As COVID regulations tightened again my mind has started to reflect on the impact it has had on how we deliver our educational services to families in the Camden Parish.  I look back at last year with a sense of challenge, not a sense of loss.  In the middle of adversity, even during the remote learning period, we learnt a great deal about ourselves, our teaching and the importance of relationships in learning.  Without relationship learning is compromised and we have to find different ways to stay connected.  The “Mr Reardon’s Friday Online Assemblies” was a strategy we used to achieve this very important goal, especially when it was very tough!.

As I reflect on this,  where everything for a period of time seemed to reach a stand still, we have tried to continue to move forward with our plans and improvement agenda.  In light of this I thought I might share some of the progress points we have achieved from the thoughts that came to the surface during the Listening Assembly held in 2019.  Whilst this seemed such a long time ago we have been working methodically at responding to some of the suggestions that came from the parent community.

I will attach to this newsletter the summary that was shared with everyone after the Listening Assembly.  Much of what was there concerning those aspects the community valued deeply and wanted to hold onto, we have committed to.  Some aspects such as our community events, especially our fete, had to be cancelled due to COVID restrictions and the recommendation of the CEO.  It was also noted that the Class Parent Reps was something that the community wanted to hold onto.  The purpose of the Class Parent Rep role was to get information out to parents of a grade or class to assist with our various community events or if a particular family needed some assistance with meals due to a significant upheaval.  With Compass being implemented afterwards as our information management system, it was no longer necessary to seek the support of parents in getting our information to a particular class/grade as we can now do this more efficiently through Compass.

When I reflect on the new ideas to consider a number of aspects come to light, even during such challenging times, we have still managed to progress forward.  The School Choir has been budgeted for and was implemented at the beginning of  COVID last year.  It then had to be cancelled for a lengthy period of time but is now back and the children have been preparing to lead the sacred music at liturgies, when the whole school can finally attend.  There has been considerable focus given to assisting the teachers to develop a whole school approach to the teaching of mathematics.  This is a work in progress and we have created a partnership with the University of Armidale to ensure that our new mathematical pedagogy is research based in its approach.  Two of their lecturers from the school of education are coming to our school later in the year to view our classroom practice in numeracy to establish our progress in this area.  The buddy bench is in the playground and used by the children.  This has been especially helpful in building the self esteem of the children.  Another recommendation was more regular check ins about student progress with parents.  This year we have implemented the goal setting meetings with parents in response to this recommendation.  We have also implemented a check in phone call to parents from their child’s teacher as an addition to this.  We have now added to this, the opportunity to be done incidentally should the context warrant it.  There was a suggestion that the reports provide more meaningful information to parents.  This has been a challenge because the reports are generic to all schools across the diocese.  However, we have given the CEO a number of recommendations that reflect the wishes of the parents in this area.  The CEO is currently going through a review of our reporting process.  This year we will be extending our transition to school for kindergarten to include four playgroup sessions leading up to the end of the year.

As you can see from the above summary, we have delivered or are delivering when it comes to responding to the recommendations taken from our Listening Assembly, even in the most challenging times.  Schools need to be self reflecting, self reviewing organisations otherwise they stand still and don’t grow and change and respond to a contemporary educational world.  Students today are a very different character to those that I taught when I was here as a class teacher in 1986 to 1992.  The advent of technology and its influence on education in this relatively short time is an indication of how quickly things change and if we want to respond effectively to the needs of our 2021 children, we must continue to be reflective and passionate about improving our classroom practice and the relationship between school and home.

Go gently,

Michael Reardon
Principal