Issue 15, 5 September 2024

National Child Protection (NCP) Week runs from 1 to 7 September. This year’s theme is ‘Every child in every community needs a fair go’. This week is an opportunity for us to recommit ourselves and ensure that every child and young person in our community feels valued, heard, and safe.

At Caritas College, child protection is our highest priority. Creating a safe environment for children is paramount and central to our work. It is important to us that every child and young person feels safe and happy at school. As such, we employ a raft of measures and initiatives to listen to our young people. Every student at our school engages with our termly pulse check surveys, social emotional learning programs and pastoral care supports. Further to this, the child protection curriculum is taught in every year level across the school. All of these aspects of our school environment support the learning and wellbeing of our students.

Below is the commitment statement from the Catholic Diocese of Port Pirie to all the children and young people. 

Created in the image of God, all children and young people are our most precious and sacred citizens with a voice that must be heard, respected and valued. Accordingly, we, the people of God in the Catholic Diocese of Port Pirie are committed to the care, wellbeing and protection of our children and young people.

We support the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as the foundation for child protection and believe that all children and young people have the right to be safe, happy and healthy. We are committed to being an inclusive, culturally diverse and resilient Church where God’s children can flourish.

Our Church strives to enable and empower children and young people to be part of the Kingdom of God as a safe and secure home. We are committed to a shared responsibility, a culture of safety which is underpinned by robust, responsive and effective policy and procedures.

As we are reminded by Pope Francis, a future in which children are secure is a future where “every child is held in God’s infinite tenderness and God is present in each of their lives”

Each year from 1 September to 4 October, Christians around the
world unite to celebrate the Season of Creation. It is a special time where we acknowledge with awe and wonder all of God’s wondrous creation.

Over the past few weeks our Year 7-9 students have all visited All Saints Church in preparation for celebrating the Season of Creation Mass on Thursday 14 September. These visits have assisted our students to learn more about the traditions and customs of the Catholic faith. The Season of Creation is a time for reflection and action to protect our common home. In caring for our environment now and into the future, we want to instill a genuine sense of responsibility and stewardship in our students.

This Friday, our staff will come together for our annual Staff Reflection Day. Our dedication to the children and young people we serve is deeply rooted in our Catholic faith and Josephite tradition. Therefore, it is essential that we dedicate time and space for our own faith development, which is a key aspect of our school that enriches the work we do. We appreciate the families who support this meaningful experience for our staff on a student free day.

This week teachers met with parents/caregivers for learning conversations. They shared information and updates about the learning and progress of students. Students and families in Year 10 and 11 have been working with teachers in subject counselling as they prepare for next year. This process will support them in choosing subjects aligned to their interests and strengths as they consider possible post-school pathways. 

In both instances, these important conversations and collaboration between parents/caregivers and teachers speak to the essential relationship that needs to exist between ‘home’ and ‘school’ to support our children and young people to grow.

Good luck to the students who will represent our College at the SAPSASA Athletics Carnival at Stirling North Primary School next Monday. This event was rescheduled due to unfavourable weather conditions a couple of weeks ago. No doubt the students will be excited and there will be a good showing of parents/caregivers to cheer on our young people.

• Noting our staff spend a significant amount of their workday focussing on teaching or other activities applicable to their roles, staff will endeavour to respond to parent/caregiver communications requesting a response within 48 hours (staff will discern whether an urgent matter requires a shorter response timeframe)

Our Years 8 and 9 students have both visited All Saints Church for the 9:00am mass over the last 2 weeks, preparing for their 7-9 Seasons of Creation mass. Students have refamiliarised themselves with our parish Church, celebrating the Eucharist and having a Church tour, with the opportunity to ask questions about what they see within the Church and how it may assist us in our faith

The Season of Creation unites the world’s 2.2 billion Christians around one shared purpose. With so much injustice all around us, now is the time for Christians everywhere to come together and show the world how to love each other and creation. This year’s theme is “to hope and act with Creation,” taken from St Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:19-25). Amid the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, many are beginning to despair and suffer from eco-anxiety. As people of faith we are called to lift the hope inspired by our faith, the hope of the resurrection. This is not a hope without action but one embodied in concrete actions of prayer and preaching, service and solidarity. We are called to take up climate and ecological justice, and to speak out with and for communities most impacted by climate injustice and the loss of biodiversity

Throughout this season, our students in Years 7-12 will celebrate a special mass at All Saints Church. Our Year 7-9 students will attend mass next Thursday 12 September and our Year 10-12 students will attend mass on Thursday 19 September. A reminder that students will need to return their acknowledgement slips to their homegroup teachers.

Julian Tenison-Woods - WikipediaAs we consider our call to care for our common home, guided by Pope Francis and his writings Laudato Si and Laudate Deum, we sometimes forget a significant aspect of our Josephite charism in Fr Julian Tenison Woods.  

Fr Julian co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph with St Mary of the Cross MacKillop in Penola, in the south east of South Australia. It was at this time that he was the only parish priest covering an area of 56000km2, caring for those who lived within the region spanning from Bordertown, down to the coast at Port MacDonnell and up to Robe and Beachport. It was in his travels that he was fascinated by the newness of the flora and fauna he found, sketching these and making notes to write his scientific papers. 

He was a prominent scientist – geology, palaeontology, botany, and zoology, with an excellent reputation amongst the scientific community before his work with Mary MacKillop. Fr Julian spent time with the local First Nations people to learn from their knowledge and understanding of the land and their use of the stars to guide them through the countryside. 

Fr Julian continues to teach us today of the innate way of being able to intertwine his love of science and his faith, following in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi. He saw beauty in God’s creation, evidenced in his writings and discovery of hundreds of plants, insects and fossils. 

There’s a lot we can learn from Fr Julian Tenison Woods throughout this Season of Creation and how we can find beauty and evidence of God’s fingerprint in all that surrounds us in our beautiful region.