We've had a lovely start to the term. I'd like to offer a big welcome to our new students Bailee, Jeremiah,Samarvir and Ebuka and their families. Welcome to our school community. We hope you enjoy your time with us and we look forward to helping you grow and learn.

Professional Learning Day

Thank you to all of our families who provided us with the opportunity to have a Professional Learning Day on Monday about High Impact Teaching. It was a pupil free day across our whole system and we know it meant an extra day of care for you. The learning we participated in was excellent and will directly help your child every day here at school. Rebekah Brown will let you know more about our learning in her section below.

Changes to our Positive Behaviour for Learning Policy

Last term we worked with Ian Luscombe of Behaveability to refine the ways we support students in learning positive behaviour here at St John the Apostle. Ian provided us with plenty of positive feedback including:

• The positive culture of the school.
• How settled and silent students were at our whole school assemblies either in the hall or on the rainbow top.
• The support of students from the entire staff community. There was an obvious care and concern for their learning and well-being.
• The engagement of students in the classroom throughout the day.
• The detailed and structured system we have for teaching positive behaviour as well as responding to inappropriate behaviour. It has had a positive impact across the school.

He also made a few suggestions for how we can increase our effectiveness further. We've reviewed those recommendations and I'd like to explain the most important points about what will be happening from next week onward.

Why 'respect' is at the core of our mission

We are a Catholic School, whose mission remains 'We are on earth the heart of God'. God is Love. Our mission is to help everyone love God, love themselves, love others and love the world.

We are also a community, with a shared purpose, to help students to learn and grow. More than just academically. Physically, socially, emotionally and spiritually as well. As a Catholic community we also look to Jesus and the gospel values to guide us in our work.

Just like every community, whether they be a sport team, a dance company, a family and a large community like Canberra, we have a set of shared values, expectations and rules to help us work together successfully. These expectations ensure everyone can feel happy, safe and learn.

Our expectations at St John the Apostle, informed by Jesus' teaching, are to Respect Others, Respect Self and Respect the Environment. 

This is a community that we all choose to be members of. I choose to be a member because I love the spirit, the people, our charism and our purpose. Our staff choose to work here. Families choose to send their children here. We have all found something that we love and want to be part of in this school community. I feel privileged to be a member.

Learning 'respect'

We can talk about 'respect' but one has to learn how to respect yourself, others and the environment. Children learn how to do this from the adults around them and by their own successful and unsuccessful experiences.

In primary school 'respect' is a complex concept to learn. So we teach it. Every day, in many ways.

We have developed posters which provide practical examples of 'respect' in various situations in our school community. We use these to teach from every year. We go over these with students. We pick a focus every week to share at morning assembly. We actively observe when students are displaying these actions and we acknowledge them through brag tags and celebrations. We give positive feedback.

Our students know our school community's values and expectations clearly, they know why they are important and how they help us all be happy, safe and to learn.

What happens when we don't 'respect'?

We also know that as human beings and children we sometimes forget or even choose not to respect ourselves, others and the environment. When that happens we have an impact on the happiness, safety or learning of the community, including ourselves, other students, our parents and teachers.

When students make these choices our role is to help them return to using respectful behaviour in a positive and productive way that they can learn from. We have a series of steps we will follow to help them acknowledge their actions, recognise their impact on themselves and others, understand more respectful actions they can take and make things right with anyone affected.

It is a teaching and learning moment. Our goal is to help them learn from any mistep and grow to become respectful young adults. We've created a safe, loving community, with clear boundaries, where they can learn from these important moments.

The steps we will take will include:

• Reminders and prompts - we will always initially just redirect students to the actions they need to be taking, e.g. "Mary, pop that away and start on your reading thank you." or "Jason, listen when I'm giving instructions thank you." Most often that is all it takes.
• Consequence - Occasionally a teacher will have to repeatedly remind or request a student to change their behaviour. When this happens, they may need to add a consequence to focus a student on what is happening, help them be more conscious of the impact of their actions and ensure they return to the expected respectful behaviour, e.g. after a number of reminders they may say "Fred, the instruction was to put the book down and listen. You need to do this or the consequence will be..." From there they may choose to have a consequence of a brief 'thinking time' away from the rest of the class, a two-minute 'detention' at the next play time or if necessary request an Executive Staff member attend to help redirect the student. When any of these happen the student will need to:
  1. Discuss what went wrong and what they need to do.
  2. Apologise to anyone impacted.
  3. Ask to join back in.
  4. Go back and do whatever was the last instruction given to them.

This is always very calm, very brief and private. It's an opportunity for the student to spend a couple of minutes with the teacher remembering the expectations in the school community and to re-align with these. Our aim is to 'keep it small'. It is a minor consequence. Teachers won't worry parents by contacting them every time this happens. We will only contact parents when it is a regular occurrence and we need to work together to provide some extra support for a student.

• Time Out - When there have been repeated minor consequences for a student or there has been a more major behaviour by a student that does not match the school expectations then an additional consequence of a ten-minute Time Out during lunch play time will occur that day or the next. Students will eat their lunch first and then spend ten minutes in a supervised space with an Executive Team member. This is an opportunity to have a more serious conversation about what happened, what they should have been doing and what they need to do to make things right. Most students will not likely require this consequence. Students will come home with a 'Time Out' sheet that shows the conversation that was had and parents will always be contacted when this occurs.
• Suspension - Occasionally there will be a need for a student to be suspended. This could be for a duration of one or more days. They are not permitted to come to school for that time. The purpose is to mark the moment and behaviour as very important, perhaps to break a cycle of behaviour, and for the student, parents and school to engage in a more serious conversation about the school's expectations, the student's behaviour and the impact of their behaviour. This will involve a re-entry meeting where there will also be an opportunity to make things right with people impacted, the student ask to re-join and then be welcomed gladly back in to the school and class.

While almost every time we will always work through the processes above, there are very occasional situations where the consequence of a student's behaviour will result in bypassing reminders and brief consequences and go straight to Time Out or Suspension.

• Swearing - some people swear. They may swear in some contexts and they also know that in certain contexts they wouldn't dare swear, e.g. with grandparents at a family gathering, at a work meeting, at Mass, on the soccer field. School is one of those contexts. If the school is a place where we respect ourselves, respect others and respect the environment then that includes using respectful language to talk with people and express ourselves. Swearing is not necessary to communicate. Students who swear accidentally (e.g. stubbing a toe) will simply have a Time Out. Students who swear directly at a teacher or another student out of anger will be suspended. Swearing is not necessary. It's a habit. We want our students to understand that while it may appear acceptable in some circumstances it is not at school. Learning this distinction is a great social skill.
• Physical violence - Very young children find it hard to express their emotions and needs with words and resort to physical expressions that sometimes hurt themselves or others. But children all learn eventually to use words, to negotiate, to be more assertive rather than aggressive. Punching, kicking, hitting to express one's anger and frustration is not acceptable in families, in society and certainly not in school. At our school any physical violence of this nature will result in a suspension that includes a process of learning other ways to solve issues and making things right with those impacted. (What about the idea 'boys will be boys'? Being a boy isn't an excuse for physical violence. Boys will become whatever we expect them to become. Expect them the learn to use words and self-regulate when they are angry and they will learn to do that. They just need high expectations, good modelling and support to do this like every other child, not excuses.)

Always about learning and belonging

While outlining the above steps for responding to inappropriate behaviour for school, supporting students begins with having a clear set of values and expectations for the community. More time is spent focusing on and supporting students to know these, learn these, live these and celebrate these.

At the same time we must have a clear, predictable plan for responding to inappropriate behaviour that helps students re-learn appropriate respectful behaviour at school. A predictable series of steps helps all students know what happens following inappropriate behaviour. All children, even those with complex needs, respond positively to clear expectations, boundaries and predictable consequences.

In the end our goal is to help our students feel a sense of belonging to our St John the Apostle Primary School community, to understand the expectations of community members and to learn the values and skills to be happy, safe and learn with us. We know that sometimes things will go wrong. Regardless, our approach will always support them to learn and return to positive behaviour and help them understand that they will always belong. In doing so 'We are on earth the heart of God'.

Yesterday I went through much of these expectations and processes with students at our school assembly. We are now in the process of updating our Positive Behaviour for Learning Policy with these changes and I will let you know when this appears on our website.

Thank you for always working in partnership with us to support your children.

Enrolments for 2022

We are still accepting enrolments for 2022.

If you have a child currently in pre-school and will be enrolling them for Kindergarten then please do so as soon as possible. Please go to our school website to lead you through how to do this or contact Leanne at the Front Office with any questions.