The sun is shining and we now have 92% of our Primary School children back on site and 83% of our Adolescent students back. This is such wonderful news and feels like we are almost back to normal. As of Friday 15 May we will no longer be offering the Learning from Home Program however the Upper Primary and Adolescent Program will still be using Teams to upload some learning tasks for these students. Playgroup returns to face to face delivery as of Monday and I thank all families from Playgroup all the way through to Senior School who have persevered with the Teams platform for the Learning from Home program. We will still be using Teams for virtual tours of the school for new families and observations are taking place via Teams for those families with children who will transition next term. Our Annual General Meeting for RMS will take place on Wednesday 20 May and we welcome all to participate in this ZOOM meeting. We have today sent you the link and notes for this meeting. We are using Zoom as we are able to use parent email addresses for this meeting rather than your child’s email account.
We welcome our five new families who have started this term in the Primary School and I am delighted that over this very uncertain time we have retained all of our families in our beautiful school. I thank all families at the Primary School site for your patience with the constantly changing Kiss and Drive procedures over this time and I am delighted that this afternoon we completed pick-ups in 12 minutes – good job team RMS! We have further streamlined this process whilst maintaining safety, as of tomorrow morning we will commence drop offs for the Lower and Upper Primary children at the front five car bays where you are collecting your child in the afternoons. We have also phoned 21 of our Upper Primary families and asked them to now park in the PCYC carpark and these older children will meet their parents there. We are cognisant that the queue is sometimes going past the medical centre and even out to the Patterson Rd roundabout however after today we’re are confident that this issue is now resolved. We welcome any feedback that may safely help to streamline this process further.
I was delighted to take part in the MSCA (Montessori Schools and Centres Australia) Head to Head forum on Thursday and Friday last week. RMS is a proud member of MSCA and through this national organisation we receive support in so many ways for our school, staff and students. Last week’s forum was for school leaders and had a strong focus on ensuring a robust school post Covid-19. There were over sixty School Leaders participating in the forum from across Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. A key point for me from the forum was the notion of ‘Giving back’ and whilst Montessori education focuses on ‘what I can do for you’ and the good of the whole community I am wondering if our families have any ideas to further enhance connections with the wider community. I encourage all to take part in our upcoming Community Spirit meeting via Zoom on Friday 15 May at 9am where I would like to discuss ideas. We will send an email with a link prior to the meeting.
I hope you have been enjoying our video reflections over this time about connection and relationships with our RMS staff Hall of Fame. These videos are available on both our Rockingham Montessori School and RMS Community Spirit Facebook pages. I have spoken with Gail, the Principal of the Mowanjum Montessori Children’s House Program and she has informed me that many from the community have now moved further north and inland to country. She too is eagerly awaiting the return of her families and hopefully, with our Premier still having travel bans to the North West, we will keep our Indigenous communities safe. I would encourage those RMS families who sent a letter and Xmas shoebox at the end of last year to a child at Mowanjum, to again write to your child and perhaps you could explain how your family has managed the lockdowns and restrictions that have been placed on us all. We will be happy to send these letters to the community for you and you can forward either an email or hard copy letter to reception@rms.wa.edu.au. Look out for the link to the Mowanjum Christmas party photos on RMS Community Spirit Facebook and Seesaw tomorrow where you may spot your gift being received by your chosen child. It certainly warmed my heart receiving these photos and made me feel more connected to this community.
