I was so proud to be the principal of this outstanding school and celebrate Education Week together last week. To welcome so many wonderful mums, dads, grandparents and family members into our world for a morning, to see where your children spend the majority of every day learning not only academics but morals, social skills, life skills of how to be kind, respectful, responsible and caring. A school where each and every child is known, valued and cared for.

This year marked 175 years since the establishment of public schools in NSW. Founded in 1848, the Board of National Education was formed and tasked with establishing a public education system in NSW. Prior to 1848, schools operated under a denominational system and were the responsibility of churches.

This years theme of education week was Learning from our past, celebrating our achievements and embracing the future with confidence.

We learn from our past by

• engaging in truth-telling to have honest conversations about the past
• Listening and respecting other peoples point of view and perspectives and being curious and asking questions

We celebrate our achievements by

• understanding that everyone is different and excels or achieves in different ways academically, creatively, socially and emotionally.
• Coming together as a community and knowing that together we share the responsibility to create an environment to shape the lives and futures of the next generation.

We embrace our future with confidence by:

• Preparing our students to be agile thinkers and life long learners
• Building confidence in our students that success comes in many forms and we are here to learn and understand individuality and support their journey and learning along the way.

Education Week to me is a time where we get to pause and come together to celebrate our school and community.

To be thankful for our teachers for everything they do each and every day knowing they do it because they want to inspire the enthusiastic young minds in front of them each day to achieve individual success.

To appreciate our non teaching staff who are the cogs behind the scenes and do incredible work to support our school ad community.

To acknowledge our school leadership team and thank them for their tireless work ensuring we are always improving everyday for the benefit of the students in our school.

And finally to celebrate and thank our community.To thank you all for your contribution and commitment to our school, without your support and your trust, we wouldn’t be able to do or provide the opportunities that we do here each and every day. Schools are not an ‘us’ and ‘you’ schools are a place where students achieve their best if we all work together to build a community just like the one we have here and I am very thankful for that.

Below are a few galleries including our morning music ensembles and from our assembly our dance and choirs groups which are again, all thanks to our wonderful teachers who give up their lunch times and before school times because they know and believe that experiences like these provide opportunities for students to love to learn.

STUDENT PERFORMANCES

VISITING CLASSROOM

RECESS TOGETHER

CELEBRATING ACHIEVEMENT

Congratulations to  Mia in Yr 5 who was successful being a finalist in the Ryde Sustainable Art competition. 

My artwork comprises mosaic style images of endangered species: the tiger, sea turtle and the panda. My turtle is especially important to me because I created it using broken glass (sea glass) collected from Sydney beaches including those along the Spit to Manly walk. My panda and tiger are made from recycled/used wool collected from an art workshop. All animals are featured on my little brother’s used nappy boxes and pieced together with unused/unwanted takeaway chop sticks. The message I am conveying is one about caring for our environment we share with animals and endangered species by not being wasteful.

SYDNEY WRITERS FESTIVAL WINNER

Congratulations to Nathan from Yr 6 who won the Megabeast design at this years Sydney Writers festival excursion. 

Nathan was sent two books from the author of Wylah - The Koorie Warrior

NEW GARBAGE BINS

Our new school bins have arrived and are being installed this week. With support from our Green Team representatives we will be developing resources to support all children to focus on nude foods and also waste management and ways to care for our school and environment. The slogan on the bins, 'There is no planet B' was voted by our students in a whole school survey.