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Dear parents, friends, staff and students,
The Feast of St Mary of the Cross, McKillop occurs this Sunday. Mount Carmel has a special connection to St Mary and the sisters of St Joseph as the first Assistant Principal of the College was a Josephite nun (Sister Maria Casey) and one of our houses is named after St Mary. St Mary was a strong advocate for education in Australia and specifically for education for the disadvantaged. There is an often-recited quote from St Mary; “never see a need without doing something about it”. This reiterates the notion that each of us has an obligation to assist where we can but also to ensure that our eyes are open to where need occurs. There is another quote that I have used on many occasions which is appropriate in our current setting; “do all you can with the means at your disposal and calmly leave the rest to God”. For our students and parents who are locked into remote learning and the many stresses that come with that, I encourage you to keep this quote in your minds. We are in a very unique situation and whilst we are expected to do our best, we must be comfortable that this is all we can do.
At the moment, there has been much said in the media around the return of students from remote learning. Our Year 12 students had been scheduled to return on August 16 and to commence their Trial HSC examinations on August 18. There has been much discussion both inside and outside the College regarding the return of students and how this might be managed in the current health climate. As we have done since the start of the pandemic, we continue to follow the health advice and directives of NSW Health, Catholic Schools NSW and Catholic Education, Diocese of Wollongong. The decision to continue with the trials was to provide students with valuable experience that cannot be gained in any other format as well as the opportunity for feedback on their performance under exam conditions in preparation for the HSC itself. The running of trials was also to reduce the interaction of students whilst they are on campus following a return to school. As the Premier has announced this morning, we have now been informed that students at Mount Carmel will now not be permitted on site. This will result in a significant change in the format of the trial examinations for this year. Our above reasoning for running these trials in their advertised format is now impractical. HSC students are being contacted directly to advise of the new arrangements. Of course, all our plans are continually reviewed with new advice and directives. We are also currently discussing the implications of the current advice on our Year 11 students in the leadup to the end of their preliminary courses. As we are able to make final decisions regarding these, we will also communicate that to students and parents.
Next Tuesday is the Term 3 P&F meeting. Parents may recall that a decision was made at the last meeting to move P&F meetings in the current environment to week 5 of each term. This will occur next week. For parents who would like to attend this meeting, please follow the link below:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://dowcatholic.zoom.us/j/66443017266?pwd=Uit1V0k1dHErVVk4M21PcDYzQUhOUT09
Password: 568106
As always, a very big thank you to the staff, students and parents for your flexibility and ongoing support during remote learning.
Ite in VeritateMr Steve Lo Cascio
Principal
As we come to the end of Week 4 of remote learning, I take the opportunity this week to thank the parents (and students) who have taken the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to offer feedback, both affirming and constructive, regarding our online learning processes. In the same way that students appreciate feedback on their progress, we appreciate the feedback in terms of the lessons and activities that are being left each day.
One valuable tool for lesson delivery during remote learning is Zoom. Like any online platform, we have set a number of safety parameters in place to ensure Zoom remains an effective tool for worthwhile learning. Students are aware that we require them to have their name displayed on entry to a Zoom conversation, and to be conscious of their clothing, background and manners as they would in any learning environment. While copies of each zoom are recorded and stored under CEO safety guidelines, I would ask parents to remind their children that it is an offense to record or screenshot images or audio from Zoom lessons as consent cannot be obtained from student participants. This applies especially to any ongoing distribution of such recordings.
As debate continues in the media regarding the impending return to class for Year 12 students, I have been in touch with both our bus companies (Busabout and Interline) in recent days in order to ascertain when they intend on recommencing regular bus services to and from the College (you may recall that these services were recently suspended). Unfortunately they have both explained that such decisions are made at Transport NSW level and they don’t have a return date as yet. Rest assured that we will inform you once we know ourselves. I must remind Year 12 students, especially those who may be onsite for major work preparations, that it is also a breach of the current health order to carpool with anyone beyond your immediate household members.
Finally, another reminder that despite the overwhelming majority of students now working remotely for the time being, I would ask families to please continue following our COVID recording procedures, which include:
- Informing the school immediately if your child is self-isolating or undergoing testing, and informing us of the result as soon as possible.
- Following sickness with flu-like symptoms, ensuring your child is free of symptoms and can present a negative COVID-19 test, before attending the College site for any reason.
All the best for the week ahead.
David Cloran
Assistant Principal
Sunday 8 August - Solemnity for St Mary of the Cross - Australia’s First Saint
First Reading 1 Kgs 17:7-16 Elijah asks the widow for food.
Second Reading Col 3:12-17 God loves you and asks you to love others.
Gospel Mt 6:25 - 34 Jesus tells us not to worry.
Historical Context – Mary MacKillop
Mary MacKillop is not only the first Australian to be recognised by the Church as a Saint, she is truly a very Australian saint. She characterises the spirit of the Australian mythology.
She was a prodigious hard worker who put the needs of others before herself. She exhibited something of the larrikin spirit: constantly in dispute with authority but pressing on, regardless. She used the strengths of others but also didn’t tolerate those who were not genuine. Her commitment to the schooling of children from poor and rural communities established a model of Catholic education that continues to today.
A Saint for and of Australia!
7 Miles to Emmaus Week 2
So let us be inspired by this wonderful person, and complete another of the 7 miles to Emmaus.
This week, think of an action that will help a neighbour - put out their bin or bring it in, walk their dog, offer to mow their lawn or weed a garden or write a note of thanks. All of this makes for a better community.
Mrs Christine Meharg
REC Coordinator
Remote Learning
Students are expected to be participating in the learning activities set out by their teachers as best they can. Just as they would in a face to face lesson, students are encouraged to ask their teachers if they have questions or are unsure about the requirements for a lesson. Communication is essential at this time to maintain the learning partnership between teachers and students. Teachers are designing learning activities for a 40 minute lesson.
Year 11 2022 Subject Selection
Students have finalised their preferences. Year 11 2022 Subject Choices will be distributed to Year 10 students on 3 September.
STAGE 5 2022 Elective Selections
Year 8 and 9 can now access KLA videos about the electives on offer in 2022. These are available on the Subject Selection google classrooms. Students are encouraged to watch the videos with their parents/caregiver to ensure that they are informed about their options. This week, students will receive more information about the requirements for Stage 5, the process of choosing electives and how to lodge their selections online. Once the online selections are open, students will have until 20 August to make their entries.
NESA COVID Advice
The advice from NESA is frequently updated on their website: https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/covid-19/coronavirus-advice
Ms Chardy Miller
Acting Curriculum Coordinator
Good afternoon everyone,
In last week’s newsletter reference was made to the SEEEDSS scaffold for managing learning and wellbeing. As an extension to this scaffold, the Catholic Education Office Diocese of Woillongong, along with Catholiccare Counselling provide access to a range of resources for staff, parents, carers, families and students to assist with some of the wellbeing challenges that we might be encountering during this period of extended remote learning. Below are some links to some more valuable information that may assist during this current event.
CEDOW Portal - Supporting your child's wellbeing
Self care during times of uncertainty
Classroom teachers, pastoral advisors and year coordinators are continually checking in with students and families to offer reassurance and support. We have conducted two learning and wellbeing surveys over the past month as a means of gathering insights from students regarding how they are managing with remote learning. The most recent data would suggest that the majority of students are making the effort to establish a regular daily routine of keeping to their normal timetable, are taking regular breaks between lessons, getting regular exercise and communicating with their teachers when support is required.
There are some students who may be struggling to adopt such an approach. If you are concerned about your son or daughter’s ability to maintain motivation or feel that they are struggling with some aspects of remote learning, please do not hesitate to contact staff at the College, either to teachers or coordinators directly by email, or by leaving a message at reception.
Thanks again for your ongoing support and cooperation.
Mr Simon Huntly
Pastoral Care and Wellbeing Coordinator
A new emphasis on the place of writing in the secondary classroom puts the focus on the teacher as writer. Probably the most important influence on the student writer is the teacher-as-writer who writes alongside the student. If teachers are going to fulfil this role, they need to believe in themselves as writers and to reflect these beliefs in their classroom practices.
Three teachers have contributed to this week’s Literacy Links article. Ms Monique Young has composed a reflection on writing, Ms Victoria Zullo has written a commentary on the writing of American novelist Flannery O’Connor, and Mrs Madeleine Maulguet has included a poem she composed a short while ago prefaced by a brief introduction.
Putting Pen to Paper
For a long time, the writing process for me was purely academic discourse – years of submitting essays and papers to lecturers and tutors and before that, teachers. It wasn’t until I became a teacher myself that I started to truly value the craft of writing. Like building a house, painting an artwork, or even baking a cake, writing takes time. It takes patience, perseverance and I think, a belief in one’s ability. Ask any carpenter, artist or chef and I am almost certain they will say the same of their craft.
As a teacher, it is a belief in one’s ability that I feel is often the most difficult to harness in my students and so remains at the forefront of what I try to do in encouraging them to pick up a pen and write. A past student recently said to me, “I often think that our Year 9 class was the place where I learned the most about myself as a writer”. He didn’t know it, but those words underpin my joy and passion as a teacher, in having my students value writing not just as the academic discourse I viewed it as for so long, but as a process that builds skills, understanding and reason in a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of.
When faced with the question of ‘why write?’ from a sea of teenage faces – some apathetic, some confused, others eager and excited, Terry Tempest Williams says it best… “I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honour beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in a solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget.”
Ms Monique Young
Old Wart Hog – A theological commentary on Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation
In a highly secular world, revelation appears to be unobtainable; some elusive myth that only fervently religious adherents may grasp. Revelation is commonly referred to as the unveiling of God in some capacity, where our belief in the trinity is strengthened from this newfound knowledge. However, this anagnorisis of sorts isn’t always the pleasurable experience one may assume. Revelation, in the literal sense, is the uncovering of something previously hidden. These revelatory experiences may be humbling, disconcerting or unnerving and have the capacity to invoke a change in the way we think and behave in the world around us. Whilst some may evade confession or church to avoid this uncomfortable experience, engaging in literature may send one through this transformative process.
Flannery O’Connor, an American novelist and writer, depicts revelation as an experience that offers us a glance into ‘the very heart of misery’ to bewilder us with a new knowledge of God and ourselves that unsettles our very being. In her Southern Gothic short story, Revelation, the character Mrs. Turpin, a ‘respectable, hardworking, church-going woman,’ who can recite hymns and who regularly consults Jesus in hypothetical dilemmas about if she weren’t herself, would she rather be ‘a nigger or white trash,’ enters into an altercation with an ‘ugly’ teenage girl in a doctor’s office (‘Mrs. Turpin felt an awful pity for the girl…’). The incessant, passive aggressive bickering, with veiled insults being thrown back and forth, was interrupted when the girl thew her book at Mrs. Turpin and followed it with ‘Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.’ She meditated on this pejorative, outraged. It was only until ‘a visionary light settled in her eyes’ that she saw her destiny: groups of clean, white trash people, ‘bands of black niggers,’ and ‘battalions of freaks’ tumbling towards Heaven, together. At the back of this procession, was herself.
Mrs. Turpin’s internal monologue revealed that, whilst a fervent Christian, she was consistently judging those around her that she perceived as being lesser. It was only until being referred to as an ‘old warthog’ that sent her into a forced contemplation, as a ‘visionary light settled in her eyes’, and she realised her shortcomings. This revelatory experience did not confirm what she already knew but provided her – albeit uncomfortably – with ‘abysmal life-giving knowledge’ that demands the death of the old self, in order for the new to live. When we read great literature, we critique, empathise, and adjudicate characters’ successes and pitfalls, whilst subconsciously reflecting on our own actions and inadequacies. The next time you read, you may be forced to answer the question: are you, unknowingly, an ‘old wart-hog’ disguised as a model Christian?
Ms. Victoria Zullo
Writing and Poetry
Students often assume that as an English teacher, writing comes naturally to me. While yes, I have more practice at it than they do, sometimes I struggle to find the right words to express myself.
Writing is a skill that is developed like any other in life and it has only been over the last few years that I’ve really felt comfortable at all with myself as a writer. Comfortable enough even, to share my creative writing with my students. Many students will already know that I write poetry in my spare time. I love the freedom and fluidity that the form allows. I often think about this quote from my favourite author, Neil Gaiman: “Know safely what the rules are, and then break them with joy.”
The poem below is a piece I wrote a few months ago. It is my favourite piece that I have written this year. I wrote it at a time when I needed to reassure myself. After writing it I felt an overwhelming sense of relief and satisfaction. Now when I reread it I am struck by those same feelings. That’s really the power of writing, its ability to affect us.
Ceaseless is the climb
she keeps to herself.
Nothing deters her,
the loose rocks shift beneath her feet.
She cradles nothing -
but the thrum of her patient soul.
She is good enough
this only affirms her resolve.
Mrs Madeleine Maulguet
Mrs Clare Murphy
English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach
Due to the current COVID situation, the second hand uniform shop will not be open until further notice.