Dear members of the MLMC community
As I sit to write to you for the second time this week, I again reiterate that I hope you are well and coping with all the challenges currently before us. As I said in my letter to parents this week, these are challenging times and this pandemic will be an event that marks all our lives. As you reflect on how it impacts on you, think too on how it will impact on the lives of your children. What will their story be when they reflect on it and what story will they tell their grandchildren?
I think the answer to the above questions are important. I understand that fear is prevalent at the moment. We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic which fills the news services every day. Numbers abound about COVID-19 sufferers, deaths and transmissions state by state and country by country. The economics that parallel social isolation themselves are worrying to us all. Unemployment is on the increase and this impacts people’s lives. Supermarket shelves are still bare if you seek toilet paper or pasta and people with masks wander our streets. Can you just stay home and wait it out? I think not.
I think we have a responsibility to ensure that this period is far more than one of becoming couch potatoes and having family binges of Netflix. I understand the dire situation currently being faced and even after treatment or a vaccine is possible, the road to recovery will be long and for some, perhaps, impossible.
I think it important that we remain people of hope and remain positive as much as we can. This time can be a special family time. Can we not make memories for children of family dinners and game nights, of family discussions and joke sessions, of camping in the backyard or of special social media sessions. Can we not make this a time when family comes first? Take away the busyness of the world outside, park the car and turn off the phone and read books and do jigsaw puzzles. Have family cooking sessions and garden together.
I know some will think me a fantasist, who romanticises an ideal of a time past. Some may say the worry of economics make this a dream, but why does that have to be the case? You cannot change the economics at the moment. You can only do what you can do and you can only influence what you can influence, so be as positive as possible and ensure that in every way possible this is a positive learning experience as much as it can be.
Let us be the people of hope and faith and love that we are called to be.
In this time of remote learning, my belief is that students and families are having positive experiences. Students are learning. The emails I receive from families indicate that the teaching staff are providing a learning experience for our students that is positive and well received. In fact, I receive emails congratulating our teaching staff for their great effort and the collaborative way they have implemented our program. I am eternally proud of and grateful for our staff and the work they are now doing. I am grateful for the work of our students who have been exercising, cooking, developing skills of resilience, flexibility and self-directed learning that will serve them well.
Some parents have indicated that they worry that when remote learning is finished, on returning to a classroom-based curriculum that their child will be behind. I do not believe that to be the case. A recent article on the ABC (read it HERE) discussed this very construct, having looked at some recent scenarios, and it made three very clear points:
- schools in Christchurch, New Zealand, were closed for weeks following the 2011 earthquakes and did not have access to the online learning that is now available
- student results actually went up in the final exams and high school students did not drop out
- education expert Professor John Hattie says Australian students could lose a whole term out of the school year without falling significantly behind international counterparts.
Anzac Day
It would be remiss of me to finish without mentioning Anzac Day. Anzacs will not be forgotten to us amidst the tragedy that surrounds us — coronavirus and the death of four police officers this week (those that served to protect us). Now is the time to remember and pray for all those who have given their lives in service.
Mr John Ryan, our Humanities Faculty Learning Leader, prepared a short one-page introduction to a seven-minute video that was our memorial service conducted during Period 1 today. After the service, all classes observed a minute silence. I provide a link HERE so that you, too, might use the video on Anzac Day tomorrow.
We will not be gathering at dawn services, we will not be attending any marches or even marching. We will line our streets with lights shining at dawn tomorrow in social isolation, but in unity, as we remember them.
God bless
Philip A Morison
Principal
For the Fallen
by Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
hey mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
We will remember them. Lest we forget.
