May 5.............Education Policy sub-committee (on-line)
May 12...........School Council 6.30pm (on-line)
May 29...........Pupil Free Day (TBC)
June 2............Education Committee 5.15pm (on-line)
June 8............Queens Birthday Holiday
June 9............School Council 6.30pm (on-line)
June 26 Term 2 ends 1.30pm
A Message From Our Principal
Welcome to the first week of term 2. Our remote and flexible learning program has begun and teachers, parents and carers are collaborating to ensure continuity of learning for our students.
For our staff, term 2 began on Tuesday with a pupil-free day. We ran a series of virtual meetings across the day, culminating with a meeting involving over 60 of our teachers and education support staff. Our teachers worked in their teams to ensure remote and flexible learning programs were prepared for their students. All staff completed professional learning targeted at building their skills in delivering online learning.
We concluded Tuesday with my initial school council meeting. Our staff members of council:
Discussed remote and flexible learning plans,
Explained our annual implementation plan goals, and
Summarised our professional learning program from earlier in the day.
I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about our school from the parent and community members of the council. I was also impressed with the effective, efficient and empathic manner in which the meeting was run.
It is imperative that we support our families through the transition to flexible and remote learning. We are building a tiered-approach to support and begin this with the following event:
Cyber Safety for Parents: Transition from Holidays to Home Learning Thursday April 16th @ 8:00pm (tonight!) www.informandempower.com.au/april16webinar (password: parents2020) Recording available until Sunday 26th April
Please see the flyer attached to this newsletter (or on the Compass Newsfeed) for further information.
I posted a video via Compass yesterday and discussed a simple statement that I believe is incredibly important right now; do your best. No matter what you are doing; your learning, your teaching, your work or your parenting, do your best. I am proud of the start we have made to our remote and flexible learning and as a community, I know we will continue to do our best.
Rohan
A Message From Our Council President
Well it’s been a week of firsts for us all.
We had our first School Council Meeting this week online via Zoom and our first meeting with our new Principal. We had a lot to discuss, but the main focus was understanding how we can support the School Leadership team and the teaching community.
It’s also been a first for our teachers, students and parents as they actually started delivering remote learning. It’s not been easy for everyone and I know that in my house it wasn’t easy to get 3 boys focused and engaged whilst my wife, as a kinder teacher, was trying to deliver her own remote teaching and I was trying to manage my work. I know that many of you were also struggling to manage and juggling various responsibilities this week. There are also going to be hiccups and technology issues during this process.
But to echo Rohan’s comments, please just “do your best”.
It has also been encouraging to see the community help each other out with ideas or if someone is struggling with technology. However, please don’t compare yourselves against other families – everyone has different circumstances at home and work and has different approaches to learning. It isn’t going to be perfect or easy but we will get through this together.
It was great for the community to meet Rohan, albeit via video. Hopefully it won’t be long until everyone meets him in person.
This week, we profile Kym Smith and Kath White in 5CD.
Kym, who joined our staff this year, grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, playing street cricket and table tennis with her brothers and swimming in the neighbours’ pool. Tennis and basketball were her biggest passions but she played the violin and loved reading, drawing as well as pressing flowers! In her youth, she loved roller skating and choreographing dances to ABBA, and the first triathlon that she ran went past PMPS!
After university, Kym taught in Melbourne and then worked for an outdoor company but the lure of overseas travel was very strong. She travelled to America first, then Europe and Africa. She learned some French and Italian and hiked up some really big mountains. Kym also worked on summer camps and taught in London for a few years and Sydney for many more. Her biggest passion is photography, which she will share with her students often! David Attenborough is one of her heroes and she thinks that Leonardo da Vinci is really cool too! Each summer, Kym work at The Australian Open where she watches a lot of tennis and sees some awesome bands!
After completing her BA and B Ed at ACU, Kath commenced her teaching career at Streeton PS in Yallambie. She then spent a year in London working with the Newspaper Education Trust educating Year 5&6 students about aspects of journalism. On returning to Australia, she worked in several schools in Melbourne, most recently at Elsternwick PS where she was an Acting Leading Teacher, before accepting a Leading Teacher position here in 2018.
As Leading Teacher – Curriculum & Numeracy, she works closely with her Leadership colleagues in leading our classroom teachers in implementing a collaborative approach to teaching and learning across all teaching teams, with the curriculum being differentiated to ensure that each child is learning at his/her point of need. Kath has a particular focus on Writing.
Away from school, Kath loves spending time with friends and family. Most of her family live in Victoria but her lovely, little niece Poppy lives with her brother and his wife in Toronto, Canada. She likes to Skype Kath, and tell her all about how great ‘Moana’ is. Kath has to agree with her, she is a pretty wonderful role model.
Kath loves learning new things! For example, she am currently doing an improv theatre course, which is both fun and challenging at the same time.
port.melbourne.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au
Our mailing address is:
415 Graham Street, Port Melbourne 3207
