Positive Behaviour for Learning – PBL

We have done our best in continuing to keep PBL on the radar, even during these times. Dash the Dolphin tokens have been awarded digitally for times such as when teachers have seen work that is impressive or when there has been great participation or listening during our daily class Teams meeting. Tokens have also been given out at school for the positive behaviour displayed by the students there. Acknowledging great choices and giving praise when appropriate is important in supporting students as they grow.

We are thrilled to congratulate the Red Colour House for receiving the most tokens in these last five weeks of school. This really is a great achievement!! Students in the Red Colour House will look forward to their reward when we all back at school together.

In Term 4 we will once again focus on 4 specific areas that fit within our school expectations of

• Act Safely
• Be Respectful
• Care for All
• Do Your Best

Compass Ancestry

St Joseph’s, along with all schools in our Maitland-Newcastle Diocese, has been using the Compass App now for a number of years. Compass has many features such as news sharing, recording student attendance and distributing school reports. We have definitely appreciated communicating with our community in this central way over the last few weeks!

From Week 3, Term 4 St Joseph’s will begin using features of Compass that are new to us. One of the features will be the use of Events to communicate news about excursions and to receive parent consent for student attendance of these. This will be one way we work around finding the overdue banana-stained permission note at the bottom of the bag! Another area of Compass Ancestry that will benefit the school will be in regards to finance, especially billing.

We firmly believe that the transition to this new student information and finance system will be smooth. Further information, specifically detailing how it will impact parents, will be shared closer to our change over date.

A note of thanks

Dear St Joseph’s,

On the eve of finishing work for a little while and beginning maternity leave, I’d like to share a note of thanks to the St Joseph’s community. We are very fortunate to belong to such a warm and supportive school family and I have mixed feelings as I step aside to begin this new chapter of my life. To many I have shared how comfortable I feel helping to lead a school of just about 400 students, yet the thought of caring and nurturing a newborn is just a touch foreign to me. Fortunately, for many years I have watched family after family journey through our school community modelling a way of parenthood that I admire. As Lucas and I welcome this bundle of joy into our lives we will take this example with us. For now though, we will begin setting up the nursery, finally deciding upon which pram we’d like and organising for the car seat to be fitted safely (as we can’t leave it too much longer!). I look forward to sharing our baby news with you soon and even hopefully crossing paths at our end of the year celebrations.

Kindest regards always,

Ren Powell