Dear Parents and Caregivers

Berry Street PD

As term three draws to a close, many of us (students, staff and parents alike) are feeling a little fatigued, perhaps looking forward to a moment to help us reset before engaging in what promises to be a busy term four. The stamina we need to see us through difficult moments just isn’t there at times and it’s challenging for us to know how to rebuild it.

‘Nurturing stamina is building the muscles of learning, one repetition and one day at a time’

(Witten, 2015)

Day 3 Berry Street training for staff helped us focus on stamina and presented us with a variety of tools to support students in building the stamina needed to succeed in difficult moments. Giving our students scaffolded opportunities to build capacity, even on a minute by minute basis, can help them not only set an achievable goal for themselves, but also work incrementally to achieve that goal.  Building stamina requires four areas to be at play:  resilience, a growth mindset, emotional intelligence and the ability to learn independently. 

An example of building stamina is a Mindhook. A Mindhook is a time when the mind is tangled in unhelpful and rigid thoughts and can be impacted by such things as tiredness, blaming others or ourselves, thinking negative events are permanent …. Etc. Mindhooks undermine resilience and distract people from doing what matters to them. Teaching our students to practise ‘unhooking’ from these unhelpful thoughts, using simple and effective sentence prompts that help them accept and commit to an action and have self-compassion can be a powerful tool in changing their mindset. Our professional learning is helping staff activate these tools in the classroom to encourage improved stamina for all our students.

Edu Dance Assembly

We are excited to invite you to our annual Edu-Dance Assembly on Monday, September 16th at 6:00 PM, featuring the Gold classes from PP to Year 6. Please have your children meet the teacher in their classrooms at 5:45 PM. Kindy families are also invited to join us for the final Edu-Dance lesson of the day, which is specially designed to be an engaging and valuable learning experience for our youngest students. Kindy Gold will perform at 1:35 PM and Kindy Blue at 2:05 PM. This event promises to be a wonderful showcase of the incredible talent of our Mary Mac children. We look forward to seeing you there!

A Heartfelt Thank You!

We want to extend our sincerest thanks for the P&F donation received. Your contributions have enabled us to purchase a wide range of items for our classrooms, greatly enhancing the learning environment for all our students. We are deeply grateful for your commitment and generosity, which continue to make a positive difference in our school community.

Whole School Mass

Next week marks the end of our school term. To celebrate, we will gather for a whole school Mass on Thursday, September 19th at 8:45 AM, led by our wonderful Pre-Primary students. This Mass provides us with a moment to express our gratitude for the many blessings we’ve experienced throughout the term.

Everyone is warmly invited to join us as we give thanks and reflect on our blessings.

As we wrap up this eventful and exciting term, let’s look forward to the upcoming two week break as a chance to rest, recharge, reconnect, and prepare for the new challenges ahead. We look forward to welcoming students back on Tuesday, October 8th.

Yours sincerely

Lisa Liebregts
Short Term Principal