COVID- 19 Update- stage 4

Monday 3 August 2020,

The following information has been sent to parents today via Caremonkey (Operoo)

The Victorian Government announced yesterday that, on the advice of the Victorian Chief Health Officer, regional and rural Victoria will move to Stage 3 restrictions and metropolitan Melbourne will move to Stage 4 restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

These requirements apply to all schools across metropolitan Melbourne and rural and regional Victoria.

The changes to schools’ operations will come into effect from Wednesday 5 August, following a student free day on Tuesday 4 August, and are likely to apply until the end of Term 3.

As outlined in the Chief Health Officer’s advice on Friday, schools remain safe places for staff and students – but these steps are critical measures to reduce the movement of students and families across the state. 

There are implications for our school, and for families in our school community.

A summary of what the changes mean for schools is below.

Prep to Year 10 in Metropolitan Melbourne

Prep to Year 10 students will continue with remote and flexible learning.

The criteria for students that can attend on-site has changed as follows:

• children whose parents are permitted workers. The Victorian Government will provide further advice about this over the coming days
• vulnerable children in out of home care, children known to child protection and other agencies and children the school identifies as vulnerable
• children with a disability who also fit one of the above two categories.

Once the Victorian Government releases details regarding who are ‘permitted workers’, parents will need to email me at principal@scmoorabbin.catholic.edu.au if their child/children meet the criteria listed above and subsequently require onsite supervision. Furthermore, parents need to provide me with a letter from their employer indicating their occupation and that they are required to be onsite at their workplace.

If you have any queries or questions regarding this please do not hesitate to contact me.

No School For Students on Tuesday 4 August and Tuesday 11 August- No Remote/Home or onsite supervision for students on these days

As stated by the Victorian Premier yesterday Tuesday 5 August will be a student free day. There will be no school for students on this day as teachers will continue to prepare for remote/home learning. Furthermore, there is no school for students on Tuesday 11 August. This school closure day was already planned and has been previously advertised to parents as no school for students. Staff will be completing online professional learning modules on this day.

What do Good Learners do?

Good learners don’t just learn within the four walls of a classroom or indeed sitting at a desk completing copious amounts of written work. Good learners are adaptable, experimental, hands on, cooperative, willing to support the learning of others, ask questions, think critically, collaborate, reflect and communicate effectively.

The different learning environments students are presented with this term just might give them the opportunities to develop and grow in ways that we may not have considered. I am sure as adults many of you are still learning. I know all our staff have demonstrated good learning behaviours as they continue to navigate new ways of delivering learning to our students.

Wellbeing

“Research shows that being open and honest with children is the best way to help them cope with serious situations. Sharing news will help children to not feel excluded, imagine the situation is worse than it really is or, even, blame themselves. Sharing information shows that you trust and value them, which can enhance their resilience. Try not to overload children with too many details. Give small amounts of information, wait and then ask if they have any questions,” 

https://www.psychology.org.au/About-Us/news-and-media/Media-releases/2020/Coronavirus-psychologists-offer-advice-for-mainta

Wellbeing comes from physical, mental and emotional health. For children and young people, there are many things that build positive wellbeing.

Wellbeing can come from:

• understanding and managing emotions
• having good relationships
• experiencing a sense of accomplishment
• using their strengths
• taking part in healthy activities, getting lots of sleep and eating well

More ideas on how you can look after your child’s wellbeing click here

Victorian State Government Education and Training publication Wellbeing activities and conversation starters for parents of primary school-aged children is available to support parents with six key elements that are important to well being

Contacting Teachers/Staff

Parents needing support with home/remote learning can contact teaching staff during normal school working hours ie Monday- Friday between the hours of 8:00am and 6:00pm. St Catherine’s staff access their work emails normally between 8.00 am-6:00 pm and will endeavour to respond to emails within 24-48 hours. However, staff are not expected to respond in this timeframe during weekends, public holidays and term breaks.

I need to ensure the health and wellbeing of staff and ensure they take appropriate break times away from the demands of their busy schedules. Thanks for your support with this.

Thank you- Year 6 video message- “We’ve got this!”

A very big thank you to our fantastic year 6 students and Mrs Moore for organising the students to send out a video message to our school community. I must confess to shedding a few little tears when I watched the messages from our year 6 students. I miss all your smiley faces! The staff miss all our students too and we were filled with hope and positivity as we watched your message. Thank you for your positive attitude to learning and supporting our younger students with your can do attitude. 

Prayers for our school and wider community

As we continue to hear each day sickness and deaths from COVID-19 particularly in Victoria, we pray for those who are sick, the medical staff facing the virus head on each day, for the families who have loved ones in hospitals or nursing homes, for families who are suffering a decline in mental health, for those who have lost jobs, for the children who cannot attend school, for the sick and lonely. St Catherine La Boure- Pray for us.

CareMonkey is rebranding to ‘Operoo’

This is a quick note to inform you that St Catherine’s digital forms and school operations platform provider, CareMonkey, will be rebranding as ‘Operoo’: School processes, without the paperwork. 

Operoo’s mission is to help schools eliminate operational inefficiencies so that every dollar and every minute possible can be spent on a students’ education.

The name change will occur the week beginning Monday 10 August. How you use the service, as well as the ownership and operation of the company, will remain unchanged.

You can continue using the system, and its mobile application, as usual. Just be aware that, after Monday August 3rd, emails and notifications sent from the system will start appearing under the new name ‘Operoo’. You will also be automatically diverted to the new Operoo website if you go to the old CareMonkey website.

We look forward to continuing to digitize, streamline and automate St Catherine’s operations with Operoo.

The patron saint of listeners (Sr Joan Chittister)                  

If there were ever going to be a patron saint of listeners, surely it should be Mary's cousin Elizabeth, the wisdom figure to whom she went when she realized that she was pregnant with Jesus. If there were ever a moment in history—in life—that needs understanding, needs acceptance, needs personal support, this private moment, this surprising moment, is one of the great ones.

Not to forget that Elizabeth was also pregnant. She had her own reasons to ignore Mary's need. After all.... But the patron saint of listeners knows that listening to someone—really listening to them: the look on their faces, the rate of their speech, the unique sound of their voice, the heaviness of their breath, the slow, slow, slowness of their telling of the story—means being asked to move a boulder off their heart.

To miss all those other signs of tension, of fear, of shame, of sadness, of pain because we're flipping through the pages of a magazine as the person tries to talk to us, is to miss the whole message.

It is to make inhuman the human dimension of the world. When we consider chat to be conversation and conversation as nothing important, we reduce our own humanity metric. How tone deaf can a real human being be?

Who hasn't had a secret, a burden, that they could not share with everyone they knew but had to share with someone or collapse from the weight of it? And found no one who would listen. All of them, too busy. Too irritated. Too disinterested. Too into looking at their watch or checking their phones.

Who hasn't tried to talk to someone but couldn't get a word in edgewise as they simply disregarded what you said? And that made you feel what?

Who hasn't wanted to share their pain with someone and only had it denied—as in "Oh, that's not so bad; wait till you hear my story!"

Who hasn't planned for hours how to say a thing to someone and one sentence into the little speech we’re told to "just forget it." And did you? Ever?

Who hasn't wanted some advice but never got to explain the situation and so never got any?

Then, ignored so often, so completely, how long was it before you tried again? With anyone? What did you do with the frustration that comes from being rendered invisible over and over again?

Oh, yes, we're great talkers these days. We "message" and "text," we send long emails and videos. We crow about what it means for "the whole world to be connected." And then we listen to no one but ourselves.

Conversation, ironically, has become a lost art in this wired world, this communication bonanza we're in. Now it's simply a matter of learning to interrupt our way around the world, or of shouting over the tops of everyone else's comments to be the center of attention, the control chief of the conversation. Or better yet, when we get caught in that kind of a pseudo-conversation, we can just forget it, buy a good book, and quit trying.

The one nice thing about quitting is that, after all, there's absolutely nothing to lose. No friendship—since there obviously isn't one; no conversation because conversation requires a person on each end talking about the same thing; no confidant with whom to share something—because a real confidant wants to share it, not dismiss it.

So, what to do? Find a pet, a companion bird…? Or maybe we might all pray more intensely and intentionally to St. Elizabeth, the patron saint of listeners.