Welcome to Week 2
Good morning everybody and welcome to Week 2.
We trust that last week was one where you and your children felt that there was a sense of purpose and joy, and hopefulness with the start of a new school year. We hope too, that you have been able to get to know the teachers, and the classroom routine, ready for a great school term together.
With that in mind, we know it is a great time to be building new friendships, getting settled into new work habits and the various activities that help to make a learning year a success. And, with that in mind, we want to talk about students’ behaviour; how they can conduct themselves within the school grounds. We want our school to be a place of vibrancy, joy and safety. We want for our students to feel as though they have every opportunity to learn well together and to make long-term friendships.
On our site, we have got a lot of children with different expectations and goals that they have for themselves. They have a range of personalities and ways that they play together. And so, at Covenant we have developed a Student Code of Conduct. This is basically a list of rules and guidelines about how to live together well; for students to learn how to be purposeful in study, to set good goals and to recognise that we want to play and learn together in community with each other in positive ways. Secondary students would already have received a link to the Student Code of Conduct. But those in Years 3 to 6 will be hearing about this today and, over the next week, will be talking together about what it means to work and live well together.
For that reason, this year, we’re actually going to ask our students, from Year 3 to Year 12, to step it up a little and to sign the Student Code of Conduct; to raise themselves as being men and women of their word. We recognise that there will be times where we make mistakes and get it wrong; particularly in those Junior years, and so we will take the opportunity to work through problems and issues. As our children grow and become young adults, we know that they will be heading out into the workforce, heading into an adult world where their word needs to matter, so we want them to understand this too.
If you have any questions about this, Mr Dan Apin, our Director of Student Wellbeing, would be happy to discuss this with you; as would myself or either of the Deputies, your child’s class teacher or Year Advisor. We want this to be seen as a positive in our community, to help every child to feel like they are in a safe and supportive environment. They will know, for example, that they’ve signed the Code of Conduct and so has everybody else in their class and, in this way, we hope to build a strong and vibrant student community.
I hope that you will join with us in supporting this initiative. We hope, too, that we will have conversations at home, that you will take this opportunity to talk with your child about what this means. If you or your child have any questions, please don’t hesitate to come back and have a chat with us.
We wish you all the very best for the week and a great start to the year. Thank you.
Melissa Brown
