Sandpiper: May - July 2020

JULY 2020 | SANDP I PER 14 more delicious for the few staff in attendance at school than those tuned in through Google meet to congratulate Shannon and observe the spread. May 22nd was the last day for Natalie McCallum who was expecting her first child with husband Paul. While we were not able to have the usual morning tea to thank Natalie for her contribution to our staff and dedication to the children in her care; we certainly took the opportunity through Google Meet again to offer her our thanks and wish her well in the weeks ahead. Celebrations will definitely be something we look forward to down the track. To all our families; to our staff and their families; to the CEO staff we would like to say THANK YOU. LIKE all schools, across our diocese, we have been challenged to be creative in our efforts to continue to be ‘Mission’ to each other and to those in our local community. We have had to cancel or postpone many events that would normally take place during this time; however, we have embraced our school’s dispositions head on and lived by the mantra of being ‘Motivated, Action Thinkers, in delivering to and providing opportunity for, our students and their families to acknowledge many causes or special days in recent weeks. As always, we returned to school with ANZAC Day at our doorstep. Knowing that services and our usual school gathering at the memorial would not be on the calendar; we prepared our students with symbols, digital recordings of the ode and last post and encouraged families to conduct their own stand to either at dawn or later in the morning. We celebrated St Joseph the Worker’s Feast Day by asking our students to create thank you messages to the workers in our community (pictured top right). Whether these messages were dropped off by parents, posted or displayed on letter boxes and fences; the main message was one of thanks for providing for us and keeping us safe. Being ‘The International Year of Nurses’; we made a special presentation to our local hospital with a card and pay it forward voucher for coffee. Mother’s Day was the next big event on the calendar. Our usual shared lunch was replaced with a digital i-Movie capturing our beautiful mums; many pictured with their children. We also had our student leaders record a special message to the ladies in two of our Aged Care facilities; which was accompanied by a recorded Mother’s Day song sung by our 3/4 students attending school. A basket of soaps was delivered to both facilities on Mother’s Day. During National Volunteers Week we acknowledged our parent, parish and community volunteers with messages of thanks and symbols drawn on the footpaths at the entrance of our school and Church. We have also celebrated milestones of staff during this unprecedented time. Shannon Hourigan became an Australian Citizen in early May. With social distancing in place; we found a way to celebrate with an Aussie morning tea – probably Thank you for supporting us during this time. Thank you for trusting us to do things differently and in many ways better! Thank you for assisting us in keeping our community safe. Finally thank you to our teachers at St. Joseph’s who have lived by Catherine McCauley’s example and words when she said “We must strive to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.” We have asked much of you during this term, we continue to ask of you and you continue to deliver creative, motivating and educational learning opportunities to our students. St Joseph’s School, Cobram connects despite COVID-19