From the President's desk...
Welcome to term 4! The busiest of all of the terms!
Please let me start by wishing those commencing their final exams the best of luck! It's also an opportune time to share the wisdom of knowing that your ATAR does not define you! Exams teach us various important lessons beyond the content currently being crammed into young brains right now! While I know all of our young people are focused on the content right now, it is the time management, stress management and resilience lesson that are the ones that will sustain young people.
Elsewhere we are hearing some great things and some heartbreaking things from our annual parent sentiment survey! Some schools have embraced the opportunity to be innovative with their parent community and have embraced the opportunity to build relationships in new and inclusive ways.
"I am so appreciative of the school & the staff now. I liked the school before covid now I love it.'
Some schools are back to normal with only a few tweaks or changes. Parents reported that school events are back to normal and opportunities to be involved are being offered.
"I wear a mask on site or in a classroom. Simple. No bother."
But many are sharing the loss of community and relationships. The restrictions that were so necessary to keep us safe have had a huge impact on not only children but their families too. We need to keep having the conversations that matter about how we can rebuild the relationships that the pandemic has damaged.
Our survey is showing that while we are slowly getting back to normal the depth and breadth of activities that parents do in schools has become very shallow. Parents are missing the opportunities to be involved in literacy and numeracy activities. And they told us they are desperately missing opportunities to socialise with other parents, a very valuable community-building activity.
You still have the opportunity to share your experiences with us. The survey can be found here. When the survey closes we plan on advocating the government consider its responsibilities in facilitating school communities to rebuild themselves.
Thanks for reading!
Jenni
APC President
