Dear Families,
After 11 weeks, it’s time for a well-earned break for our students and staff. I would like to thank all staff for their work, whether they be teachers, administrators, support and ancillary staff; everyone’s effort, time and service accumulates to make a difference.
To our senior students, we recognise their efforts during this exam period and thank our staff for their commitment in best preparing them.
To our teaching staff, their focus has been on moderating, assessing and reporting in recent times. This is a serious investment of time; the idea of all teachers “knocking off” at 3.00pm is far from reality. Furthermore, their efforts in meeting the needs of their students goes far beyond the academic. There are social and emotional needs to contend with, along with extra-curricular activities and more. I urge all teaching and support staff to have a full week of rest in the next fortnight.
I write to you with the following updates and “snapshots” from around the College.
Learning and Teaching: Insight Program
This week we have some of the nation’s best educators here at Marist Regional College working with staff in modelling and providing feedback as a component of Insight, our College’s approach to enhancing learning and teaching over the next three years. Insight is based on the science of learning and reading, encompassing the way we teach in every classroom.
The Insight project focuses on improving the three key foundations of teaching and learning:
- A comprehensive, knowledge rich Curriculum: Supporting students’ growth in learning, knowing and remembering – every day
- Cognitive Science (the Science of Learning): Developing our understanding about how people learn; to overcome the limits of working memory in order to maximise student learning and to build long-term memory in all key subjects
- High impact Pedagogy: Regular and intensive coaching to assist our educators in actively applying the science of learning as we design highly efficient and effective teaching and learning methods in the classroom.
The practice mentors who were onsite this week, provided our staff with a high-quality professional development opportunity, particularly through:
- Instructional Leadership: Coaching and mentoring for teachers and leaders to support planning and implementation
- High Impact Teaching Practice: Theory, coaching and resources to embed Science of Learning based teaching practice in all classrooms.
Our student free days and staff professional learning at the College has a focus on the Insight initiative. This week, six of our staff were engaged in our “first wave” for the College. This will follow again in Terms 3 and 4, seeing 18 staff exposed to this experience this year. Additionally, all other staff are invited to be observers in demonstrations throughout.
You may notice that some of our classroom settings look “old school” with rows of desks and less displays in some rooms. This is deliberate, and specifically to decrease cognitive load for our students.
May I take the opportunity to thank the staff directly involved and Mrs Emily Sass (DP: Learning and Teaching) and Miss Bobbi-Jo Bailey (Director of Curriculum and Pedagogy), along with their Learning Area Leaders, for their ongoing commitment to enhancing learning at this College.
Sports Uniform Change for 2024
College Business Manager, Mr Andrew Leary, will be communicating with families in relation to a change to our sports shirts for 2024 and beyond. Our advice would be to not buy a new sports shirt at this point with the pending change. Please stay tuned for this correspondence in the coming weeks.
Sports Uniform Expectations
When your child is injured or unable to wear the formal uniform, please ensure they do not wear a “hoodie” underneath the sports shirt. This has kept on from a minority of students.
We have many visitors externally who visit a number of schools and are amazed by the quality of our climate and atmosphere. Arguably, this can be somewhat attributed to the fair and reasonable expectations we have relating to conduct as well as uniform.
Vaping in Schools
Throughout Term 2, we have had a strong focus on this area. This is a national problem that we are taking very seriously. Please expect email correspondence from my office relating to the education, response and environmental changes pertaining to this matter over the mid-year break.
Capital Project: Materials Design and Technology Centre
This week we presented our proposed technology centre to the Tasmanian Catholic Education Office Capital Projects Committee. With final approval, we will communicate broadly the plans for a commencement of work towards the end of 2023 and in 2024. This is very exciting for our students, present and future.
Maybe you have the opportunity to take some annual leave over this mid-year break? Hoping you can enjoy some time with your families during this time. We are very much excited for the second half of the year.
In partnership,
Mr Gregg Sharman
Principal
We have received 158 applications with only 168 positions available for Year 7 in 2024.
Vacancies may not exist in some classes.