Thousands of years ago, Socrates wisely noted that ‘the unreflected life was not worth living’. As we begin the 2020 school year, Marist Schools Australia has invited us, through its annual theme,to consider the same deep truth, albeit through the slightly snappier…
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
The question closes the poem ‘The Summer Day’ by Mary Oliver. Earlier passages describe how the author has spent her day in a seemingly deserted field,puddling around without specific purpose, attending to the sights, smells, sounds and other sensations that a seemingly empty natural space might contain.
In doing so, she notes that prayer may be likened to being idle, and that through cultivating a simple and open awareness to that which is in our midst, we most naturally encounter God. I suspect many of us know this to be true.
In our Marist world, we call this the gift of ‘presence’. In 2020, through the invitation of the poem, we will seek to provide space and time for each of us to ‘be present’ with greater frequency; present to our deepest selves, present to each other, present to our natural world and present to our God.
We invite our families, to journey along with our staff and students in this important work, so that together, we can live our ‘one wild and precious life’ with joy, peace, purpose and love.
I hope everyone has now downloaded the Assumption App and is finding it to be a more user friendly way of staying connected to the College (if you need assistance, Caroline Burge is standing by for your call!).
We’ve certainly noticed that parents have become used to it very quickly and it’s significantly quieter in the front office of a morning, with fewer absence phone-calls coming through!
Please ensure you have your preferred Notification Settings arranged for the App, as we will be using it more frequently to communicate with you, and saving the use of text-messages for absolute emergencies.
With the return of school we have been revisiting a number of our Emergency Policies and Procedures. Please be aware that if a Code Red day is called in our Region (North Central), it does not necessarily follow that the College will close for the day.
Should the decision be made to close the College, we will attempt to notify you by every means at our disposal(and certainly before 2 pm on the day prior).
On days where the school is closed by a Code Red situation, teachers are expected to provide classwork online, and students are expected to continue on with their school work from home (i.e. we don’t all get a day off!).
Depending on circumstances,boarders may be sent home, moved to another site or remain here at the College. Again, this will be communicated to parents well in advance.
We are aware that a number of our buses travel into other districts that may be deemed ‘Code Red’ on days where our region is recorded at a lower level. In these cases, parents are encouraged to use their discretion to determine whether their child should attend school on that day.
There have been occasions in recent years when we have had to divert school buses to accommodate emergency events. As always, we will do our very best to inform parents of changes, and to ensure that students are kept safe and calm.
