Dear OLC Community,

As you know one of our family's recently suffered the unexpected loss of their husband and father in February this year. Dave Clift was husband to Annmarie and dad to Violet in Year 5H, and to former OLC students Damon (17), and Sunny (15). Annmarie has been overwhelmed by the love and support she has already received in terms of willing listeners, shoulders to cry on and lovingly prepared meals. Many people have continued to ask how they might best help the family as they move forward. Here is a way. Without Dave and an income, Annmarie could really use some financial support. If you are able, even if in a small way to contribute to this Go Fund Me Campaign, she would be forever grateful. Thank you and may God Bless you.

Mrs. Amie Meyer

https://gofund.me/cffd29eb

We are delighted to announce that Mrs Amie Meyer has officially been appointed Assistant Principal at OLC. Amie has acted in this role over the past few years while she has been completing her studies in RE. Amie is an excellent ambassador and role model for the faith development of our community. We are very fortunate to have Amie as a leader at our school.

On Tuesday our staff attended a Professional Learning opportunity after school focusing on the Make Jesus Real (MJR) philosophy we implement at OLC. It was a perfect opportunity for us to reset our focus for Term Two and to discuss how we can continue to embed MJR at our school. It was wonderful to hear from Peter Mitchell (Mitch), the developer of MJR, and learn about his background and gain valuable insight. One of the things we plan to do in each newsletter is give a little more understanding to parents about MJR. This may be in the form of a prayer, an example/definition of the language of MJR i.e, what a W.E.S.T person is or what does Meet, Greet and Treat truly mean or a link to one of our focus areas. This way, the language of MJR will not just be the language of the school, but also used at home.

Many of us attended ANZAC Day services locally and in Perth on Sunday. Mr Jones’ Year 5 class performed a wonderful ANZAC day assembly at school last Friday afternoon. Many of our school and MJR values are displayed in the ANZAC spirit. Before we complain about our COVID-19 difficulties, we need to reflect back on the difficulties experienced by our early and current servicemen.

Many thanks for all the hours of preparation by Mrs Ricciardone and Miss Hurst to provide the opportunity for our Year 6 students to enjoy so many sensational experiences on camp at Fairbridge Camp last week. Thank you to Mrs Murphy, Mrs Sweeney and Mr McSevich for their attendance on camp. The excellent weather and fantastic location near Pinjarra made for a great bonding and learning week together.

In keeping with our OLC Strategic Plan and School Improvement Plan, this term we are commencing our whole school Wadandi cultural learning and our partnership with Josh Whiteland and Koomal Dreaming.

This term we will have Josh working with classes:

Week 3 – PP at Quindalup

Week 4 – Year 1 Incursion at OLC with Josh on building a mia

Week 5 – Year 2 Djiljit Mia

Week 6 - Year 3 at Ngilgi Cave

Week 6 - Kindy - Cape Kaya Experience at the Lighthouse

Years 4-6 will have their cultural experiences in Term 3, including a 2-day experience for the Year 5 cohort.

The focus of these two days for the Year 5 group is: Culture, Nature and Challenge, taking place down in the Margaret River area. The school will not only be partnering with Koomal Dreaming but also Cape to Cape Tours on what should be two exciting and full days.

More information coming soon……

All students from Years 3-6 will be performing in our OLC Dance Extravaganza on the final day of this term, Friday 2 July. A number of our students will also be given the opportunity to perform in Bunbury at the YOH Fest on August 20 at 6.30pm. Mrs Haines will send more information to relevant parents shortly.

In the next few weeks all families will receive information inviting you to participate in a survey of our school. The valuable data gained will then be used for our Annual School Improvement Plan and our school Strategic Plan that will be renewed later this year. It is important to us that all families have a voice. The survey was created by Curtin University and CEWA. All parents, staff and students at OLC will be involved in the survey.

The survey opens on 10 May and all responses are to be submitted by May 21.

We will send you an email and SMS on Monday 10th May when the online survey opens.

We welcomed five new students into our school community last week. It is a real credit to them all how well they and their families have settled into our community.

We are pleased that once again our staff will be working with Laura Allison, Leader of the psychology team at Catholic Education WA. (Laura is an outstanding operator and is only working with one school this year, us!) Thankyou to Adrian Torrese for arranging this for our school community.

Lauren will be continuing the work she had started with us around staff and student wellbeing, including embedding the SEARCH (Strengths, Emotions, Attention, Relationships, Coping and Habits) Framework into the OLC culture.

Our school Wellbeing team is working closely with Lauren and are currently implementing strategies across the school on a weekly basis. Our focus for Term 2 are “Identifying our Strengths” and “Being aware of our Emotions”.

Our building plans, estimated pricing and five-year maintenance plans have been submitted to CEWA. Our School Advisory Committee (School Board) has placed many hours of work into developing the plans. A panel from CEWA will be at our school on Tuesday 18 May to judge the Capital development needs of our school compared to the other 162 Catholic Schools in Western Australia. We are requesting funding for two new classrooms and refurbishment of the junior primary areas at school. We will hear if our submission has been successful before the end of Term 3.

Our Senior Primary Playground Committee has now met twice and will keep us informed of how we can help in the process. We want to develop the playground on the hill overlooking the oval. Lots of exciting ideas are being circulated at the moment. Thank you to those who volunteered to be on the committee.

A number of our students have done exceptionally well in various sporting events recently.

Mila Devereux is currently participating in trials for the state athletics team in long distance events, Lola Day and Holly Greening achieved excellent standards in the All Schools Equestrian events at Brigadoon and Xavier Armstrong, Phoenix Kerr and Jett Devereux came second in the Under 11 X triathlon while Cooper Bidesi came second in the under 13 Triathlon. It is a real credit to our families supporting their students in an active lifestyle.

• We have five sets of twins at OLC.
• Richard Sweet is a Western Bulldogs supporter.
• Jasper's favourite activity on camp was abseiling.
• There was a uniform meeting this morning at 8.40am
• One of our teachers fell in the fire when she was practising her ballet (when she was a little girl).
• Mitch, our MJR presenter, lives in Tasmania.
• A playground meeting was held yesterday at 2pm.
• Miss Hurst's mum sends her special teabags from Ireland.
• Tieg (6) completed a 32m torpedo punt last Saturday morning playing for Dunsborough Sharks.
• Cam (6) came second in the Trigg Surfing Competition in the holidays.
• Mila (5) has a broken arm
• Kye's (1K) favourite food is pizza. His dad likes to work with vines. Kye is a ripper kid, hard working, kind and always helps others. (He has also won a Star Citizen award).
• Mr Torrese was visiting Year One when they were doing work on nouns. Slight spoonerism occurred and he referred to his name as a "proper clown". Strangely, no staff member has debated this point.
• Warrnambool Cup will be help next Thursday.
• Tom McNeil is walking the Cape to Cape fundraising for kids mental health, Zero to Hero!

Principal

This term at OLC we are encouraging our students to keep an eye out for the way we Greet, Treat and Speak (GTS) to each other in our day-to-day interactions. Our students are encouraged daily to help others to fit in, to share smiles and high fives and to grow friendships. Jesus was the ultimate role model in how we should Greet Treat and Speak to others, and we can all try to be more like Him.

Parents, if you see anyone in our school community demonstrating exceptional GTS skills, please feel free to nominate them for a “Spirit of Jesus” moment. The nomination forms are available at the front office, and each week we select a student from each faction to take home an OLC Cape Crusader as recognition for the love of Jesus that they model in our school. Stay tuned for this week’s recipients in next fortnight’s newsletter!

On Sunday students from Year 4-6 were commissioned by Fr Francis to act as Altar Servers in our parish. Their enthusiasm to take an active role in the faith life of the church demonstrates leadership and service, things that Jesus modelled his whole life. Thank you for undertaking this role at Our Lady of the Southern Cross Church. Our new Altar Servers are: Xavier Hayhow, Oliver Hoar, Elliot Birch, Isabelle Casas, Violet Clift, Xavier Goodall, Jacob Heitman, Cielo Howard, Taya McMaster, Tara Tutt and Ari Wilson.

The Year 3 students preparing to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation attended a workshop with their parents at the school on Wednesday evening.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a way for people to be forgiven for the things they do wrong. Through Reconciliation we are forgiven and brought closer to God. The workshop was a special opportunity to help the families of the candidates to develop a shared understanding of the Sacrament and to appreciate its value as a gift.

Please pray for our Year 3 students as they prepare to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time in June.

“Children and their families look on in fascination as Mr Mac and Miss Lombardi stun them with science to demonstrate how the Sacrament of Reconciliation cleanses us”.

Tues: 8.30am Mass

Wed: 8.30am Mass; 9.00am Rosary

Thurs: 8.30am Mass

Fri: 8.30am Mass

Sat: 6pm Mass

Sun: 8.30am Mass

Flower orders cut off extended to 3rd May