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Reflection
Undoubtable Wounds
Thomas was granted the gift of seeing the Risen Lord bearing the wounds of His crucifixion. Thomas was invited to touch them. Responding, he simply cries out: ‘My Lord and my God.’
Thomas does not declare his belief in the Resurrection as such. That was all too apparent. Rather, he declares his faith in the identity of the risen Jesus Christ: ‘My Lord and my God.’
Pope Francis says we can only join Thomas in this faith by touching the wounds of Christ. Those wounds are to be found in the body of someone wounded. This can be in a myriad of ways.
We have to bend down and touch those wounds in whatever means of healing is available to us. Otherwise we simply engage in philanthropy at a distance. We end up believing in a semblance of God, but not God embodied in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ always bearing his wounds.
Sometimes we struggle with our faith – after all, it is an astounding claim that Jesus of Nazareth is God embodied for us. You, or any other person intrigued by Jesus, are invited to touch the wounds of Christ and let the patience of God take care of the timing of the response of faith.
We could pause for a moment, praying to be counted amongst those who receive the Blessing promised to those who have not seen the Risen Lord as such, but who touch his wounds and proclaim, ‘My Lord and my God.’
© Fr Michael Tate
Dear Families,
As we continue our Lenten journey this year, I ask you, what are you doing to be closer to God? I remember as a child we would have to commit to actions like giving up lollies for Lent, but as I developed a deeper understanding of our faith, I discovered that these actions, although they may be good for our health, were not really going bringing me closer to God. It is by taking another step, like donating the money that would have been spent on the lollies to charity, or you could commit to attend mass regularly, or to pray daily with your family, these are some of the actions that can bring us closer to God. What are you doing this Lent?
What is PBS?
For our new families PBS means Positive Behaviour School and this is about the strategies we use to manage student behaviour. We as a community believe that behaviour like anything with children must be taught, and it is our responsibility to provide those opportunities for our child. At St Thomas More’s we try to be proactive, by creating class agreements, taking students on PBS walks (showing students the correct and safe way to behave in the playground), STM stickers and provide reminders regularly at our assemblies. Sometimes though, things may go wrong for the child and they misbehave. We need to remember ALL children can “misbehave”, after all they are just children and are still learning what is right and wrong. Our immediate response as staff is to find out the child’s understanding of the behaviour and to talk with them about what is the correct behaviour. Sometimes we need to apply consequences for the behaviour and where possible the consequences support the child on learning how not to repeat that behaviour again. More often than not the staff member will record the behaviour, (sometimes referred to as a PBS form), the purpose being to monitor the whole school’s behaviour to see if there are any needs we need to address, and to monitor the individual in order to support them. (Continual negative behaviour is one way a child could express they need some help.) It is our responsibility as a community to ensure our next generation grow up to be strong, resilient and responsible adults.
I will be starting to interview Kinder 2021 families next week. If you or someone you know is interested in enrolling in Kinder at St Thomas More’s please fill in an expression of interest form, available at our office or on our website.
Monday is a public holiday, enjoy your long weekend.
Have a great week.
God Bless,
Shayne Kidd
The Australian Department of Health has advised that the virus does still NOT pose a threat to the Australian community. It has been successfully contained through safety measures, and there have been no cases of transmission from one person to another. Evidence also suggests that most people infected get better over a week or two, and it seems children usually only get mild illness, like a bad cold.
In accordance with current advice, children should not attend school if they:
- have been told by Public Health to stay in home isolation;
- have been in close contact with a confirmed case of coronavirus; or
- have left or transited through mainland China (not including Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan) or Iran in the last 14 days.
In each of these cases, the child must be isolated at home for 14 days from the date of the event. Any unwell child should also not attend school.
Please note that this advice is changing frequently as new cases are discovered. To keep up to date with latest advice visit www.health.gov.au.
It’s important that students and staff continue to practice good hygiene to prevent the spread of colds and infection. Transmission of infections can be reduced by 80% simply by regular washing of hands. If we can please ensure our sites are resourced to support this preventative measure.
If you are concerned about the symptoms of a student or staff member, you should contact the Public Health Hotline on 1800 671 738 for guidance.
Students from year levels 1 - 6 voted for two students from each class to represent them as SRC's. The SRC's meet every fortnight and the meeting is facilitated by the school captains. Each SRC rep has the opportunity to bring agenda items to the SRC group from their peers where it is discussed and actioned, if necessary. It is an opportunity for students from all ages to be a contributor and leader in the school. Students received their badges at a recent school assembly.
We have a number of students who have reached 25 stickers in their sticker booklet. These stickers are given out to students displaying positive and respectful behaviour in the playground. They are a great role model for others. Well done!
GRADE 6 CAMP
On Wednesday the 26th of February all the grade 6 students, parent volunteers and staff were greeted to a nice early morning downpour to start off camp. As we were getting ready to go, the rain still wouldn’t let up so we packed the bus anyway and headed off to Myrtle Park.
As we arrived at the park the rain was still being a pain by raining cats and dogs, we decided to put our bags in the hall and play some games while we waited. We played a game in which there were 2 teams and they each had a hockey stick, the teachers would call a number and one person from each team would run up and try and hit the ball into their team's goal. If they did they would gain a point. After a few games, the rain stopped so we decided to go out and set up our tents before it got dark, after a good 30 minutes of hard work putting up our tents the teachers said ``Put your wetsuits on and get ready to raft!” We spent a good hour perfecting and designing our rafts. (Even though only one raft ended up surviving the deadly stream). After rafting, we got dry and practised for the big one and only… TALENT SHOW! Everyone did amazing but we all know, there can only be one winner. (According to Mr Healey). Well done to Elyssa, Maddie and Lily for winning the talent show!
The next day everyone was pretty tired but that didn't stop us from waking up bright and early and getting ready for the treetop adventures. We went through some drills so that everyone knew what to do. The green course was the easiest, the blue 1 was the second easiest, and the blue 2 was the medium and the one most people went on was the red course. It was extremely hard but everyone who did it ended up loving it. Everyone thought it was thoroughly enjoyable and so scary at the same time. Later that night while we were eating our pizza, Mr Healey got a call saying that we were allowed to use the zip line tomorrow which put a smile on everyone's faces.
On our unfortunately last day we packed our tents and bags and headed off to the zip lines at Holly Bank. Everyone was so scared for the 50m high and 200m long zip line but after we rode the 200m zip line, everyone, and I mean everyone wanted to go first on the 400m long zip line which is the longest and fastest in Australia. After the zip lines were all over the walk back up was a really big challenge. Carrying a 4kg zip line hook back uphill is not the most enjoyable thing to do, but we all survived and that's what matters. We would all like to give a big thank you to Mr Healey, Mrs Taylor, Miss McLauchlan, Mrs Pearce and Mr Kidd and as well a massive thank you to the parents who helped, if it weren't for them, we wouldn't have even been able to have this amazing experience.
Written by Grace Ebbelaar, Lukas Slama and Willow Campbell-Hodge.
Video by Elyssa Langham
Support STM Yr 6 student Izzy Alexander by clicking on the link below