As principal of St Patrick’s Primary School, Pakenham, I am pleased to welcome back all my amazing students and their families to another school year.
It is an incredible privilege to watch our young people begin new adventures, take on new challenges and make new friends.
As a Catholic school, we recently celebrated Ash Wednesday and remembered the sacrifices that our Saviour made for us.
This year, the teachers spoke to the students about how we can have a change of heart.
We know that Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us so that we could live on to spread his message of love.
It is important that the students understand that these sacrifices can hopefully pave the way for a new and brighter direction and look to how they can be the positive change for all.
Already so much has happened in our first few weeks.
We have had our beginning of the year mass where we presented all our captains with their badges.
Recently, Fr Paul celebrated mass with our Foundation students as they experienced mass for the first time.
Fr Paul commended the students on their behaviour as did many parishioners.
Our grade 2s have begun their swimming lessons, and the implementation of NAPLAN for our 3s and 5s followed, so school is off to an incredible start.
As a staff we are promoting our whole school approach to positive behaviour and it has been so pleasing to see the students respond well to this.
The students move safely through the school, they look out for one another and are able to articulate and demonstrate our values of Respect, Safety, Co-operation and Resilience!
Meg Escalante,
Principal
