Issue 14 - 15 September 2016

Newsletter Articles

VISION STATEMENT

St Rita’s School will be a compassionate and supportive community built on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, specifically incorporating the Mercy Values which are lived out. We will be a values-based community reaching out to and welcoming the wider community. Our strong school spirit will shine. St Rita’s will be a school in which every member is respectful of self and others.

PRINCIPAL’S PEN

Dear Parents and Carers,

As Term 3 lessons conclude this Friday afternoon, we will be celebrating the successful completion of another term at St Rita’s School. I sincerely thank all families and friends who have contributed in some way to our school over the past ten weeks. During the term, our school has enjoyed and celebrated many important events as a happy and thriving learning community. We have hosted a Book Fair and Children’s Book Week, Catholic Education Week, Science Week, National Literacy and Numeracy Week and the parish sacramental program. The disco allowed the children to enjoy a social occasion with their friends and family after school. All of these events showcased St Rita’s as being a place of learning, community and faith.

At the end of last week, we received the exciting news that APRE Mrs Bec Burns was successful in her application for this leadership position at St Joseph’s School at Parramatta Park. I’m sure you join us in congratulating Bec on this achievement and her farewell will be organised at the end of next term. Advertising for a new APRE is commencing shortly and I’m sure there will be many eager applicants to join the staff at our wonderful school.

Early in Term 4, I will be organising the placement of classroom teachers, whole school timetables, specialist teachers and visiting programs, such as ‘Dance Fever’, for the new school year. I have heard that some parents are asking their teachers what class they are having next year. The only information I can provide, at this early stage, is that staff will be meeting at the beginning of term to discuss year level preferences and special programs that they might be interested in developing in 2017.

Following the school holiday, I will be taking an additional week’s Long Service Leave. Mrs Bec Burns will assume the Acting Principal position in my absence. Plans for next term are well underway, and we have already set dates for our swimming program at the Babinda Pool, the commencement of the Pre-Prep program each Monday and the school float and display for the Harvest Festival. The monthly meeting of the P & F will be held on Tuesday 18th October and all parents are encouraged to attend these short, productive meetings. Exciting times ahead!

As I am participating in a Principal’s Study Tour in Adelaide this week I will not be around the classrooms to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday. I thank you for being an active part of your child’s education and I hope to continue seeing parents around the classrooms, in the tuckshop and at Assemblies next term. I believe that what we do and how much we achieve at St Rita’s is a result of our strength as a successful school community.

Have a restful and happy holiday!
Regards and blessings,
Judy Billiau

THANK YOU FROM ST RITA’S!

We are always very grateful for the help and support we receive at our school. At the recent Working Bee and BBQ, we had such an awesome roll up of families, with barrows, rakes and gardening tools, that the job was done in a few hours. The gardens and grounds have never looked better! Last week, we had Jim Stager visit the Year 5/6 classroom and speak to the children about one of their science topics, electricity. Thank you everyone from the St Rita’s School community!

STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS 2016 - 2019

Direction 3: Access and stewardship of quality Catholic education

Evidenced by:

• Preference for the poor and marginalised
  Catholic schools ensure that no family is disadvantaged due to financial difficulties. We ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to enrol within our schools and provide support where needed.

• Future needs and analysis of Catholic education provision enabling access and equity
  Catholic schools are committed to the education of our rural and remote students and providing education in these locations or through boarding schools. In the past few years, schools have been open at Weipa and Cooktown as well as a campus for Flexible Learning here in Cairns.
• Responsible capital and recurrent resource allocation which promotes equity and environmentally sustainable practices
  Catholic schools strive to ensure that capital and resource allocations are equitable and supportive of the needs of individual school communities. Through active environmental initiatives our schools encourage our students to look for ways in which to make our environment more healthy such as through reduced litter campaigns, being water wise, caring for the reef and being mindful of electricity consumption.

At St Rita’s School we ensure that our stewardship of school funds is wise and that resources are allocated for student learning to support the needs of all students. Decisions around allocation of the budget are shared with the Parish Finance Committee, the Combined Parishes Schools Board and the school staff. Our school is committed to our environmental responsibility and actively ensures that we are recycling and composting, using solar panels to generate electricity as well as having students participate in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program.

Judy Billiau
Principal

APRE THOUGHTS …..

Wow! Week Ten already. Reflecting on Term Three, we have had some wonderful celebrations in the Religious Life of St Rita’s, including Father’s Day Liturgy, Assumption Celebration and First Eucharist to name a few. I would like to offer a big thanks to all the staff, students and parents, who have participated, prepared children, and been there to help me during all of the celebrations. St Rita’s has a wonderful community and this is reflected in these times of coming together.

Next term will be busy, busy, busy! Our social justice focus will be “Soctober” and Sock it to Poverty for Mission Australia. This will be run during the last week in October, with class activities and finishing with Crazy Sock Day and a coin race on Friday 28th October. More information will be sent out closer to the time. The theme for Soctober comes from the Gospel of Matthew 25:40 ‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me’. This reminds us that Christ is alive in every person, and how we treat others is how we treat Christ. This powerful message does not just relate to the donation of goods and services, but to all our interactions with one another. Those we get along well with and those whose ideas may be very different from our own. For more information on Socktober please visit the link below.

In addition to Soctober, we will also celebrate All Saints Day, Graduation Mass, End of Year Mass and our P-3 and 4-6 Class Liturgies. Our Graduation Mass will be held on 22nd November at 5.30pm and our End of Year Mass will be held on Friday 2nd December (last day of school). Please note these dates in your diaries.

Wishing everyone a very safe, happy and relaxing break.

Bec Burns
Assistant Principal Religious Education

CASTING THE NET

To Pray for the Living and the Dead:

The seventh spiritual work of mercy.

There is a New Age spiritual practice that is good as far as it goes: give out to the world feelings of goodness, love and peace. And how our world, and we ourselves need that.

But there is more we need: we need mercy. Sometimes, we have been so badly hurt by others or by life, that feelings of goodness, love and peace are impossible to find. Pain hardens our hearts. If you are like me, you have people and situations that have hurt and scared you. If you are like me, you have people you are angry with, resent, or dare I say, even come close to hating. If you are like me, you need God in such situations because God alone can save: us and those we see as the cause of our pain. We need to pray, allowing God to hold and heal our hearts so that rather than being deformed we will have the strength and creativity to respond well in these difficult situations. Sometimes all we can do is sit and let God’s love flow through us into the situation.

The power of this prayer and mercy is not confined to either our current situation or to the living. The flow of God’s love can go out to the world. We can have an influence, though we may rarely see the results. And we can pray for those who have died. This is especially important when people who have hurt us (or whom we have hurt) have died before we have come to healing. Held in God’s love, we can now speak to them our pain (or ask for their forgiveness). The Mercy of God is always at work in our world and God’s desire is to involve each of us in its healing love. So let us pray, let us allow God’s goodness, love and peace flow out to the world giving it the grace it needs.

Loving Father, you allow me to reveal your mercy in this world. Transform the pain of my heart with your love so that your healing grace may flow in my life. I ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear me.

Sr Kym Harris osb

COUNSELLOR’S CORNER

I want…….

Dear Parents,

Often children come into the world learning about what they “want”….food, sleep or attention…Babies rely solely on their caregiver/s to meet their needs. As time moves on, sometimes we need to remind our precious children about “not wanting” and “not expecting” things to arrive on demand.

Talk to children about being patient and allow them to practice patience. Tell them that tomorrow they are going to…”the beach, a friend’s house, the park” etc. Let them know there is something happening, but we have to do what we need to today and then once we wake up, we will start to prepare for our fun activity.

This truly allows children to learn that things do not always just happen. There is planning before, during and after an activity to make it happen and for everyone to get home. These types of activities allow children to learn that instant gratification is not the majority of their life.

However, there is always a time and place for the odd surprise to make everyone’s day exciting and bring joy to our children’s faces.

Yours in counselling,
Carmel Parisi

LIBRARY LINKS

What an amazing term we have had, packed with fun-filled learning experiences.

This week we bid a sad farewell to our District Teacher Librarian, Mrs Darelle Horsford. Darelle has been an integral part of our team here at St Rita’s during Term 3, sharing in many literacy based celebrations, including Book Week, Book Fair and National Literacy & Numeracy Week. Students across all year levels have enjoyed acquiring additional skills in relation to literacy and IT. Thank you so much, Darelle, you will be missed, and we hope to see you again in 2017.

Our library is looking wonderful, packed with creativity and colour. Our final display for Term 3 pays homage to author, Maurice Sendak, creator of Where the Wild Things Are. I love to think there is a little bit of ‘wild thing’ in each of us; just enough to make us interesting. I’ll finish the term with a quote from Maurice, “There’s so much more to a book than just the reading.” I hope you find time to enjoy an outstanding book or two during the holidays.

Lisa Calcagno
Library Assistant

‘STEPHANIE ALEXANDER KITCHEN GARDEN’ PROGRAM

Wow, we’ve all made it to the end of Term 3! Congratulations everyone. In the SAKG Kitchen we’ve had an extremely busy end of Term 3 preparing for our community market stalls and our SAKG Tuckshop Tuesday – Pizzas. Our fundraising for the chicken coop, chickens and dwarf fruit trees has far exceeded what any of us (including me) could have anticipated. We have raised sufficient funds to be able to purchase a variety of dwarf fruit trees and vines, and will have sufficient remaining funds to be able to develop a detailed final plan for the construction of the chicken coop for consideration and approval (hopefully) by the relevant authorising parties. If this goes well, construction of the coop may also be achieved.

During our community stalls we totally sold out of all our jams, marmalades, fruit butters and cakes. There are only have a few jars of homemade pickled cucumbers left for sale. Please contact the office if you are interested in making a purchase. Our fruit butters are still being sort after with community members enquiring about placing additional orders.

While speaking about our successes, I want to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge that none of this success would have been made possible without the generosity and support of the St Rita’s families and staff.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

I want to acknowledge and applaud the generosity of our St Rita’s school community. To those families and staff who made donations of ingredients, glass jars or equipment; without you all we would not have had the opportunity to be so successful in our learning or our stalls. To those parents who washed and ironed an extra uniform for students on the weekend stalls and delivered their child/ren to town on a Saturday, and to those parents who adjusted their Tuesday afterschool routine to collect students later, we really do appreciate your extra efforts. To those families and staff who made purchases from our stalls, thank you for your generous support of the children and the SAKG program.

Finally, I want everyone to know how immensely proud I am of each one of my students who assisted at the stalls. Each of you were a positive example to the community of our school and displayed our school values to the community.

So everyone, enjoy the next two weeks of holidays and I’ll see you all in Term 4 when we’ll be busy planting our new additions and gardening.

Jenni Stone
SAKG Coordinator

DATE CLAIMERS

STUDENTS OF THE WEEK

St Rita’s School congratulates those students who were awarded ‘Student of the Week’ at Assembly on Friday 9th September 2016.

BIRTHDAY CONGRATULATIONS

St Rita’s wishes Georgina Stone and Amethyst Ripps all the very best for their recent birthdays. We hope you had wonderful birthday celebrations. Congratulations Georgina and Amethyst!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

COMMUNITY NEWS

Well Women’s Clinic – Babinda Hospital

Service includes Pap Smears, Health Screening, Breast Awareness, also info on Continence, Menopause, Lifestyle Issues, etc. All services are provided by a specially trained Women’s Health Nurse.

For appointments phone 4067 8200

INNISFAIL JUNIOR CRICKET SIGN ON

Sign on NOW at playcricket.com OR email markjmcavoy@gmail.com Phone 0429 633620.

Season starts October 7th & 8th from 5yrs to Under 16. Also there is a sign on at Goondi Bend, Herb Collins Oval bottom clubhouse Friday September 16th 2:00pm onwards.

FARINELLI TENNIS ACADEMY

Hello Parents,

It is with regret that I will not be continuing tennis in Babinda on a Tuesday afternoon next term. I know there will be some children that are disappointed but I'd like to share with you information about my Innisfail program and some amazing benefits of playing at our club. We are still the cheapest tennis program around but we are also by far the largest. Even though your children have been doing tennis we are happy to offer them the benefits available to new players shown in the attached flyer. This means they would get a new racquet, shirts, water bottle etc. Each term we also have a prize draw for one of our lucky players to win for their family. Term 1 this year we gave away a Weber BBQ, Term 2 a $280 fishing charter trip and in Term 3 we are giving away a $100 holiday voucher at Kurrimine Beach Holiday Park and a $150 Dan Murphy's voucher. Term 4 will be an amazing prize worth over $300 and with Christmas in mind. The other benefits of bringing your child to our program in Innisfail are that they will be able to play in their age group and advance according to their development.

I hope you will give this some serious consideration and I hope to see you all in Term 4.

Kind Regards,
Travis Farinelli

HOLIDAY PROGRAM

WALK TO REMEMBER