Dear Parents and Caregivers,
First and foremost, thank you to all of you who are supporting our school and our staff by heading the Premier’s request to keep your children home, unless it is absolutely essential that they attend school so you can attend work.
It has been fantastic seeing how resilient our children are, from the littlest in Kindergarten through to our senior students.
Please be assured that staff have been working together to ensure that we have a whole of school approach to our Distance Learning. Currently we are creating materials to support you at home. Staff have been extremely proactive in this area.
Our primary focus is to support you. We do not want you or your children to feel overwhelmed so our first key focus is on keeping it simple. For you and for your child or children. Our second key focus is around ensuring what we provide allows for flexibility. We know that not everyone is going to be ready to start their learning at the same time and that we need for you to be able to deliver distant learning in a manner that works for your family.
We don’t expect you to be your child’s teacher, more their guide or touch point. What we provide you with will be manageable and not in our teacher speak.
I did share some thinking from a former teacher who home schools her children. How she closed her post was particularly pertinent. She said, “At the end of this our kids won’t remember everything we did during this time, but they will remember how they felt.” We hope that they feel connected, safe, healthy and happy.
On being connected, over the next week you will receive a phone call from one of your children’s teachers. In the case of families who only have one child at school, it will be from your child’s teacher. We don’t want to inundate you with phone calls, as we do understand many of you are working from home and juggling other things. We just want to maintain the connection between your children, their teachers and their school. We also want to check in on what we can add in or consider when moving forward with our planning.
Next week, Monday the 6th of April, teachers will cease teaching students at school and will be focusing on deep planning for next term. Only students who must attend school during the day will be cared for by other staff.
Moving into term two, all students who must attend school will be supervised in their learning by Education Assistants. Teachers will be teaching all children via Distant Learning.
Moving forward from today, I will not be providing daily updates but will provide updates as significant things change.
Once again thank you for being so supportive. Please continue to make sure that you keep continue to stress to your children the importance of personal distancing.
Kind regards,
Barbara Bromley
March 31 2020