St Paul's Newsletter: Thursday, 28 March 2024
2024 St Paul's Newsletter - Term 1, Week 9
From the Principal
Hello everyone, and welcome to the last day of Term 1. I can not believe how quickly the term has passed by, and I would like to express my gratitude to everyone in the St Paul’s community for making me feel so welcome.
Last Monday, each grade helped share the Easter story through words, actions, and songs. It amazes me that this Person, over 2000 years ago, has impacted us so much that our little school in Monbulk exists because of Him. For me, as a principal, the biggest action I have taken away from these three days is washing of the feet. Here is God, knowing what is coming: pain, betrayal, and ridicule, and Jesus takes the time to be a servant to his friends. This is such a powerful symbol.
We will hit the ground running on Monday 15 April at 8.45 am for the beginning of Term 2. It is a big term with great things happening like camp, cross-country and Andrew Chinn coming to visit and share his music with us.
Today, the hats will be heading home, and we ask that you bring in hard-soled slippers for the classrooms as we head towards winter.
Next term, we begin our popular Prep Taster Days (see details below), so we would love to get the word out. If there are current students who have siblings ready for Prep in 2025, please reach out to Helen. If you know anyone who is interested in being shown around the school again, please reach out to the office.
I hope that you all have a safe and happy holiday, recharge the batteries and return to us in a few weeks with awesome stories to share. If you need any assistance during the holiday period, please reach out via email.
Thanks
Nick
2024 Whole School Sports Day
The weather was certainly in our favour for our whole school sports carnival. A little bit of sunshine with some nice cloud cover. The students were all actively engaged in the six athletics rotations that we had. There was some exceptional throwing, jumping, leaping and running by all the students. Blue house was lucky to come away with the win this year but all the students came home with at least one ribbon for the day.
A huge thank you to all the parent helpers who supported the staff on the day. Without parent support, we cannot run these events like we do, so we very much appreciate everyone's help.
Don't put away the coloured sports shirts yet though, next term we have our very first whole school Cross Country Carnival which I am sure will be another successful event.
Let's Go St Paul's!!
Regional Swimming
On Friday 22nd March, Lilly and Henry did amazing once again representing St Paul's at the Regional Swimming Competition.
Henry won second place in freestyle and backstroke and Lilly impressed all of us with her sensational effort in breaststroke.
Well done to our brilliant swimmers. What a tremendous achievement to make it to that level of competition.
Go St Paul's!
2025 Enrolments Now Open!
We are off to a great start at St Paul’s in 2024 with many new families and several new students who have settled in well to St Paul's life.
We are already preparing our enrolment timelines for our 2025 Prep students - Enrolments for 2025 are now open!
We respectfully request existing families with a child/ren intending to commence Prep at St Paul's in 2025 submit their completed Enrolment Packs into the school office by the end of Term 1 (Thursday 28 March). Enrolment Packs can be downloaded from the school website. Alternatively, paper copies or emailed forms can be requested from the school office. Thank you!
If you know of a family that is considering St Paul's for their child/ren, please encourage them to get in touch with us and book a tour, or direct them to our website.
Student Wellbeing
As we finish what seemed like a 'speedy' Term 1 and head into holidays, it's time to reflect and ground ourselves. There are lots of holiday activities within our council area available through the libraries, sporting groups, etc. Remember it's also good for kids to have 'unplanned' time; time to 'find' something to do that parents have not pre-organised.
Below is an article from The Parents Website by Andrew Fuller. For more articles, follow the link at the bottom.
Reviving your parenting mojo
ANDREW FULLER, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST
Parenting can be a rollercoaster, and you may sometimes want to take a breather. Here, clinical psychologist and family therapist Andrew Fuller shares how parents can rediscover the joy by looking after themselves.
Parents are exhausted, the kids are bonkers, the dog, after an intensive fitness program, is feeling abandoned. Everyone is out of sorts. What is going on?
The past few years have discombobulated us and torn us away from our usual patterns of life. We work, socialise, and live very differently than we did before.
Having our lives pulled apart means we now need to recover and reassemble the parts that work for us. We also need to accept that the world has changed, and we need to readjust our priorities and reset our daily rhythms.
The past few years have left many of us feeling edgy, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Sadly, this has left some of us so numb and so swamped we are unable to enjoy the things that previously gave us great satisfaction such as spending time with our loved ones and family.
Regaining your mojo
We all deserve better. However, the frantic whirligig of life isn’t going to pause to give us the opportunity to recalibrate. If we want to regain our energy, our vitality, and our wellbeing we need to reclaim our balance and rhythm. We need to do this for ourselves, and we need to do this for our children.
There seems to be a split in what people want — some want concerts, sports, getting out and about, and socialising, while others want some serenity, privacy, and time alone.
I asked the team at Skodel to research the big challenges for us all. These are to:
- regain restful sleep
- refocus our concentration
- reduce our anxiety
- take charge of our online life
- rebuild our friendships and social connections
- increase our motivation.
Don’t wait to feel right to begin
Decide to create a life you can love. Love is a commitment that you decide upon. Choosing to create a life you love is a struggle that is worth fighting for. Summon whatever energy you have into a ferocity of intention to do this.
Restful sleep
The world has changed but we haven’t really kept up with the changes. The past few years saw many people with disrupted sleep. While this has largely passed, there are many people who still wake up feeling just as tired as when they went to bed.
The remedy for this will be gradual, but you can begin to readjust by:
- Have a wind-down evening time where we settle after the busyness of life.
- Make a to-do list for the next day before getting into bed.
- Trying to re-establish a sleep routine by going to bed and waking up at the same times more days.
- Eating breakfast outdoors in the sunlight.
Focus and concentration
It is important to reconstruct our ability to concentrate. Read a book and gradually increase the number of pages you read every day.
Concentration is a skill that can be developed using the process of AIER:
Awareness- what am I doing?
Intention- what is my goal?
Evaluation- what should I be doing?
Reset
Anxiety
Since the pandemic years, anxiety levels have skyrocketed, creating levels of distress and avoidance we simply haven’t seen before.
While anxiety expressed as worry still occurs, what predominates more frequently is immobilisation and avoidance. In the past few years, people have generally experienced their anxiety as digestive issues, pain sensitivity and sheer exhaustion. This threatens the ‘have-a-go’ mindset that broadens success.
There are three main levels of anxiety, and each one needs different strategies:
Freeze and fatigue – rest, then move, reset and step in rather than zone out or avoid.
Fight and flight – exercise, dance, sing, hum, move.
Synch and link – talk, problem solve, link and act with others in the community.
Friendships and social networks
Time to dust off the social list and see who you really want to reconnect with. There may be some people you wish to consign to history, but you are not designed to be a hermit. Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, it is important to reconnect with the right number of people who you feel supported by.
Reduce your use of misery machines
Taking charge of your online life is tricky. The internet is like a clever fishing device that entices using lures and bait. In this analogy, you are a hapless, innocent fish.
Twitter or X is a sewer of vitriol and contempt.
Instagram robs us of happiness by increasing envy and comparison.
Facebook or Meta is filled with ads and fake news.
TikTok makes it appear that everyone else is incredibly marvellous and leaves us feeling like lonely losers.
These are time-soaking, misery machines that, unless controlled well, absorb enormous amounts of time while contributing to our sense of misery.
Motivation
Most of us feel like our get up and go has got up and gone.
If we don’t transform pain, we transmit it. We risk passing it on to future generations to carry as a burden.
If we don’t transform pain, we transmit it. We risk passing it on to future generations to carry as a burden.
Reclaim your life
Mapping over 500,000 lives for my book, Your Best Life at Any Age provided some useful lessons about how people transform the setbacks and even devastations they experience.
One lesson was that many people experience a period of pronounced growth after a setback. The forms of setback ranged from grief, heartbreak, loss, and major disasters.
Of course, not everyone experiences this. It would be irresponsible and unethical to claim that we can overcome every experience that life throws at us.
Our setbacks and hurts alter us. Like a shock to the soul, our spirit is shaken. People are so wired to perceive and remember danger that the experience becomes incorporated within us and shifts our view of the world.
Past hurts do not just vanish into thin air. They reverberate within us and return to our awareness at specific times (such as anniversaries) to remind us of their lessons.
Transformation occurs not through forgetting or growing beyond the pain but by living through the pain.
It is easy to get stuck at this point. It would be understandable. Nevertheless, there are things we can all do to adapt and adjust after tough times and personal pain. It is in our own interest to do as much as we can, and it is also to the benefit of future generations.
So, based on 500,000 life maps, let’s start to consider what makes a time of recovery and growth possible after a tough or even devastating time:
Connect
Protect
Respect
Applying CPR to your own life
This is not about becoming some kind of tough, thick-skinned, gritty person who is imperious to the slings and arrows of life.
It is also not about waiting for a major challenge, disaster, loss, or setback to give you an opportunity to prove your resilience.
We all get enough opportunities most days. Resilience is a practice we can refine as we deal with the relatively minor challenges we face every day.
Connect
Just as some animals hibernate to avoid the harshness of the weather, we, too, need to retreat and recuperate before we can advance.
Connecting is coming home to the person you were before the tough past few years. Initially, this may involve turning inwards and away from the dangers of the external world. It may also require less exposure to the screeching voices of the world to restore yourself.
Some people seek out the familiar and reread their childhood books or rewatch cherished movies. Like a paddock that is left fallow, we need to step back from being productive to replenish the self.
We all need time to return to comfort and recover. As we restore, we reconnect with our inner strength.
These strengths are physical as much as mental. Take walks to reground, rest and sleep well, restore your awareness of beauty, and eat foods that act as ‘penicillin to our souls’.
Gradually, gently, connect with your tribe. Be discerning. Find people who replenish your spirit. Anything or anyone who bores you, drains you or diminishes you, should be left until later. Be considerate of others and be kinder to yourself. This is not an avoidance of life; it is a reconnection to it.
Protect
We need psychological safety to learn. We are in the serious business of learning how to incorporate the painful experience without being defined by it.
Adapting to a new sense of yourself is never about ‘fake it till you make it’. Adopting a breezy, ‘I’m fine’ front to the world is appealing. It is also lying to yourself and to others.
Accepting that the past few years have done some damage and will take some working through is a better approach to sustainable future growth.
People who pretend to be early ‘super-copers’ place themselves at great risk.
People recover from horrible events in different ways. Some need to reckon with the tough times and create a sense of meaning around them. Others seem less helped by this and instead look to changed ways of living their lives in the future.
If there is one thing that I have learned from being privileged to work with people going through this in my therapy room, it is that no one recipe of recovery is right for everyone.
Respect
The past few years have most likely robbed you, to some extent, of energy, creativity, certainty and meaning. Things that you thought were trustworthy were not reliable or safe.
Respect your own recovery timelines. This should not be rushed. It takes time to rebuild a meaningful life that is informed by, but not ruled by, the tough times you have experienced.
I hope that applying CPR to your own life does for you the same thing springtime does for nature.
Important Dates
TERM 1
- Thursday 28 March - Holy Thursday: Term 1 Concludes
- Friday 29 March - Good Friday
- Sunday 31 March - Easter Sunday
TERM 2
- Monday 15 April - Term 2 commences for Students
- Mon-Wed 22 -24 April - Year 5/6 Camp to Phillip Island
- Thursday 25 April - ANZAC DAY PUBLIC HOLIDAY
- Tuesday 30 April - Open Day
- Wednesday 1 May - Whole School Cross Country
- Thursday 2 May - Prep Taster Day - #1
- Friday 3 May - Mater Christi & St Joseph's College Taster Days (Year 4s)
- Wednesday 8 May - School Photos
- Friday 10 May - Mother's Day Breakfast / Mother's Day Stall
- Tuesday 14 May - Andrew Chinn: Student Workshops & Evening Concert
- Wednesday 15 May - Prep Taster Day - #2
- Saturday 18 May - Emerald BBQ
- Thursday 23 May - Open Day
- Friday 24 May - District Cross-Country
- Thursday 30 May - Prep Taster Day - #3
- Tuesday 4 June - Open Day
- Tuesday 4 June - Division Cross-Country
- Thursday 6 June - Working Bee (3.15pm)
- Thursday 6 June - Lighthouse Expo Night
- Friday 7 June - School Closure Day - No school for students
- Monday 10 June - KING'S BIRTHDAY PUBLIC HOLIDAY
- Wednesday 12 June - Prep Taster Day - #4
- Wednesday 26 June - 3 Way Conferences (aka Parent/Teacher/Student conferences)
- Friday 28 June - Term 2 Concludes
- Saturday 29 June - St Paul's Feast Day
From the School Office
Hot Lunch & Sushi Days
Next Event: Hot Lunch & Sushi Day - Term 2
Date: To be confirmed
**Please see below for current menus**
Operoo - Student Medical and Contact Details
As we begin another school year, it is important to ensure that you have reviewed and updated your child's Operoo profile, carefully checking that all information held about your child and emergency contacts are accurate and up to date.
- Have any of your family or contact details changed?
- Have there been any changes to your child's medical profile?
- Have you uploaded your child's updated Allergy, Asthma or Anaphylaxis plan?
Parents & Friends News
Child Safe Standards: Ministerial Order 1359
St Paul's Primary School is a child safe organisation which welcomes all children, young people, and their families. We are committed to providing environments where our students are safe and feel safe, where their participation is valued, their views respected, and their voices are heard about decisions that affect their lives.
Our child safe policies, strategies and practices are inclusive of the needs of all children and students. We have no tolerance for child abuse and take proactive steps to identify and manage any risks of harm to students in our school environments. We also take proactive steps to identify and manage any risk of harm to students in our school. When child safety concerns are raised or identified, we treat these seriously and respond promptly and thoroughly.
The original Child Safe Standards were implemented in Victoria during 2016. They were developed in response to The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse (2013 - 2017). In 2019 Victoria agreed to adopt the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. Schools are one example of a Child Safe Organisation.
There are eleven Child Safe Standards:
Child Safe Standard 1 – Organisations establish a culturally safe environment in which the diverse and unique identities and experiences of Aboriginal children and young people are respected and valued.
Child Safe Standard 2 – Child safety and wellbeing is embedded in organisational leadership, governance and culture.
Child Safe Standard 3 – Children and young people are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously.
Child Safe Standard 4 – Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing.
Child Safe Standard 5 – Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.
Child Safe Standard 6 – People working with children and young people are suitable and
supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.
Child Safe Standard 7 – Processes for complaints and concerns are child focused.
Child Safe Standard 8 – Staff and volunteers are equipped with the knowledge, skills and awareness to keep children and young people safe through ongoing education and training.
Child Safe Standard 9 – Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
Child Safe Standard 10 – Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved.
Child Safe Standard 11 – Policies and procedures document how the organisation is safe for children and young people.
MACS provides Catholic schools with templates for the required documentation which we are required to adapt to reflect our school community whilst ensuring all legal requirements are met. Below are 3 key documents that we continue to review in light of the new standards:
Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy
Child Safe Standards: Identifying and Responding - Reporting Obligations
Uniform Shop
Ross Haywood Sports - Update:
St Paul's Online Uniform Shop
https://www.rhsports.com.au/product/school_wear/st_pauls_monbulk_ps
For in-store purchases RH Sports are located at 12/100 New St, Ringwood.
The store is now a CASHLESS STORE, EFTPOS transactions will be the only acceptable method of purchase.
Online ordering continues as normal with all delivery options available including contactless pick up. Delivery is free for orders delivered directly to St Paul's School and will then be distributed to your child to take home.
Please phone the store direct on 9870 1377 if you have any further queries.
Secondhand Uniform Shop
Our secondhand uniform shop is onsite at school and is managed by one of our parents, Kelly Garrett, with items being purchased by gold coin donation. If you are looking for items of secondhand uniform please feel free to text Kelly on 0435 810 954 with your wish list. Items will usually be sent home via class tubs or collected from the school office by arrangement. Cashless payment for items is via CDF Pay, selecting the Second Hand Uniform option and the quantity of items purchased.
The secondhand uniform shop welcomes donations of St Paul's current school uniform items which are still in good condition. We do not accept the old St Paul's round neck jumpers, yellow shirts or non-St Paul's items. If you have any current uniform items you no longer need please feel free to leave your donations at the school office.
St Paul's Policies
OSHClub
Out of School Hours Care: OSH Club
Enrolments, Bookings and Enquiries
Parents will need to enrol with OSHClub. Please visit https://www.oshclub.com.au/ and click on "REGISTER". You will need to enrol with the Monbulk Primary School service.
Transition Information
Victorian Catholic Schools Guide
To assist your decision making in relation to your child's education for 2025 and beyond, please find below a link to the March 2024 edition of the Catholic Education Guide.
CLICK HERE: https://victoriaschoolguides.starcommunity.com.au/catholic-education/
Community Notices
Outdoor Cinema Event - Mt Lilydale Mercy College
Mount Lilydale Mercy College Old Collegians' Association is hosting an outdoor cinema event — come and join us and watch the classic film, Back to the Future.
This is a free event for our local community to come together and enjoy a night under the stars.
The event will be held at Mount Lilydale Mercy College on Friday 19 April, starting at 5.00pm and concluding at 8.30pm.
There will be a barbecue, snacks and drinks available for purchase. Please bring your own chairs, picnic rugs, bean bags and blankets.
Please register to attend by visiting trybooking.com/CPGHU
Shire of Yarra Ranges - Newsletters
Please click the link below to access latest family news and events from Shire of Yarra Ranges.
Financial Resource Support for Families
Open Door Community Care - Local Support Services
Monbulk Care Network has recently changed its name to Open Door Community Care. It is the same community service with a new name. Please see below for details if you would like to access these community support resources.
Food Pantry hours (next to Open Door Community Church)
Cnr David Hill Rd & Moxhams Rd
Every day: 9.30am – 5.30pm
The Op Shop & Laneway Nursery hours
Mon-Fri 10am -4.30pm
Saturday 10am -1pm
