PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
This year we celebrate a very early Easter season, and we commenced this most important time in the Church calendar with our Ash Wednesday Liturgy on the 14th February. Ash Wednesday reminds us of the start of the 40 day Holy season of Lent, where we prepare for the celebration of Easter and the resurrection of Christ. During Lent we are called to focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving to come closer to our God, and undertake true conversion to follow the teachings of Jesus more faithfully. Our liturgies serve as wonderful teaching experiences for our students as we share the meaning and purpose of our Catholic traditions. Students participated very reverently and I thank all involved in making the liturgy possible.
We have had a very settled and productive start to the year and I have been most impressed with the attitude and efforts of our students. There is a wonderful learning culture that has been developing for some time and the feedback from our staff has been overwhelmingly positive. We have also had a number of guests to the school who have commented on how well presented and calm the school environment is. Our High Achievers assembly held on the 8th February, is a wonderful reminder of what is possible when we commit ourselves to our learning and push to achieve our potential. It is important to recognise those students who have achieved exceptional results and the article later in the newsletter highlights some of these fantastic achievements. One of the most important aspects of the assembly is the opportunity for our current students to see what is possible and set their own goals for their time at John Therry.
Professional Learning Days
I appreciate that we have a number of professional learning days early in the year that is not always ideal for parents and carers. Schools have been given additional professional learning days in 2024 to prepare for the many syllabus documents that are changing, and we have been keen to make use of these and provide teachers with the time and professional learning to make best use of the changes. We believe the long term rewards of this approach will be worth it, but undertstand that this is not ideal in other ways. We have had our NESA Liaison officer presenting to staff, and will do so again on the 4th of March at our last PD day for the term. Terms 2 and 3 have just the one pupil free day planned in a return to normal scheduling.