Filter Content
CONGRATULATIONS
As restrictions throughout Victoria continue to ease we are all very proud of our students for the way they have adjusted to an incredible year. Their return to school has seen them be very respectful of each other and their teachers. I am frequently hearing stories from teachers on how well students have returned to focusing on their work and particularly their care for each other.
I, like all of you, look forward to the announcements this coming Sunday. Following these announcements we will be in a position to be able to finalise most of what we can allow for in our final weeks of this term. I will then share with you what we can do before the end of the year.
CHANGE OF SCHOOL CLOSURE DATE - Now Friday, 4th of December
As part of our planning to include as much as we can for our students before the end of the year including possible camps, I need to move the School Closure Planning Day from Friday, 27th November to Friday, 4th December. I apologise for the late notice but the change opens up a number of opportunities for some of our senior students.
DROP OFF AND PICK UP ARRANGEMENTS
We will be continuing with current morning drop off and afternoon pick up times until the State Government announcements on the 7th of November. After these announcements we will advise any changes.
PUBLIC SPEAKING FINALIST
Ashton Hepworth (5PH) entered the 2020 Parliament Public Speaking Competition. This year there were a record number of entries, 748 students entered the prize, representing 186 schools across Victoria. Our judges were really impressed with the enthusiasm and passion Ashton displayed in his member statement speech. He was one of the finalists in his category. We are very proud of Ashton’s willingness to have a go and for his success in this competition.
SCHOOL FEES/LEVIES
At our next School Board meeting I will be presenting a proposal to credit some of this year’s levies to next year's school fee accounts or refunding fees for families who will not be at St Peter's in 2021. Full details will be included in the next newsletter. In the meantime if you are still impacted financially by the COVID restrictions and you require assistance please email fees@spbentleigheast.catholic.edu.au so that I can assist you in responding to your needs. This email address is only viewed by me and Loretta Ballas, our school Finance officer. All correspondence is confidential.
PLANNING FOR 2021 - FAMILIES LEAVING
As I continue to plan for 2021 I am grateful to the families who have already advised me that they will not be returning to St Peter’s in 2021. If you know that you will not be returning in 2021 I ask that you advise me via email principal@spbentleigheast.catholic.edu.au as soon as possible.
NEXT COMMUNICATION
My next communication will be with you on Monday the 8th of November via email.
PREP ONLINE AQUARIUM ACTIVITY
PDG FUN FACTS FROM OUR AQUARIUM INCURSION
Archer -There are 375 types of sharks.
Sophie -The crocodile is 5 metres long.
Xavier - Sharks do not look after their eggs or babies.
Caitlin -The Dad seahorse has a lot of babies in his tummy.
Victoria - The penguins argue about who gets to go on the mat.
James -The fish eat the crocodile’s poo and brush their teeth.
Max - The mum shark does not look after her baby, she just leaves.
Oscar - Penguins need 150 pebbles to make a nest to lay their eggs.
Adelaide - Sharks lay eggs and when they hatch the babies are left alone.
Natalia - Penguins like to ‘scream’ in a bucket.
Ella-Rose -The fish clean the crocodile’s teeth.
Isabel - A seahorse is a fish. It can camouflage in seaweed.
Alexander - The crocodile is 5 school rulers long.
Eleni - A shark has 5 gills and a triangle fin.
Tia - Penguins get fish from the sea.
Ruhi -The stingray’s tail is long.
Maya - The penguin cleans its moulting feathers with its beak.
FOOTY COLOURS DAY - Thursday, 22nd October
The Australian Government has put extra support in place for psychological support. I make this information available to you for either your own or family use.
Increased Mental Health Support Main Points
- As part of the 2020–21 Federal Budget, the Australian Government will provide 10 additional psychological support sessions subsidised by Medicare. The purpose of these is for young people and adults to continue to receive mental health care from their psychologist, counsellor or other eligible allied health worker.
- Additional in-person mental health support sessions may be accessed through a medical general practitioner referral until 30 June 2022.
- For people accessing telehealth support services, additional sessions are available until 31 March 2021.
- To be eligible for the 10 additional mental health support sessions, a person must have:
- an approved treatment plan developed by their medical practitioner
- used their initial 10 individual sessions
- a referral from their reviewing practitioner.
- People who do not use all of the 10 additional sessions by the end of the calendar year may continue to access the remaining services in the next calendar year.
HAMPERS - COMPASS COMMUNITY CARE - For your information
Compass Community Care is a local organisation that exists,
- To be involved in relief, development and the giving of direct aid, for the alleviation of poverty, sickness, destitution, suffering, distress, misfortune, disability or helplessness as appropriate locally, interstate and internationally
They have been in contact to ask whether we know of any school families who would benefit from a Christmas Hamper to be delivered around the 7th of December. If your own family please email me confidentially and I will organise this for you. Alternatively if you know of a school family that would benefit from this support please check with them whether they would like us to organise this for them and then advise me of their names by Friday the 13th of November.
THE TEACHER WHO INSPIRED ME
I was late, as so often had been the case in our long relationship, and I expected to be greeted by the same generous, forgiving smile, writes Fergal Keane. I was no longer a schoolboy but a hostage of the grown-up life with all its complications and competing timetables.
Now approaching his room at the Bon Secours hospital in Cork, I could tell that I was too late. Br Jerome had passed away.
In the far-off days of the 1970s when he was my headmaster, Br Jerome Kelly would sanction repeated lack of punctuality by directing many of those who the offender towards some socially useful labour. I remember winter afternoons picking up rubbish on the Mardyke Walk next to Presentation Brothers College. "Don't return, boy, until it’s all clean as your conscience”, he would declare.
Brothers College was until it is as clean as your drifting peaceably but conscience," he would aimlessly, a haven for the declare. He never used violence to impose his will. His force of personality was quite enough to achieve any necessary end.
Br Jerome came from a small farming community in West Cork, living on an impoverished peninsula where hard work, thrift and a sense of community were primary virtues.
He joined the Presentation Brothers in the 1960s and became a missionary in the West Indies. As a teacher in Trinidad, he taught many of those who would go on to become government ministers, judges ad prominent civil servants.
He was a force by nature. By the time he came to Cork in 1969, Presentation College was drifting peaceably but aimlessly, a haven for the children of the city’s merchant classes, a noted rugby nursery but of limited academic prowess.
It was a private school with a reputation among other schools for a degree of snobbery.
Br Jerome arrived like a whirlwind, brimming with energy and ideas. Exam grades improved but that was only one part of his revolution.
He built a television and radio studio, correctly anticipating the media revolution to come. I had my first experience of broadcasting at Pres.
I was the child of a broken home, often in trouble for attention seeking in the classroom. Br Jerome was patient with me when many others might have kicked me out of school. Years later when I asked him why, he replied: “That Fergal was a troubled boy." It was his duty, he said, to keep faith with my possibility as a person.
Within a year of arriving, Br Jerome set up the Share organisation - Schoolboys Harness Aid for the Relief of the Elderly-which would go on to build 200 homes for the elderly poor of Cork City.
His pupils raised some of the money through an annual Christmas fast, while Br Jerome used his immense powers of persuasion to push the city council to provide the rest of the funding.
Just as important were the visits we made after school, often accompanied by Br Jerome, to sit with those elderly people living in poverty and loneliness.
In the Ireland of the 1970s - still in thrall to more reactionary voices - his example provided me with an inspiring model of Christian witness. All of this was done with a boisterous sense of humour and an acute understanding of the psychology of teenaged boys.
Br Jerome was my teacher, my role model, and my friend. I am a lucky person to have known him.
By Fergal Keane
THE TABLET 17 October 2020