iServi News | 24 July 2020 | Term 3, Week 1
Welcome Back
Welcome back to the start of a new term. As always, I hope that you had the opportunity to spend some quality time together as a family during the break.
Our Ongoing Improvement Journey
As a College that promotes learning for all, we actively advocate individual and whole school improvement procedures and processes to ensure that we continue to grow our school and provide the best possible contemporary learning environment for our students.
I have recently been encouraging our students to reflect on their progress to date and to set achievable SMART goals to enhance their learning. Through adopting a growth mindset, students can then develop a clear plan of action to ensure their ongoing improvement.
Just like our students, as a staff we too reflect on how we can continue to grow quality learning opportunities for students. To this end, our Professional Development Day on Monday this week was spent developing individualised and school wide growth strategies designed to ensure we continue to meet the learning needs of our students. In building a professional learning community at Servite, we encourage strong professional development and rich conversations between staff as we continue to strive to develop contemporary and engaging pedagogy.
Part of the process also included a focus on key strategic initiatives to ensure the continued growth of the College. As you know, we have a wonderful College Vision which aims to personalise learning and engage students in a rich, welcoming and inclusive Catholic Servite community. In striving for everyone to ‘become all that they were created to be’ our Mission is to ’embrace life, inspire growth and serve others’. We live our Mission through the core domains of Community, Learning, Ministry and Stewardship. These domains allow for the development of clear and specific strategies to ensure we maintain momentum on our improvement journey. We focused our thoughts and ideas through the following key strategic intents:
Community: Nurturing a school culture that is reflective and innovative, supporting growth in learning and wellbeing for all.
Learning: Ensuring our dynamic practices and personalised learning framework best prepare our students for their futures.
Ministry: Providing diverse opportunities for faith development and practical Servite ministry to make a difference.
Stewardship: Develop the best possible learning, physical and social resources to meet contemporary needs and grow the College community.
Parent and Caregiver Survey
As part of our strategic process, we now welcome input from our broader community on how we can achieve the above four intents. To this end, we have created a survey which is available here. We strive for a community that fully engages its parents and caregivers, so we look forward to receiving your thoughts and ideas.
You will note in the survey that we have also included our regular Parent and Caregiver questionnaire. This information provided to us by parents and caregivers will, as always, support quality strategic decision making moving forward, so we again invite your input. Given the current COVID climate in WA and the related recent relaxation of certain restrictions, we look forward to holding our annual planning session via the College P&F later this semester.
Child Safety at Servite
During our Professional Development Day, we also focused on the College Code of Conduct which is designed to support the safety of children at our school. The Code of Conduct “promotes positive work practices and establishes expectations for personal and professional boundaries concerning appropriate and inappropriate behaviour for staff, students, volunteers, parents and guardians, and visitors. There are clear procedures for raising concerns, facilitating discussion, and promoting professional behaviours and healthy relationships.”
The Code of Conduct forms part of a suite of policies and practices designed to support the safety of our students. We are fully committed to creating and maintaining safe environments for students as we believe that “all members of our College have a fundamental right to be treated with respect, and to learn and work in a safe and supportive environment”
We were also pleased to recently inform you, as part of the Semester 1 reporting process, on the progress of our Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum. The curriculum is taught across all years at the College and is designed to educate students on their right to feel and be safe, to be listened to, to be treated with respect and to be protected from harm.
A reminder to families that all of our Child Safety related policies and statements are available here.
Enrolment Interviews
As mentioned over previous weeks, the College is currently conducting enrolment interviews for incoming families for 2021 and 2022.
Given spaces are quickly becoming limited, we would encourage families and friends who intend for their child to attend Servite, particularly for the next two years, to lodge an enrolment application as a matter of priority.
Mr Jeff Allen
Principal