What a joy it was to come together as a whole school community to celebrate our Opening School Mass. It was terrific to see so many parents joining us to commission our new Senior Leaders and newly elected members of the Student Representative Council. We wish them well in their leadership and encourage them to aspire to the servant leadership model given to us by Jesus Christ. Congratulations to the following College leaders:

College Captains: Laura Szabadics, Mitch Nicol

Spiritual Leader: Daniel Moes

Indigenous Leader: Shannon Anderson

House Leaders:

• • Benjamin - Sydneh Corrigan
  • Chisolm - Nick Cambetis
  • MacKillop - Christopher O’Toole
  • Rice - Kelsey Verhoeven

Student Representative Council:

• • Year 7 - Brook Macfarlane, Jamisynn Roberts
  • Year 8 - Preston Lehmann, Jorja Kelly
  • Year 9 - Malachi Munns, Danica Taylor
  • Year 10 - Ella Coghlan, Sophie Greenhalgh
  • Year 11 - Peter Mataia, Stepheny Reddish

This week we held our first College Board for the year and we are keen to expand our Board and recruit some new members. We are currently looking for another Community Representative, Teacher Representative and Parent Representative. If you are interested in any of these positions, please contact me at the College office. No previous experience is needed, just a genuine desire to contribute to the shared wisdom of our governing body.

Thank you to our Parents and Friends’ Committee, who also met this week. There are some very enthusiastic parents who are committed to working with the school to engage parents and families in the learning at the College and also to help to provide opportunities for students to participate fully in the life of the school too. We look forward to hearing of their plans for 2020. Imagine what we could achieve if every parent or family signed up to do ‘just one thing’ for the College in 2020 - we would love to hear your ideas.

Our School Safe Persons play an important role at Good Shepherd in supporting our students and staff. In 2020, our School Safe Persons are:

Jade Marinelli

Pelly Morganson

Kathleen McCarthy

The Harassment Referral Officer for the College is Kate Millian. Each of these people receive special training to be able to fulfill these roles. The College also employs a Guidance Counsellor Mrs Yvonne van der Worm and a Speech and Language Pathologist who work in our Well-being Team to provide additional resources to students. If you have any questions about how we can support your son or daughter, please contact Pelly Morganson our Assistant Principal - Pastoral at the College office.

Congratulations to all Good Shepherd students who will receive an Academic Excellence award next Wednesday at our Scholar’s Assembly. These are in recognition of those students who attained outstanding results on their Semester Two report last year. All students should aspire to achieve their best.

Good Shepherd will be celebrating the Academic Achievements of our students from Years 8-12 based on their Semester two results in 2019. This celebration will occur on Wednesday the 19th of February (Week 4). Our goal as teachers at Good Shepherd is to deliver high-quality teaching and learning experiences to all students so that each student is equipt to reach their full potential. In 2020 the College will celebrate these academic achievements through a Scholars Assembly. To be awarded a Certificate of Excellence, students are required to have achieved an A standard in 50% (or more) of their subjects. This round of Awards is based on the results from 2019 Semester two Report Cards.

Progressing Achievement Test - Reading 

In English, this week students in Years 7-10 have completed a Progressive Achievement Test in Reading. This test is also commonly referred to as PAT-R. Progressive Achievement Tests in Reading asseses students’ reading comprehension skills, vocabulary knowledge and spelling. The test is also used to determine how well students can comprehend a text, as it asseses their retrieval of directly stated information, as well as both explicit and implied information. 

At Good Shepherd the data retrieved from standardised testing like this allows for the established programs that assist the development of students. This level of data-informed practice is vital in effective pedagogy that helps students achieve their full potential. 

After a busy start to 2020 students should now be settled into their timetabled classes, working hard and learning lots of new and exciting things.

Compass Parent Portal 

The Compass Parent Portal is the platform Townsville Catholic Education uses for schools to provide up to date attendance, wellbeing and academic information to teachers and families.

To access the Parent Portal, parents/carers must come into the College Front Office to collect login information (office hours are 8am - 4pm Monday to Friday). We are unable to provide login details unless we can see you to verify your details; this is important due to the sensitive and sometimes confidential information that you will have access to on your child’s portal.

If you have not collected your login details from the College Office, please do so by the end of Week 4 (21/02/2020)

For returning parents, if you have forgotten your password please see the steps on the document below to reset it.

Compass School Manager - Smart Phone Application 

If you have a smartphone, you can download the Compass App for free from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

If you do not have a smartphone, you will access the desktop site here: Compass School Manager Desktop Site

Compass Parent Portal - logging an absence

If your child is absent from school, you are able to enter this information directly using the Parent Portal (this replaces the need to call the office - absences can be entered at any time before 8:25am; you can also approve absences at a later time if you did not meet the 8:25am cut off). Please see the instructions below to assist you with this process.

Safer Internet Day is held on Tuesday the 11th February where millions of people around the world unite to raise awareness about online safety issues and inspire positive change. This was a great opportunity for Good Shepherd to kick-start our students’ online safety initiatives for 2020 in homeroom classes by getting them to learn about their “Digital Reputation” and the importance of being careful of the picture that they paint of themselves online.  

Students need to be aware that the people and sites that they follow online, the content that they have posted, liked or shared, and the comments they make, all contribute to their digital reputation.
Their social media interaction shapes how they are perceived by others and can affect their friendships, relationships and even job prospects now and in the future.

Safer Internet Day is an initiative of the eSafety Commissioner who are Australia’s national independent regulator for online safety. The eSafety website provides a variety of skills and advice to young people about safe online use and also offer information and free webinars for parents and carers who may want to build their own awareness about online safety for their child. For further information, please access the site: https://www.esafety.gov.au/

Christian Mediation at Good Shepherd 

We often have lots of questions about Christian Meditation. Here is some information from Townsville Catholic Education that aims to answer some of those questions.

Children and young adults are born contemplative but in our Western world we are bombarded from an early age with noise, stimulus and a message to keep busy.  The aim of Christian Meditation is to teach stillness, silence and simplicity. Meditation is a way of self-knowledge and self acceptance. This is the indispensable first step towards any knowledge of God.

Christian Meditation is Prayer

Christian Meditation is simple

Christian Meditation is a journey

Christian Meditation is experiential

Christian Meditation is supported by the Church

Silence

St Ignatius of Antioch once said, “It is better to be silent and real than to talk and be unreal.”  Jesus seems to be in agreement: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7)

As John Main says, “Prayer is not a matter of talking to God, but of listening to Him (sic), or being with Him … Only in and through silence do we become fully conscious” (Word into Silence, p22, 83)

Christian Meditation is NOT guided Meditation or Ignatian meditation (with images).  It is a SILENT prayer.

The Practice

The practice of Chriatin Meditation begins with a small prayer. Students then sit down, sit still and upright. They close their eyes and say, silently and interiorly, the mantra ‘Maranatha’. Students participate from anywhere between 5 minutes - 15 minutes. A chime will ring to signal the end of the meditation when a prayer is shared.

For more information, please visit http://www.cominghome.org.au/

Welcome to the first term for 2020. I would like to introduce myself as the Year 8 Pastoral Leader along with the following Year 8 Homeroom Teachers 8.01 Ms Jane Edmiston , 8.02 Mr Keith Fainges, 8.03 Ms Ann-Marie Lesca / Ms Claire Jones and 8.04 Ms Kate Millan. I am looking forward to working closely with this Year 8 cohort and build on the strengths and friendships that were made last year. 

2020 has started off extremely well along with the wet weather and I am very pleased to say that everyone has returned excited and looking forward to continuing on where they left off in 2019. Students have been settled in well with their classes along with their chosen electives for Year 8.

The Year 8 team look forward to working with all Year 8 students and their families in making it a memorable and enjoyable year in their learning experiences. By now all students are back into the full swing of lessons and have received their allocated timetables and collected the necessary text books and student diary. They have also received their Term One Assessment Calendar, so can you please ask your child to see that, so you are aware of when their assessments are due for their chosen subjects. 

All students are required to take their diary and hat with them to Homeroom each Tuesday morning where their homeroom teacher will check to see that they have these items. Failing to have these items with them will result in a Uniform Detention. Students had their identification photos yesterday and every student should be commended for their Uniforms.

Last week saw six students nominate themselves to represent the Year 8 cohort for this year’s Student Representative Council. All students showed great courage and composure whilst presenting their speech to their peers on how they could contribute and why they would be the right person to represent all Year 8’s if elected. Congratulations to Preston Lehmann and Jorja Kelly who will be the Year 8 SRC Representatives for 2020.

Our Year 12 cohort will be hosting a fundraising event for their upcoming Formal, the ‘Freaky Friday Trivia’ night on Friday 13th of March.It is $15 per person with 8 people per table/team. Tickets must be purchased from the office by Friday 6th of March. The trivia night will be held at GSCC Lumen Christi Centre, from 6.45pm with the Bar opening at 6pm. This is an over 18 years event. Please see the flyer attached for more information.

Plenty of exciting opportunities in sport this month at Good Shepherd - Our school Confraternity Rugby league team and QISSN Netball teams have begun training/trials. If your student is interested in these teams please ensure that they are committed to everything involved, including training, fundraising and travelling etc. 

In other sports - We have had many students nominating themselves for upcoming North West trials which is awesome to see. If your child has great experience in the following sports please encourage them to continue nominating themselves.

Over the weekend the Isa Rats triathlon was held out at Lake Moondarra on Sunday morning, we had a team of students compete in the ‘Open Mixed’ Competition -Mirari Villanueva (Swimmer), Conner Boshoff (Runner), and Pratik Seegoolam (Bike). These three students put in a massive effort to come fourth place in this event where they were the youngest group and the only school aged team in this open event. They completed this Triathlon in 1:21:31, only 13 seconds behind third place. This was a great weekend for our students representing the College in this event, as well as the Junior event on the Saturday morning, which saw other GSCC individuals compete as well.

All Instrumental Ensembles have now commenced rehearsing for the term. If your child is interested in joining, permission notes can still be collected from the College Office. We already have some performances booked in for the year and looking forward to seeing the progress each ensemble makes.