Principal’s Blog

Holy Family Staff will be provided with a “Playbook” of information and strategies to enhance the wellbeing of our staff and students. We will work through this information with staff in real time seminars with The Wellbeing Distillery, in Staff Meetings and in a variety of online activities with groups of various sizes and composition across the school including OHSC, Early Learning and Inclusion Programs.

I have spoken to the Staff about the need for resilience, character strengths, mindfulness, sleep, nutrition, exercise and values. The staff will be provided with this information and the skills that underpin it.

Today our Leaders met with David (left) and Justin (right) to plan a range of activities we will be undertaking in 2024 here at Holy Family to enhance wellbeing amongst our staff and students. We met these people through our longstanding relationship with Geelong Grammar School. They will be coming here for a Pupil Free Day on May 6 and working with our whole staff group in Curiosity. They will also be sharing with our staff a huge resource of information about the enhancement of health and wellbeing for our community. This will be shared with the staff and will be the subject of ‘real time’ and online learning with staff over the next three years

The 2024 School Year has started smoothly with lots of new children starting school from Early Learning through to Year 6. Long Day Care for 3-5 year olds started on January 8th and our wonderful Vacation Care Program has been in full swing over the school holidays.

This year we welcome out new Assistant Principal Religious Identity and Mission: Anthony Terminello together with our new Head of Early Learning Margot Papillo to our Leadership Team. Additionally, Emma Finos has increased her time and is now working four days a week as Coordinator of English as an Additional Language and Leap Learning. Nicholas De Palma is in his second year as Deputy Principal and Jake Winters is continuing in his role as Assistant to the Principal:Inclusive Learning.

Professional Learning

Since we have returned in 2024 the School Staff have been engaged in some deep learning in the many aspects of school life which keep the children safe and engaged in their learning. The image below shows some of our Reception Teachers working with Nicholas De Palma who is also our Numeracy Coach. These teachers are bursting with energy and good ideas which will match the children’s desire to learn.

After many many years in the planning, Holy Family opened Early Learning for Long Day Care on January 9, 2023. Our PreSchool subsequently opened on January 30th 2023 together with the Reception and Year 1 who had the run of the school for the first day of school in 2023. Year 2-6 Classes commenced the school year on Tuesday 31 January. Congratulations Team on getting the job done.

Filling the Billabongs 2 Having billabongs is like having a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get. What are your reflections on what you see in this video?

On the 28th March, ABC TV “Landline” will be covering the release of some of the purple spotted gudgeon we have bred into waterways near Murray Bridge. A group of 12 students will accompany some teachers from the school in a bus travelling to and from the “Release Event’. Teachers and students, if you would like to be part of this group, please write to me explaining:

• How have you personally been active as conservationist?
• Why the Purple Spotted Gudgeon Project is important?
• What can we learn from this project which could applied in other similar ways?
• Why do you wish to be part of the fish release?
• How will you contribute to the Fish Farm/ MUDLA /Billabong Project in the future?

Please feel free to use a combinations of words/pictures/drawings Applications close 15th March at 4pm

Holy Family is proud of our orchards of red and black olives, oranges, avocados, nectarines together with our gardens of salads, mints and vegetables. Not forgetting the Principal’s Rose Garden. These crops provide content for our studies of food production, supplying the School Canteen “Food for Life”, casual eating by students and families and various other community celebrations. We are commencing a project on a “Food Trail” in which we curate the various food production areas with signage to inform learners as they traverse the trail. We need the learners at Holy Family to understand the source and purpose of food production.

At Holy Family we are conscious of the Outer world of the Universe and Inner worlds of the biosphere. We are undertaking very important work in ecology by our work in farming some endangered species of native fish. These include the Southern Purple Spotted Gudgeon. We are breeding this species for the purpose of releasing them into the wild. The next release is on the 28th March near Murray Bridge. You may see a program about us on ABC Landline! During the holidays, we started constructing a series of four Billabongs in which we shall store and develop populations of these species. We need to look to the inner worlds of the biospheres to help us to understand the ‘big picture’ which we need to guide our learning. What do you think?