Mrs Inglis’s Messages
Welcome to Term 3.
Hello to our Beacy Community,
I hope that you and your family are travelling well in this lockdown. I appreciate that some of us are getting ‘lockdown fatigue’ and are finding it difficult to be back in this situation. Please take the time to think about what supports you have in place and what works best for you and your family and activate them. Be kind to yourselves and always take some time each day to do something for yourself (no matter how big or small) and something that helps the wellbeing of your family.
Last lockdown I attended a Headspace webinar and it helped me with a better understanding and provided some strategies. At the moment we are all in this lockdown but the experiences we are going through are different. It was presented to me as ‘we are all going through the same storm’.
However, even though we are all going through the same lockdown, our experiences are different because we have different ‘boats’. Our ‘boats’ are different because we all have different situations, capacities, strategies, supports in our lives and experiences. You need to take the time and think about your situation – what are your strategies and supports and begin to use and access them.
Flexible and Remote learning
Once again our families are doing an amazing job with the flexible and remote learning. Our students are so lucky to have such fantastic parents who are supporting them and working with them. I appreciate that it looks different for everyone – depending on the ages of our students and the situation parents are in due to their own commitments.
Our teachers have provided many different supports so they can accommodate all our families:
- Drop in zooms. Our teachers are online from 9:00 – 11:00am every day for you or your child to come online. You or your child (depending on the age and capability of the student) can come on to ask questions about the learning pack, show work to get feedback or just to check in. This could become part of their routine every day.
- Small group zoom – these are called different names across the school. Your child has been allocated a specific time and day to come along with a few of their classmates. These zooms are designed for a specific purpose by the teacher. They could be for giving feedback on specific work or modelling some common misunderstandings or whatever the need of the group is.
- Wellbeing zooms. Students can come along and participate in activities that will support them with being connected with their classmates and have some fun.
Staff are available to respond to emails and call parents to provide support – just reach out and we will respond.
Farewell Mr Methven
We finished off term 2 farewelling Mr Methven. He had a lovely last week at Beacy and was overwhelmed with parents and families wishing him all the best and by the number of wonderful gifts he received. The students did a great job at keeping secrets and he loved his ‘Mr Methven Day’ and special assembly. I hope you have had a chance to view the video. The assembly consisted of:
- All students creating a piece of artwork of Mr Methven and filling the whole wall of the gym.
- Our School Captains reflecting and thanking Mr Methven on behalf of the students.
- Students from across the school reading their writing and Mr Methven being presented with a book of all students’ writing piece.
- Students singing and performing farewell songs.
I will continue to fulfill the role of Acting Principal until the Department of Education appoints a new principal later this term.
Celebration Books
Your child will have come home with their Celebration Book. I hope you took a moment to sit down with your child to look at their work and discuss it with them. If you have not done already, please return the book when we return on-site so your child can keep contributing to it over the year.
Covid
Finally, as you will have been aware we have had a public exposure site in Beaconsfield on Saturday. Aldi is listed as a tier 1 site and we have a couple in Berwick. Please make sure that you are checking in when you are out and about and continue to monitor the DHHS website.
https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/exposure-sites
If this has impacted you and your family, please let the school know. We will continue to provide your child learning whilst your family is quarantining, even once we have returned on-site.
At this stage, we are planning to return to on-site learning on Wednesday. We will email out learning packs and zoom links by Monday morning for Monday and Tuesday’s flexible and remote learning.
The sun is shining today (as I write this) so hopefully you are able to take some time outside to do a bit of exercise and get some vitamin D. See you on Wednesday.
Heidi Inglis (Acting Principal)
