Dear Parents and Carers,

We have had an amazing OS adventure for the past 7 weeks. We have enjoyed new places and spaces, sampled culinary delights (not so much me as the other family members!), met interesting people – including friends who were also OS at the same time, and had a lot of fun times (most memorable the days at Paris Disneyland…) However, it is great to be home and to be back at St Patrick’s this week. My favourite moment was when I went to the playground before school on Wednesday (my day of return) and was greeted by your lovely happy children. ‘Welcome back!’ ‘You’ve been gone a long time!’ ‘We missed you!’ ‘How was your holiday?’ ‘Where did you go?’ ‘I’ve got a sore finger!’ ‘We’ve got a new person in our class!’ ‘Hello Mrs Scott-Pegum!’ Ah the delights of being in the presence of these joy filled, energetic children.

I also arrived back for the day of our second Kinder 2020 orientation morning and had the opportunity to greet familiar faces of current parents and becoming familiar faces of our new parents as they begin the journey of partnership in learning at St Pat’s. I am really looking forward to spending some time with our 2020 Kindergarten children at their third and final orientation to school next Wednesday.

My sincere gratitude goes to the other amazing leaders in our school who led our school in my absence. Thank you to Mrs Perryman, Mrs Kite, Mrs Grant and Mrs Fraser for your tireless dedication to the students and families at St Patrick’s and for all you have done to support seamless learning and engagement for all learners this term. Someone asked me this week: ‘Where are you headed on your next adventure?’ but for now we will be enjoying being home!

In the final week of our holiday, I moved from holidaying to professional learning, attending the International Study Tour in Reggio Emilia, Italy. To help situate you here is a map:

In Reggio Emilia, the municipality post World War 2, have cultivated an approach to early years education in their infant / toddler centres and preschools, they also have one primary school. In fact, post war, they decided that the place to start rebuilding and on which to focus, would be the children. I have been interested in this educational philosophy since my first degree in education and am so glad to have taken time to visit and explore (with 300 other educators from 54 countries) Reggio Emilia. I will share more of my learnings and what that can mean in our Australian setting…

Blessings on a cooler-than-yesterday weekend!

Jo