From the Principal Week 4 Term 2 2014

Dear Parents, Friends and Caregivers,

Jesus said, "Go out and invite everyone to the wedding feast, the good and the bad alike." Such an invitation is both amazing and shocking to us in those times we are feeling pleased with our goodness, and a grace received with deep gratitude in those times we are feeling down about our badness. Jesus' words are both profoundly liberating and challenging.

It was a delight to talk with a parent of a child in one of our junior classes this week who shared something her child had said to her.

It went something like this:

“If I say to _________ ‘Please don’t do that, I don’t like it’ with a voice with love, they get to see God’s love. I think it is God’s job for me while I am at school to help to show love to the other kids. I think that God brings children to our school so that we can show God’s love to them.”

It is such a privilege to be part of a school in which children are being encouraged by both parents and teachers to develop understanding and awareness, to have good boundaries, to think before they respond, and to be sharers of God’s love to other children.

It is a privilege to be a part of a school which embraces children from all walks of life, including those with a wide range of physical, emotional, social and learning challenges, recognizing that we are all a mixture of goodness and badness and that God's invitation is to us all.

It is a privilege to be part of a school which genuinely seeks to see each child as God sees them, to embrace their potential, and to build on whatever we can to see growth and change.

At times, due to no fault of the children, this is harder for some than for others.

Thank you for being a community of parents who are more interested in helping your children grow in character, faith and love than in defending their every action.

Thank you for being a community of parents who are keen to support each other acknowledging that we have in common that we all have children who do wrong things sometimes, and that ‘it takes a community to raise a child’.

Thank you for being a community of parents who are so prepared to get involved either personally, or through your children, to make our school, and this world a better place.

Together is better!

Helen Pearson

P.S. Welcome back to Mrs Port, who has enjoyed a wonderful ten day cruise around the Islands (we missed you!), and thanks to Mrs Hewitt for a fantastic job filling many of the gaps in a part time capacity while also teacher aiding! Thanks to Mrs Loser for so wonderfully stepping in while Mrs Holdsworth is away. Thanks to Mr Carstensen for stepping up as a temporary teacher aide.