The vision for St Thomas More's Catholic School is to be a vibrant, positive, and energetic learning community, where every child is valued, and where relationships, the Gospel, and our Josephite charism are at the heart of every aspect of our educational program.

We have high expectations for student learning and student behaviour, and aim to support our students to grow into independent and confident learners, but community-minded contributors to society.

Students are invited into an intimate relationship with Christ. We know we have achieved this goal when our students smile when they arrive at school, and are still smiling when they leave.

BE GREEN!

It is no secret that the summer school holidays for teachers and all those engaged in the industry of education is a significant milestone that presents an opportunity for rest, rejuvenation, refreshment, and reconnection with family, friends, and self. We do not coast across the finish line, we collapse. But, in keeping with the unintentional alliterative theme above, I have always viewed the purpose of the holiday periods to be: renewal. An opportunity to learn, grow, evolve, improve, explore, and extend yourself. To this end, through my journey of educational leadership as Deputy Principal and Principal over the past seven years, I have concluded each year with a message for staff that encourages reflection and renewal. Please find below my email to staff verbatim on Thursday 14th December, 2023. I trust that you may also find something in the words below to compel you to be green…

Thank you all for your commitment to serving the needs of our school community in this 2023 school year. As St Mary MacKillop of the Cross once wrote, "Never see a need without doing something about it". Please know that your generosity, hard work, spirit and goodwill does not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

At our final liturgy together as a Staff this year, I gifted you each The Resilience Project: 21 Day Gratitude Journal, a green apple, and a Christmas card. And I urged each of you over this holiday period to be green. That is to live young, stay unripe, and embrace the spirit of challenge. At the liturgy, I explained to the staff gathered the concept, purpose, symbolism, and intention of the gifts. And the task of this email is to achieve the same.

In your Christmas cards was a picture of the sculpture of a green apple. Tadao Ando is a celebrated, progressive, and renowned Japanese architect. The green apple is his art installation which he titled, Youth. Tadao Ando was a boxer-turned-architect, with no professional training in design or engineering, whose commitment to learn, innovate, self-teach, seek mentorship, and be green, yielded enormous success. He was invited to design an Art Museum building in Kobe following the 1995 earthquake, where he also commissioned his own artwork, Youth, a symbol and movement toward the importance of vulnerability, learning, and growth. And the purpose of the green apple was to encourage its beholders to be green (Read: Hidden Potential by Adam Grant).

To be green is to continue to be open to learning, open to growth, open to new experiences, and open to taking on new challenges. The exhortation is to live young. That is to approach each day with the energy, the vigour, the excitement and the desire to play, that is indicative of a youthful spirit. To never lose our sense of curiosity, our sense of wonder, or our constant amazement at the freshness of new experiences and everything we learn from them.

We are called to stay unripe. That is, we are never the finished article. We have never learned everything we need to know. We must never miss an opportunity for growth and improvement. For as soon as we believe we have ripened, is when we soon begin to grow stale, stagnant, blemish and eventually spoil. And this is why I gifted you each a green apple, as a symbol and a visual cue and reminder to stay unripe.

So how do we live young, stay unripe, and be green? By embracing the spirit of challenge! Neuroscientists are clear that as we grow older our neuroplasticity (capacity to learn) diminishes. and that our peak for our brain to accommodate and assimilate new information is when we are young. However, contemporary research by neuroscientists has proved that through deliberate effort, we can maintain our neuroplasticity, that is, our capacity to learn (Read: How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene). 

And it turns out, the best way to maintain our capacity to learn is to... keep learning! More specifically, that we must place ourselves in an environment that requires regular and sustained cognitive effort - that is, to embrace the spirit of challenge! To seek out opportunities to learn and grow and immerse yourself in these spaces. So, in other words, to live young, stay unripe, and be green... keep learning!

And in a period of rest and renewal, like the impending summer and school holidays, the most effective means of learning is reflection. To reflect on your recent experiences, interactions, relationships, actions, and learning, in order to give yourself the time and space to accommodate, assimilate, and make meaning of everything you have learned and experienced this year. To fail to reflect is to rob yourself of the opportunity for growth (after all, be green!).

Therefore, I urge you to commit the time, effort, energy, and fidelity into the task of completing The Resilience Project: 21 Day Gratitude Journal. Again, my favourite author, Fr Richard Rohr once wrote, "You show me what you focus on, and I'll show you who you will become". Your habits become your character, and your character becomes your destiny (Read: The Resilience Project by Hugh van Cuylenburg & The Universal Christ by Fr Richard Rohr).

I look forward to reconnecting with each of you at the start of the 2024 school year and exploring the ways in which you were green, lived young, stayed ripe, and embraced the challenge during the holidays.

In closing, I wish you all a holy and merry Christmas, and a happy and joyous New Year celebration! And more than anything else, be kind to yourselves (Read: Kindness by Kath Koschel)! 

Mr Casimir Douglas

Sunday 11th February, 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

SALUTATION

Grace to you and peace.

PROJECT COMPASSION LAUNCH

At our whole-school Prayer Assembly this morning we launched Project Compassion for 2024 as we enter the Lenten season this week.

We were joined by Leanne Prichard from Catholic Education Tasmania, and also by Richard Landels from Caritas Australia who made his way from Sydney to speak with our students. He shared the story of Ronita from the Phillipines and how the work of Caritas Australia helped to transform her life!

If you'd like to know more about Caritas Australia, Project Compassion, or Ronita's story, please access the link below.

https://www.caritas.org.au/project-compassion/ronita-story/

SWIMMING CARNIVAL

The Swimming Carnival is always the one of the most eagerly anticipated dates on the school calendar. It is an opportunity for our students to build House spirit, form relationships, and enjoy a summer day at the pool with their peers in a climate of fun and competition. 

The carnival was held this Wednesday (14th February) at the Riverside Pool. We were blessed with a beautiful sun-drenched Tasmanian morning, excited students, dedicated staff, and wonderful parent volunteers and spectators. 

I wish to express my sincere gratitude for all the parents that offered their support with the running of the carnival, to the staff for their encouragement and organisation of the students, to Mr Rik Bryan for all his work behind the scenes in setting up and packing down, and to Mr Nick Stacey for his leadership, planning and execution of the school Swimming Carnival.

But the heroes and focus of the day is quite rightly our students. They are to be congratulated in their behaviour, engagement, energy, and participation. I was so pleased to see the level of support and positive encouragement as they cheered their peers all the way to the final touch of the wall.

Eventually, after the excitement and gruelling competition of the relays as the final races of the day, Tenison were crowned the winners of the 2024 St Thomas More's Catholic School Swimming Carnival, and the House Captains, Levi Roney and Rosie Chugg, were impressive in their acceptance speeches in receiving the trophy.

SHROVE TUESDAY

There is no question the most excitement and energy for our students in the lead up to Lent, is on the promise of Shrove (Pancake) Tuesday. In 2023, the tradition of our P&F preparing and cooking the pancakes for our students returned with a vengeance, and was even more successful in 2024. Thank you so much to our amazing parent volunteers who generously gave their time to plan, cook, and serve the pancakes. They were delicious and very well received!

I spent time in each of the classrooms that morning, and when quizzing the students on their preference of pancake toppings, their responses ranged from the downright delicious to overly outrageous. The day was topped off (pun intended) with the three Grade 1/2 classes participating in the annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Race! And as always, the guiding principle of the race was... to the winners go the spoils!

ASH WEDNESDAY

Ash Wednesday presents the Catholic school community with a unique ritual to celebrate the commencement of the Lenten season each year. The ritual requires students and staff to present themselves to receive ashes on their forehead in the shape of a cross. This charcoal and granular cross prompts every student (and staff member), no matter the age, to rush to the nearest mirror, window, or puddle of water to check their reflection to see what it looks like, whilst under strict instructions of their teacher not to disturb it! 

But the cross reminds us of Christ's paschal sacrifice that we celebrate on Good Friday. The traditional exhortation of the Church is for us to sacrifice something of our own during the Lenten period. For many this is chocolate, wine, screen time, or buying pairs of shoes. But as I perenially remind students and staff, the purpose here is not to sacrifice for the sake of sacrificing, but this sacrifice creates space for Christ to enter, for God to enter, for light to enter, for family to enter, for friends to enter, for faith to enter. We make space for parts of life that we hold most sacred and most important. Therefore, let us not enter the Lenten season thinking about what we should or must give up, but instead, how we will make space for the things that matter most.

Thank you very much to Mrs Belinda Taylor, our Religious Education Coordinator for organising the Ash Wednesday liturgy, and to our teachers for spending time in their classrooms to support the students in learning about the key symbols of the ritual and what they mean to us as a Catholic school community.

COMMUNITY WELCOME EVENING!

As per previous correspondence, the Community Welcome Evening is being held this coming Monday 19^th February from 5:00pm – 7:00pm in the Kitchen Garden.

Additionally, from 5:00pm-5:30pm, we will be holding open classrooms as an opportunity for parents to view their child's learning environment and meet their child's classroom teacher. There will be no formal presentations, no prepared speeches, and no new or additional information to be shared on this evening. Just simply an opportunity for parents to briefly meet their child's teacher and visit their child’s learning space.

FINAL GREETING

May the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

God bless,

Mr Casimir Douglas

Principal

A reminder for parents to please update any change of details e.g. contact numbers, address and email address.

We remind families that the Campbell Street pick up is for students with no siblings at the school (except for Kinder students who are all picked up on Abbott Street). The pick up zone on Campbell Street is for a very brief pick up or drop off. You will be asked to do a lap around the block if your child has not yet come out of class. This pick up area is supervised by a teacher until 3:15pm.

The Abbott Street pick up area is for all other students including bus travellers and is supervised until 3:30pm.

Please stay with your car if in the pick up zone.
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If you need to collect your child after 3:30pm, then please contact CatholicCare Tasmania to organise after school care.

If you need to collect your child during the school day for an appointment, please ensure that this has been communicated to the office via email: stm@catholic.tas.edu.au and to the classroom teacher prior to the day.  Please do not collect your child during break times:

Break 1 – 10:55am to 11:25am
Break 2 – 1:30pm to 2:00pm

You need to sign your child out at the front office and the office staff will then call through to the classroom to advise of your arrival.  Your child will then be sent to the office for collection.  Please do not go to the classroom to collect your child.