Dear Parents and Carers of Good Samaritan,

Having Kindergarten and Year 1 back at school this week has just been terrific. The children have come back together Ready to Learn and ready to play together. As the students come back to school they will be working on re-establishing strong routines for learning. This will include opportunities for Religious Education,English, Mathematics while embedding social emotional learning. 

Watching the students return and be in the company of one another again highlights our need to live in community - and what a wonderful community they are a part of here, at Good Samaritan. The energy that Kindergarten and Year 1 have brought back to our school site is palpable. We are so grateful to see them return. This energy feeds into our whole school community bringing meaning and purpose to our work. 

It reminds me of a quote I read recently by theologian, Fr Ronald Rolheiser: The fuel we need to resource ourselves for our journey in life does not lie in the strength of our own willpower, but in grace and community. We access that through prayer. We are mature to the degree that we open our own helplessness and invite in God’s strength and to the degree that we pray with others that the whole world will do the same thing. The classical definition simply defines prayer as “lifting mind and heart to God”.

My prayer, what I lift my mind and heart to God for, is that our collective recovery as a school community is one where we see the strengths in others, we acknowledge the commitment and success of us all during this lockdown and where we take comfort in the interdependence we have with each other.

Yesterday, NSW saw over 92% of people across the state receive their first ‘jab’ and over 80% having received both doses. I feel that this is evidence of our communities demonstrating a collective commitment to protecting one another - doing what we need to do for the common good of all. We all know that our primary school aged students under 12 years cannot yet receive a vaccination however, I heard a wonderful image being described on the radio that even though they aren’t yet eligible, the adults around them are cocooning them, wrapping around them, by being vaccinated ourselves. This really gives meaning to the saying:  It takes a village to raise a child.

As the week continues, our students in Years 2 to 6 carry on with their re-orientation to school activities within their daily learning plans. It will be wonderful to be able to welcome them all back to school next Monday as we return to face-to-face learning as a whole school community.

As we journey together, with Jesus, through this final week of remote learning,

Toni Sillis

Principal