Dear parents,

Today parents should be able to access their child’s reports via Compass. Instructions on how to do this were sent to parents at approximately 3pm today.

On Monday next week, class lists will also be sent home to parents on Compass. These lists have been worked on by all staff for a number of weeks and no changes will be made.  Classes were constructed to give a balance of students across each class in each year level.

Staff Changes

On Tuesday Mr Brendan Roweth accepted a position at Holy Trinity Primary School, Curtin for the 2022 school year.  Brendan has taught Kindergarten, year four and, for a number of years, has taught year six.  He has worked tirelessly coordinating sport and has provided opportunities for all students to participate in sports they may not normally experience.  Besides his great work in sport, he has been an outstanding classroom teacher who establishes wonderful relationships with his students.

On behalf of the school, I thank Brendan for the contribution he has made to Mother Teresa School and wish him all the best at Holy Trinity.

Today we finalised our classroom teachers for 2022.  Claire Dekuyer has been appointed to 3 Cobalt and will be joining us from Western Australia; Belinda Hicks who will be taking 6 Charcoal is coming from the Northern Territory and Tina Bruce who will be taking 1 Ochre. Tina is a local.

We congratulate all three teachers on their appointment and look forward to them sharing their skills and experience with us next year.

Year 6 Celebrations

On Wednesday we held the Farewell Mass for our year six students followed by the Graduation Dinner at the Canberra Racecourse. Both were special events and should be long remembered by those that were present.  For the first time, with the help of the parish, we were able to live stream the Farewell Mass.

I pass on my thanks to the many people who helped with either of the celebrations. Your efforts were greatly appreciated.

Carols Night

Unfortunately, the Carols Night that we had planned has been cancelled due to the wet weather. The evening will not be able to be re-scheduled due to our performers being fully booked for other celebrations.  We will still be judging the best Christmas bauble & winners will be announced next week.

God Bless

Peter Hughes

WHOLE SCHOOL FOCUS
The Whole school focus theme for this year is:

"We Are Bee-Attitude Keepers”

3rd Sunday in Advent

12 December 2021 - Year C

“What, then, must we do?”

Something to Think About

If you see an Advent wreath, with three purple candles and one pink candle, this is the day on which the pink candle is lit. This Third Sunday of Advent brings with it a sense of great joy, because Jesus will soon be born. What makes you joyful?

The Story

In this gospel passage, the people ask John how they should live. John tells them, if you have plenty, share with the one who has none. Be happy with what you have and don’t complain. In other words, John is telling the people to help others and to be grateful.

Reflecting on the Gospel

Imagine you are a prophet with big eyes, big ears and a big mouth. In your imagination can you see anything in our world that God might want someone to change? Mention people who have no homes, no food, and no jobs. How would God would want us to help these people?

Group Activity

MAKE A DECORATION

On the third Sunday of Advent, there is a sense of JOY in the Church, because the birth of Jesus is drawing very near.

You will need: one template for each child, coloured markers, glitter,

scissors. Optional: hole punch, ribbon, blu-tac.

1) Colour in the decoration above using joyful colours!

2) Sprinkle it with glitter to make it sparkle.

3) Cut out your star decoration.

4) Use some blu-tac to fix it to a wall, or use a hole punch to make a hole in the top and hang it with ribbon from a door handle.

2021 Christmas Appeal

To all those wonderful families who have shown the value of giving with their generosity.  It is truly wonderful the way everyone has contributed to the St Vincent de Paul Christmas Appeal. This is not only a vital service for our community, and an important way that children can be involved to see that Christmas is not just a time for receiving, but a time for giving and helping others too! It was a beautiful culmination to the work the teachers and students have been doing throughout the term in preparation for the occasion. As usual there was a marvellous array of gifts provided on behalf on Mother Teresa School for those in need in the Holy Spirit Parish. They were very gratefully received as well as our monetary support as well. Many thanks for your support and generosity!

THANKSGIVING MASS

Thank you to all those parents, who came along to the Thanksgiving Mass on Wednesday. It was a wonderful celebration of another school year as we give thanks to our Year 6 leaders and those families and teachers who will be leaving Mother Teresa School. We wish them well on their journey!

 

Peace and best wishes

Anne Leet

Religious Education co-ordinator

Dear Parents 

My name is Damien Kelly and I am Chair of the Mother Teresa School Community Council. Whilst 2021 marked the continuation of some very challenging circumstances, I wanted to take the opportunity to provide you with a summary of some of achievements over the year and to give a sense of some items which will be our focus for the new year. 

The major item of focus was the development of a sensory walk proposal. The Community Council's AGM agreed upon the proposal, which means that we anticipate it will be up and running from the start of the school year in 2022.  I'm particularly proud of the development of this proposal as it began as an idea contributed by parents at the first MTSCC social event of the year (the wine and cheese night whilst the school social proceeded).  The design committee then took on the challenge of researching and deciding upon the best design and materials and seeking to achieve it with the best value for money possible.  I think that it is going to make a significant improvement for the children well into the future and I thank the design committee for all of their hard work developing the sensory walk from a concept to reality. 

The social club has delivered a range of made a fantastic events this year under challenging circumstances.  Its hard to pick out single events, but I think the welcome back to the students from home learning was fantastic.  It was at these events that your contributions helped support our major fundraising target of the sensory walk. 

The development of this year's yearbook has been a major success and was developed following its absence last year.  We marvelled at how Karin Pumpa had previously developed this output on a consistent basis on her own effort.  This year's edition was developed by the significant efforts of Tanya Bolton, Kahla Kruger and Lindsay Pennock.  The MTSCC contributed to the project to assist to keep the cost of the yearbooks down.  We had close to 350 sales, so we consider that to be a major success and we have plans in place to build on that great work next year. 

The traffic and parking issues around the school grounds continued to be another major consideration.  A draft expert report has been produced for ACT Traffic and City Services and we will look assist to implement some if its recommendations into the new year.  I remain optimistic that we'll be able to achieve some successes in this area. 

I'd like to thank all of the volunteers who have kept all of the key functions going, such as the clothing store, Facebook pages and the various sporting activities.  We have reached an agreement to run a 12 month trial of the scholastic book club within the school - keep an eye out in the new year for more information. 

The MTSCC AGM agreed its strategic plan.  This plans reaches out over the next decade, but will also articulate and focus on the key activities for next year (agreed at the first meeting of each school year).  This will include longer term items such as the school building and capital works plans.  By agreeing what we will focus upon will inform the basis of the manner in which we may seek to fund or deliver our proposed initiatives, which we expect to occur through a range of efforts.  We will actively seek feedback early next year. 

From next year, we will have MTS representation at the Archdiocese-wide parent representative body (Catholic School Parents Archdiocese Canberra-Goulburn).  We see it as an opportunity to gain direct access as a parent body to key Catholic Education office executives and to contribute to substantive issues such as topical academic issues and broader funding issues across the Territory.  This body has pretty good representation across a broad range of schools, so we think it will also provide a great opportunity to share knowledge and ideas. 

By around the time that you are reading this, I expect that we will have provided a farewell gift to Peter, on behalf of all parents and members of the MTS community, to thank him for his significant contribution to the school over the past 7 years. We wish Peter all the very best at his new role at Young and we trust that he will take full advantage of the extra time accruing from the shorter commute. 

I want to thank all of the members of the MTSCC executive and the broader committee and other parents & friends who have assisted across the year.  These achievements don't happen without the hard work and support of volunteers, so I'd like to express my gratitude for all of your hard work and your good cheer when doing it.  I'm also grateful to the Peter, Craig (Hart) and Liz (Hagerty) directly as valuable teacher representatives on the MTSCC.  We are also grateful for all of the support more generally from the MTS staff.  

Looking back, I am proud of the achievements that we have delivered over the last year and consider we are well placed to make significant progress on others over the coming years. We'd welcome any further assistance and ideas which we can focus upon in 2022.  Please do contact me if you'd like to discuss anything further. 

I hope that you have a wonderful and safe Christmas break and I look forward to seeing you again in 2022 school year. 

Damien

MTS has been acknowledged as a finalist in the CCSP Roger O'Sullivan Award, for their Mini Maths Mornings. This program aims to deepen parents and carers understanding of maths and show ways to improve numeracy through play at home. 

Scholastic Book Club

Next year the MTS Community Council will be trialling the re-introduction of Scholastic Book Club.  Catalogues are usually available twice a term online, and a paper copy will be sent home with students.  Parents can order online via the Scholastic LOOP parent portal and will be advised of order cut-off dates.  Please see the Scholastic website or paper catalogue for details.  No orders or cash will be accepted by the school, all orders must be made online. Late orders or orders from the previous catalogue are charged a flat rate for home postage.

Orders will be marked as received when handed out to older students or placed in the bags of younger students. Please discuss with your student the importance of not misplacing their order before bringing it home, and treating it carefully so it doesn’t get damaged. Missing or damaged orders can be reported to Scholastic using their online contact information.  Out of stock items already paid for are usually credited to the LOOP account.

In the past there were many reports of missing, misplaced or damaged orders.  If parents are concerned about this, or they wish to keep the order a surprise, please wait until the catalogue is closed and use the home postage option.  MTS Community Council parent volunteers will be running the Book Club, so please ensure any inquiries are directed to Scholastic, rather than to school staff, teachers or librarians. We will be doing our best to make the trial run smoothly, and look forward to using school reward points earned to purchase additional books for classroom readers.