As we enter the sixth week of lockdown and the fourth week of remote learning I am beginning to see the stress levels in the community and the children lift.  The ongoing indoctrination that we are getting from the media doesn’t help in alleviating this as it becomes filled with such melodrama and unfortunately young eyes and ears aren’t very good at filtering it.  

To add to this, the challenge of connecting with the children at home becomes even more important.  I hope that the daily catch ups via zoom with class teachers has been helpful in alleviating some of this.  Due to the tightening of restrictions where staff have to wear a mask at school, it has complicated this even further because it makes it virtually impossible to have our very popular Friday Online Assemblies.  I have finally come up with a “fix” on that and I will share it with you in a moment.

In addition as things have tightened even further with Campbelltown coming into the eight LGAs that are in high lockdown it has been necessary to further reduce the number of staff we have on sight each day.  Previously, all class teachers worked from home and the part time, casual and support staff were coming to school each day to keep the school open for essential service workers.  However, with things tightening again,  it is necessary to break the “ at school “ staff into two teams that work remotely five days per fortnight and run the school five days per fortnight.  This means that should there be a situation where someone is infected and enters the school setting the second team can manage the school whilst the other team isolates for fourteen days.  Whilst I believe that this situation is unlikely, with Campbelltown now included I feel we need to have a contingency should the Camden LGA be the next to be included.  This is very difficult for us in managing the school as Mrs Brunetta and I obviously need to be on different teams and therefore all our communication now is over the phone.  

Due to the staff availability at school each day now being halved, I need to stress, where possible, children should be at home doing remote learning unless you are an essential service or have specific needs related to your family situation.  As we only have a skeleton staff at school, if those numbers begin  to creep up I will need to call on our class teachers to also go on a Team A and Team B to provide additional support at school.  This could cause undue stress on the class teachers concerning their work and family situation and this obviously wouldn't be my wish. 

As of tomorrow, Wednesday, 4 August 2021, if your child is attending school you need to register the day before via Compass.  The directions are provided with this newsletter.  It will enable me to determine staffing needs for the following day.

Now for the good news.  This Thursday and Friday I will be working remotely from home, whilst Mrs Brunetta will be at school.  During this time, with the help of my daughter, I will video a message each week that will be posted on their Myclasses page each Friday.  The time I have with the children will be called “YOU AND ME AND A CUPPA TEA!” with Mr Reardon.  Each session will focus on fun.  Each video will have a weekly theme about ideas for fun breaks during remote learning.  Naturally my character will continue to channel Tim Bailey, the weatherman, and I will try to focus again on the absurd to try and lighten the load for the students as they feel disconnected with school and their friends. The most important thing about the videos, each of the children at home needs to have a cup of tea or something in a tea cup with them as they watch the video.

I’M SOOOOOOO EXCITED, CAN’T WAIT!