The College celebrated a reflective and very reverent ANZAC assembly on Friday 23 April. Mr Jason Szkwarek from the TAS Department spoke to the community about his personal and lived experience of service in the Army. Jason’s message of striving to be people with a sense of purpose, a commitment to being responsible, compassionate and selfless is one that closely reflects our Catholic values. It was a wonderful contribution to our service and a speech that the students and staff gained a lot from hearing.

At the assembly I had the opportunity to speak about some professional learning that the staff at the College are undertaking related to the science of learning. I spoke about the need to transfer new ideas and knowledge from one’s working memory to long-term memory. To cement learning into our long-term memory takes practice and lots of it. Transfer into long-term memory takes anywhere between 11 and 72 times. I encouraged the students to keep working at their learning and to not give up when it is difficult. Learning is tough and it takes a great deal of effort for that learning to become embedded and automatic. As staff, we are learning how best to help students with this process of transfer, and we are looking forward to introducing new strategies in our classrooms throughout the year.

The Year of St Joseph

This year has been declared by Pope Francis to be the Year of St Joseph. Joseph was the husband of Mary and father to Jesus. As a way to celebrate Joseph, the father of the Church, St Bernard’s Parish is holding a community soup night on the first Friday of the month in the Parish meeting room. There is a brief prayer reflection on the life of St Joseph at 6:00 pm with soup and socialising following the reflection. Everyone is most welcome.

Erica Drewsen
RE Coordinator/Assistant Principal