Welcome to the start of 2021. We are all very exited and enthusiastic about what the year will bring us. It was great to see students arrive last week eager to catch up with friends and staff, sharing their holiday stories. Their eagerness to be prepared and well presented as ‘Team Parklands’ has continued to shine with students transitioning back into routines and structures of school life with such positive focus. The first few days has seen staff getting to know their students and invest time in building strong positive relationships.

Our school continues to grow in both size and opportunities. We take great pride in increasing experiences and diverse learning activities as we continue to enhance a personalised learning approach.  

This year sees the school continuing to grow in student numbers, staffing and opportunities. We welcome our 160 new students and 10 staff to our school community. All of whom will bring their dynamic personalities to further create our positive school culture. Our new staff are: Mrs Zoe Smith, Ms Mariah Payne, Mr Andrew Hay, Mr Dean Cornwall, Ms Julia Brown, Mr Josh Triffitt, Mrs Angela Hancock, Mr Chris Bryan, Ms Carol Boyd, Mr Atifur Khan. I would also like to congratulate Mrs Bianca Munday on her appointment as Assistant Principal and Miss Emily Devlin on being Year 8 Grade Coordinator.  

Staff participated in the final day of our Berry Street Education Model professional learning last Monday. This program has provided us with a suite of strategies and activities to support our students' engagement in their learning, through an inclusive practice approach. Throughout this last week, our focus has been on investing time to get to know our students and build positive relationships, through a range of class, grade and whole school activities. Embedding our core values, setting personal goals and growing our positive school culture, underpins our school and what we represent.

Over the past couple of weeks we have also communicated with many parents and carers, to ensure smooth transitions to school as well as exploring alternate learning opportunities for students to support their learning needs. We are fortunate to have a diverse range of opportunities for our students:

Seven students - including a Year 8 student - attend at Hellyer College 2 days a week as part of an extension program, enrolled in courses such as Maths Methods 3 and Physical Science. It is great to work with Hellyer College to support our students in this way. Our range of alternate learning programs are up and running with these extending to include ‘Stringalong' and Cultural Awareness, out of our Cultural Hub. More information on the range of programs will be shared over the coming weeks. We are also fortunate to have a new addition up and running with the ‘Police in Schools’ program. Senior constable Kellie Little will be onsite every second Wednesday, working across the school in a range of ways. These will include delivery of programs to classes and year levels, participating in grade and school wide activities, and working with individual students and families. This is a great resource that we are excited to have in our school.

As a way of supporting our community, I would like to remind our parents and extended community that we have the Parklands Pantry fully stocked and encourage families to come and help themselves to what they need.

Wishing everyone a happy and positive 2021