Annesley News, Issue 154

Week 4, Friday 14 August 2020

Principal's Video News

Play Video

Our School

Committed to Keeping Children Safe
On Saturday August 8, Annesley Chair of Council Bruce Spangler AM and I participated in Professional Learning provided by the Association of Independent Schools in South Australia (AISSA) titled ‘What Boards Need to Know About Child Protection.’ The informative and important Professional Learning was facilitated by the AISSA’s Chief Executive, Head of Legal Services and Senior Education Consultant.

Topics covered included;

  • Legal and moral obligations and responsibilities of board members
  • Update on changes, new legislation and requirements
  • Australian Student Wellbeing Framework
  • 10 Child Safe Principles

Annesley is committed to keeping children safe and ensures this in many ways including but not limited to a recent review of the School in line with the 10 Child Safe Principles, making Child Safe a regular feature on meeting agendas, facilitating the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum across the School and giving our students genuine voice and ownership in our community, including playing an integral role in the selection of new staff. Bruce and I will be updating the Annesley College Council of the important content shared at the Professional Learning at our Council Meeting on Wednesday evening.

Strategic Planning Update
As you’re aware, the Annesley College Council, in partnership with the School’s key stakeholders, are this year driving the creation of our new Strategic Plan. We appreciate those families that responded to and shared great insights in our Stakeholder Survey earlier this year. Your input is critical as we plan for the future of Annesley. Staff and students have also had the opportunity to feed into this important process. Annesley has engaged expert advice from Louka Parry as we plan for the coming years. Louka works globally to enable a world of thriving learners across schools, companies and organisations. He speaks on innovation, leadership and change having worked with thousands of leaders and educators from diverse contexts all across the world, including in all Australian Education Departments and sectors, across international systems from the Dominican Republic to Romania, with corporates like PWC, the AFL, Microsoft and Apple, and with not-for-profits such as Social Ventures Australia, Inícia Educacíon and TED. Louka has completed executive studies at Harvard and a residency at the d.school at Stanford University. Annesley is blessed to have Louka providing insights into this important process.

Policy Development Update
ICT Policy – We would like to thank those of you who provided insights and ideas for our new ICT Policy. We have completed the first draft of the policy and it is currently being reviewed by the school leadership team, after which it will be presented to Council for final approval. We aim to have the final policy ready to share with the school community by the end of this term.

Behaviour Management Policy – Our next policy to be reviewed is the school Behaviour Management Policy. During this review we will revise the processes for behaviour management at Annesley to better meet the needs of our growing school community and provide clearer guidelines for all stakeholders. Our current policy is guided by restorative practices and this approach will remain at the heart of our new policy. The restorative practice approach aims to develop strong communities and to manage conflict and tensions by repairing harm and building relationships. It focuses on both proactive strategies (building relationships and developing community) and reactive (repairing harm and restoring relationships) approaches. You can read more about restorative practices here.

Again, we are keen to hear the thoughts of parents as part of this review and will be sending out a short survey to you in the coming weeks.

Road Safety
This week SAPOL visited the school to provide more students with School Crossing training. We would like to remind families to please continue to observe the road and parking rules surrounding our school including speed limits, the kiss and drop zone, crossing the road at the school crossing, no U-turns over double lines and respecting our neighbours by not parking in permit zones and turning off your vehicle when parking along Rose Terrace for an extended period. We thank you for your continued cooperation in an effort to keep our community safe.

The Quest

It’s been a busy week on The Quest for our Year 5, 6 & 7 students. Our Year 5 students embarked on a 30km round trip bike ride along the River Torrens with Glenelg as their destination. Our Year 6/7 students travelled to the Fleurieu Peninsula to visit the Forktree Project. Hosted by project leader Tim Jarvis AM and his wife Liz, students learnt about issues of ‘re-wilding’, cleared dumped building waste and planted 50 trees to support the project in encouraging biodiversity and reducing carbon emissions. Annesley’s recent visit to the Forktree Project has been featured in their recent blog posts, you can check these out by clicking here.

Primary Years' Learning

Year 1 (Bella) Video News

Play Video

Health & Physical Education Video News

Play Video

This term Annesley students have been doing a movement unit with a focus on gymnastics and skipping. Here is a video of some amazing Base 4 students showing some of their skills!

A Note from our Chaplain

Resilience Handles The Pressure

Life can often be unpredictable. This year has certainly proved that to be true. Sometimes we face difficult challenges which come against us and put us under pressure. These challenges can cause us to worry, panic, retreat, or simply give up. The pressure can see us react in ways which are out of character, and not true to who we really are. For children, it may come as a result of things not working out how they had hoped, or through misunderstandings with their friends. For adults – well let’s be honest – it’s no different.

So how do we handle that pressure. Do we collapse under its force? Do we behave in a way that’s out of character? Do we become deflated, or perhaps explode? Or do we develop a resilience which enables us to recover, and return to who God created us to be – who we truly are?

Developing resilience is a personal journey, and in this we can identify strategies which work well in order to build resilience. Mindfulness exercises, acts of kindness, gratitude activities and others, are skills which can be developed through small, incremental wins. Sometimes it’s hard to bounce straight back, no matter how much encouragement we get. But resilience is that ability within us to make deliberate decisions to return to our best self.

“We have troubles all around us, but we are not defeated. We do not know what to do, but we do not give up. We are persecuted, but God does not leave us. We are hurt sometimes, but we are not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Peter Morton
Annesley Chaplain

Assembly & Chapel

Chapel and Assembly has reverted back to face-to-face for Term 3. At this stage we continue to ask parents and caregivers to refrain from attending for the first half of Term 3. We will notify our community via School Stream once we are able to invite parents and caregivers back to Chapel and Assembly in Gillingham Hall.

Date Assembly/Chapel Class Presenting
Thursday 20 August Chapel
Thursday 27 August Assembly Reception (Alex)
Thursday 3 September Chapel
Thursday 10 Spetember Assembly Year 1 (Bella)
Thursday 17 September Chapel
Thursday 24 September Assembly Year 6/7

Previous Issues

Back to Top