part of my job is the parts that I can’t share.
I can’t share aspects of another student’s disability with you. I can’t share with you that they may have a physiological disorder that impacts how they react to situations. I can’t share aspects of their family life that may have led to their actions.
More often than not it’s inappropriate for me to share the consequences that a child might face for actions. This is often misconstrued as student’s not facing consequences for actions. This couldn’t be further from the truth. This makes it tough.
I can’t share with you how mortified a parent might feel when we share the actions of their students, and how apologetic they might be about how their child has responded in a certain way.
In some ways I wish I could tell you all these things. It would help to create a sense of understanding.
What I can share with you is no children are bad. No children set out to cause conflict or hurt others. They don’t.
There is so much we do as a staff to ensure the wellbeing of our students. From wellbeing programs that we run such as Peaceful Kids and Rock and Water, that help provide our children with the tools required to solve conflict. From an established social and emotional teaching program, that we are receiving further professional development on this Friday.
One simple action we take is subtly communicating through our staff memo’s and emails that a student might need to be ‘handled with care’ after a big weekend or something that’s occurred in their home life. A simple, subtle way we can ensure the care for our children and keep personal information private and confidential.
This is in no way a woe is me article. I’m incredibly blessed to do the job I do.
It’s an article that I hope will continue to build trust in you as parents in how we handle conflict as a school. That when we communicate with you it’s to help ensure we work as a partnership to help the young people we have in our care understand how to exist in relationship in a highly complex world.
I hope you enjoy the mid-term break that is upon us with a Student Free Day and a Public Holiday ahead. God Bless.
Scott March
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