The Immediate and the Future

Over the last few weeks I have had many meetings and conversations around the future of Channel, our growth and direction. It is an exciting space, to be thinking about next year or even 5 or 10 years down the track. But the struggle for me is that the things ‘today’ are just as important and exciting. Things like encouraging NAPLAN participants, visiting school campers, walking outside amongst the students, chatting with them in the classrooms, seeing the love for learning about bridges, or discrimination or the continents, dealing with behaviours in students and balancing staff absences and birthdays. 

It’s tempting to stay in the immediate, the today, but the bustle of that will stop us from doing more. The danger of staying in the immediate is that we lose sight of the bigger picture or forget the long term planning, the strategic stuff. There are times we need to remove ourselves from the immediate to focus on future planning. Do we allow ourselves enough time to do this? Asking ourselves the bigger questions:

• Why is Channel here?

• Where do we want Channel to go?

• How big should we grow? \

• If we aim for 180 students then what happens to the other families who would like to join us and long for a Christ-centred education for their children?

• Are we providing the best practice teaching and learning?

It is important for all our stakeholders to think about these bigger questions. I value the input of our parent body through the School Council members, as your representative voice, as well as our School Board. The students also have their opinions and it is important to listen to them. As a staff we too have times to wrestle with some of these questions for future planning. It was therefore important for all us to go through the process of completing the surveys. Thank you for your voice. We will share the summaries of the findings with you in the near future.

In all these things let us not lose sight of who we are Channel Christian School. A place where we are free to teach and learn all things through the lens of the truths from the gospel, honouring our God in all we do. What a blessing to have such a strong unchanging identity for the immediate and the future.

Margaret Louw — Principal

You're Mum is a great new book that helps readers empathise with other people's experiences. It also enables Mum's to look back with fondness and remember some of those special moments of from their own lives.

Year 4 student Milly really enjoyed this fantastic book. She says, It's 'heartbreakingly lovely, very funny at times, and extremely true. I’d recommend it to Mums, because it has very good advice; also, the pictures are very good, it had a lot of experience and personal opinion.'

Thanks for the review Milly!

Today we participated in the National Simultaneous Storytime, when approximately 1 Million students and children from all over Australia read or listened to the same story. This year the story was read by an Astronaut from the International Space Station! We had a great time listening to her read to us and watch how she wasn't affected by gravity!

If you'd like to watch the story being read again its available via Youtube.

We still have delicious frozen Croquettes for sale. $25.00 for a pack of 12. Payment and pick up from the school office. Don’t miss out!

School Banking is a great way to practice regular savings.

Remember, TUESDAY is School Banking day and students can bring in their weekly deposit to the school office.  

For every deposit made at school, students will receive a Dollarmites token. Once students have individually collected 10 tokens they can redeem them for a School Banking reward item.   

If you would like to know more about School Banking, please ask for a 2021 School Banking program information pack via their website.

We have started our 6 week collection of any crumb free bread and wrap bags. Collect your family’s bags and place them into the bin at school. We are already in the running for a free outdoor gym circuit (made from the recycled bread bags), however, for every 5kg of bread bags we collect, of any brand, we get credits toward Physical Education equipment.

Employment Opportunities

Applications are invited for the position of Maintenance Officer/Coordinator at Calvin Christian School. To APPLY or learn more please visit the Christian Schools Tasmania website.