News

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

Welcome back to term two!

We hope that everyone has had an impressive easter and a restful break at the end of term one. (Given it is week two that seems a long time ago now!!) Term two brings a great deal of excitement at the College as, finally, we hope the COVID restrictions start to lift, and we can again celebrate all the wonderful things that happen at St Paul’s in a more formal and more relaxed way.

Parents and family members are allowed back on-site and while we will continue to maintain safety precautions such as masks and spreading people out, we hope to be able to share with the community on a much more personal level.

As a staff, we have not met all together in the one-room all year. This has been frustrating given we had over 25 new members of staff join us this year and to also not have a whole school assembly means we have not been able to all be together to formally welcome the additional 200+ students who joined our community in 2022.

Having said that the celebration of the Stations of the Cross that Mr Joe Hicks our new APRIM and the Catholic Identity team led on the last day of last term, in the courtyard was amazing and a tremendously inclusive celebration of the most significant event in our Catholic, Christian calendar – the death and resurrection of Jesus. The whole community was there in the open and everyone enjoyed and appreciated the power, solemnity, and celebration of the liturgy.

One example of just how important returning to more face-to-face is to our community occurred this week when, as a staff, we were able to go into the Chapel together for staff prayer. In speaking to a staff member who started at St Paul’s at the beginning of 2021, this was the first time he had experienced the beautiful staff prayer we share together every Friday morning, collectively in the chapel. It is so much better than the online versions!

Parent / student / teacher conversations’

By now most families would have engaged in our mid-semester learning conversations. Again, while these could not be held face-to-face the staff have reported back on how well they all went and how valuable they are in assisting the students in their learning, and in fact helping them reach their full potential. We often speak of the three-way partnership that exists at St Paul’s between parents, students, and staff. When this partnership is strong, and we are all “on the same page” there is no limit to the achievements that can be reached. The most important message to come out of these meetings is that we are all working and will continue to work, together, for the students in our care.

New Building

Another wonderful occasion occurred this Monday when we were finally able to start the usage of the new senior learning centre. While things are not fully completed, we are so delighted, and so are the senior students, to be able to use what is a quite remarkable facility. The college will have a formal opening later in the term or year and we look forward to sharing this beautiful environment with as many of you as we can, through parent meetings etc. It fills us with such an enthusiastic sense of pride to be able to have a state-of-the-art learning facility that is as good as what would be provided in any school. And, as a bonus, the view across the ovals to the Adelaide hills is as good a view as you could get in any school! St Paul’s gets to have and share such a facility because of the enormous amount of work that has been done by so many community members, over a long time. It is indeed a just reward for that diligence and great belief in the College.

God Bless, take care

Paul Belton