Dear Families,
Over the past five Newsletters I have been writing briefly about each of our School Values: Compassion, Courage, Justice, Respect and Service, provided to us by Catherine McAuley and the Sisters of Mercy. Today is the final one: Hospitality. This is where we open our home and heart to those who need a place to belong. It is all about being welcoming to those we meet, in our homes, in our schools or even out in the street. I am sure whenever you have someone arrive as a guest to your house you invite them in for a coffee or cup of tea or offer them something to eat. Being kind, generous and welcoming to our friends, family and those we know is easy. It takes courage to welcome the stranger.
I invite you to think of a time when you were a visitor in someone else’s home or when you were a new person in a sporting team or club. How were you welcomed? What did people do to make you feel ‘at home’ and a part of the group? Think about a time when you had the opportunity to extend hospitality to someone new, what did you do and how did you feel? I think there is a sense of joy in doing things for others.
Hospitality in our world is greatly needed and I think it is one of the most important of the Mercy Values. Catherine McAuley herself said “You must waste time with visitors”. This indicates that it was a priority for her. Jesus too saw hospitality as being very important, so much so that he washed the feet of the disciples and invited them to do the same for others.
I invite you to be hospitable to those you meet. This includes family and friends but also asylum seekers, refugees, our Indigenous, the homeless and anyone living on the ‘edge’ of society!
Since my arrival, I have been quite concerned with the amount of time that some students miss from school each term. We all know that there are times when we are genuinely ill or injured and there has been the ongoing battle with Covid-19 in the community. Even allowing for these things, we still see many children having a large number of days away from school. I have developed the following table to show how being regularly late or absent from school soon adds up.
|
Minutes late each day
|
Days missed per term
|
Days missed per year
|
Total days missed from school R-12
|
|
10
|
1.5
|
6
|
78 (1.5 terms)
|
|
20
|
3
|
12
|
156 (3 terms)
|
|
30
|
4.5
|
18
|
234 (1.2 years)
|
|
60
|
9
|
36
|
468 (2.3 years)
|
|
90
|
13.5
|
54
|
702 (3.5 years)
|
As you can see, if a student is 10 minutes late every day they will miss 6 days per year and 78 days total in their twelve years of schooling. That is a whole term and a half! Add in another day or two per term and suddenly that child has missed half or even a whole year of schooling. If a child has 13 days off per term they will miss more than 3 years of schooling in their life time.
We all understand the value of education. It is a way to help our children to be successful and achieve and hopefully do better than us as parents. We have an obligation and a responsibility to our children to give them the best opportunities in life and education is one way to do that. It is important that your child is at school every day unless they are genuinely sick or have Covid-19 symptoms. How on earth can we expect our children to be their best or even compete with students from other schools and other areas if they miss a term or a year or more of schooling?
Remember that it is a legal requirement that children aged 6 to 17 must attend school. From this year the government requires all schools to report any students who have had more than 10 days absent in a term. With this in mind, I thought I would look at the attendance data for our school, and I must say that I was quite concerned to say the least. I understand that things have been tough for everyone with Covid, the economy, unemployment, the cost of living, etc. However, this is all the more reason why our children should be at school every day! Last week I sent a letter to every family where a child has been absent for 10 days or more in Term 1. In that letter I have outlined the number of days missed for each term, from 2020 up to and including this term, as a reminder for parents to ensure that their children are at school every day.
From this week adults are no longer required to wear masks but they are encouraged to do so whenever indoors or where they cannot physically space themselves.
Please remember that next Friday 10 June is a Pupil Free Day (the long weekend).
This week we welcomed Ms Kylie West to our school community. Kylie will be doing some Human Resources (HR) work across both St Mary Magdalene’s and St Thomas More, as well as doing some work for Catholic Education SA. We hope your time with us is full of learning, friendships and fun Kylie!
Next week we welcome our intake of Term 3 Receptions as a part of their transition program. If you know of any family with a five year old who is looking for a school, please let them know about St Mary Magdalene’s. We do have places available in our Term 3 intake.
Hopefully you have seen an improvement in the state of the oval. We have done quite a bit of work in nurturing it back to full health and it seems to be working. We are also about to undertake a bit of painting around the school. All the green is about to be transformed into the Woodland Grey which you can see on the poles of the Yarning Place verandah. We will also be upgrading the path that runs through the school during the next school holidays. We have had some Yakka trees and a gum tree removed and still have a couple more to go on Fairfield Road. We have considered replacing these with some fruit trees so that our children can learn about growing our own fruit – but we are still discerning at this stage! We want our school to look good and be a warm and welcoming place of ‘hospitality’ for our children and families.
“Be hospitable to one another without complaining.” – Peter (1Pet 4:9)
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