To the families of 5/6 LF and 5/6 EP,

Today marks the end of another school year. The culmination of 4 terms of learning and what a 4 terms it has been!

This year was the first time in my 5 years of teaching that I have worked in a setting with ‘double’ classrooms. To be honest, at first I was unsure how I would find this experience or whether I would be able to build relationships with that many kids within a room, which is my passion and strength as a teacher.

I finish the year having felt that I achieved that! The group from 5/6 EP didn’t feel like the class next door and instead were just an extension of the students in my own class and how lucky I was to be able to work with such a bubbly, energetic, charismatic and sometimes sassy group of students.

To the students of 5/6 LF, I couldn’t have hoped for a better group of students to start my Holy Family journey alongside. There have been some interesting and no doubt tough conversations along the way. But I am hopeful that you loved the year, the class, the journey we experienced together and maybe even sometimes your teacher (haha). I hope that I have taught you as much as you have taught me, this year!

You will all be missed and I hope and look forward to seeing and hearing of your successes in the future. If you become famous, you know where to find me!

To the parents and caregivers, an enormous thank you! I know both Elia and myself have felt incredibly supported this year. You have backed us in with our decisions and the way we do things! Again, no doubt some fantastic and probably some tough conversations along the way. But everyone has had the best interest of the kids at the heart of what they’ve done and that is all any of us could hope for.

My personal teaching philosophy is that ‘kids don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.’ Both Elia and I have done our best to support the students across the year with this in mind. In the hope that we can enable them to be the best students and more importantly people that they can be within our care. Our goal was to encourage their personalities to shine rather than to squash them and I am hopeful that has been achieved across the year.

I wish you all the best for a merry Christmas and happy holidays with your loved ones.

Enjoy the break!

You will all be missed and I will see some of you next year.

All the best

Mr Flanigan