Dear parents, friends, staff and students,

All of the readings from this weekend have a common theme which requires us to be a people of action. We are asked to spread the message of Jesus through what we do and to be productive in the service of God. From the first reading (Apostles 9: 26-31) which recounts how Saul (St Paul) spread the word of Jesus through Damascus, to the Gospel (John 15: 1-8) where Jesus explains that He is the vine and we are the branches who need to bear fruit, we are given the clear instruction that we must live what we believe. The theme however might be summed up best by the opening line of the second reading (1 John 3: 18- 24) which states: “My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active”. As a College community, we recite the mantra that we are Christ-centred, but we should be constantly asking how this statement is put into action. Within our community, the Marist concept of family and the Carmelite focus on ministry (or apostolate) challenges us to be a people of action in ensuring that Jesus is at the centre of what we do, how we do it and why we do it.

Earlier this week, the College Leadership Team were privileged to have Fr Aloysius Rego,  attend our Leadership Team meeting to guide us in exploring the way in which the Carmelite Charism can be used to assist our focus as a College. This focus is around the way that we are a Christ-Centred community and helps us to build on the strong Marist connections that have existed at Mount Carmel since its inception. Fr Aloysius highlighted the idea that the Carmelites are led to Jesus by following six focus areas. These are the ideas of Mary, Prayer, Silence, Solitude, Asceticism and Ministry. These six focus areas meld beautifully with the Marist characteristics of: Presence, In the way of Mary, Family spirit, Love of work and Simplicity. As one of our School Improvement Plan (SIP) goals is developing a clearly articulated vision and mission for the College, our leadership team and staff will continue to explore these concepts and work with the staff this year as to how we put them into practice. Our plan then will be to develop the ideas with students and parents next year as the final stage of our current SIP and this will hopefully ensure that what we say is what we do.

Included in last week’s newsletter was a link to a survey (TTFM) for parents regarding your thoughts on the College. It is extremely important that we receive feedback in terms of what we are doing well and what we might be able to improve. I have included the link for this survey again here. For any parents who may not have had a chance to complete this, we would be grateful for you to spend 10 minutes letting us know how we are travelling. For those who have already completed this, I thank you for your time and opinions. This will be used to evaluate our current improvement plan and to include strategies into the future.

On Tuesday May 11, we will be holding our next P&F meeting. This is held in room I3 (at the front of the College near the La Valla Centre) and starts at 7pm. Our hope is that at each of these meetings we will have a College Middle Leader speak at the meeting regarding something of interest and importance to parents. Following from requests at the last meeting, this meeting’s guest speaker will be Ms Alison Kripal our Administration and Compass Coordinator. She will be presenting information on Compass and how parents might use it to enhance communication with the College. All are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Mr Steve Lo Cascio