On Wednesday, the Catholic church celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March - nine months before Christmas). This was the moment that the Angel of the Lord appeared before Mary to ask her if she would be prepared to give birth to Jesus Christ, the Saviour. Mary agreed and with that simple confirmation, she changed the history of the world and enabled the salvation of humankind. The reason that this feast is so important is that it highlights the free choice that Mary made and reinforces that even a simple person can have an enormous impact on others. Mary’s “yes” reflected a conscious decision to accept the will of God even when it might bring hard times and difficulties. This does not mean that we simply give up and allow fate to take its course. On the contrary, it is about us making decisions and sticking by them. Over the next few months, we will be challenged by events in our lives and communities to make our own decisions. In making these, we need to consider what is the path that God wants us to take in order to make our world a better place and then follow this path to a brighter future.

As you would all obviously be aware, following statements by the Premier, the College has been open but parents have been encouraged to keep their children at home. This has been an important step in slowing the impact of the Coronavirus whilst enabling people in essential services to continue to provide these for the wider community. The numbers of students attending the College has declined sharply as the week progressed. As the directive currently stands, at this point in time, the advice has not changed, The College is still open, but parents are encouraged where possible to keep your children at home. In order to achieve this balance, the College has moved to online delivery of classes. In most cases, this has involved teachers setting up lessons on Google (Classrooms, sites and docs) and running Zoom or videoed lessons. These will continue into the future. Please look again over the tip sheet sent earlier this week to assist your child in remote learning. A copy of this is included later in the newsletter. 

As a result that many students and parents will now be isolated from the Mount Carmel Catholic College community, we will now have a number of new sections in the newsletter to keep you updated. These will be authored by our College Leadership Team (CLT) and will include notices, tips and suggestions. Please contact your teacher, Year Coordinators, KLA Coordinators or the CLT should you have any questions, comments or suggestions. 

Finally, I would like to formally and deeply thank our staff for the work they have undertaken over the past week and into the foreseeable future. We are now moving into a rotation of them on and offsite to continue to set and deliver lessons in a remote way. This will ensure that there is adequate supervision for the children who continue to attend the College and also ensure their own safety as the wider community begins to shut down. Please do not underestimate the enormous work that these staff (both teaching and support) are doing in order to provide online lessons. In many cases, this is a more difficult process in the extreme and entails much greater time and a much higher level skill set. The staff have upskilled in an extremely short period of time. They are doing this with a genuine interest in the learning and well-being of your children and in an attempt to give them the best of opportunities. Please take the time to email them your thanks as they race into a whole new way of thinking and teaching. 

Ite in Veritate

Mr Steve Lo Cascio