This coming weekend we celebrate Mother's Day. I am particularly looking forward to our annual Mother’s Day High Tea being held at the Primary Campus on Friday. It is always such a beautiful celebration of the amazing women in our community - gentle, courageous and tireless - who carry out the diverse and faith-filled act of mothering.

The act of mothering the young, and not so young, can be messy, both in a literal and a figurative sense. There are no guaranteed outcomes; there can be moments of pain as well as incredible joy; and there are definitely lots of laughs along the way (especially if you can keep your sense of humour). There are always plenty of people ready to judge our varied approaches to mothering, and sometimes, we can also be our own harshest critic. So, this Mother's Day, let us find ways to lift up and encourage all mothers and also remember to show compassion and kindness to ourselves. We are all doing an incredible job!

Happy Mother’s Day.

An introduction to Restorative Practices and our Partnership with Real Schools

This year, our school has made a very important decision to work with an organisation called Real Schools to enhance our practices as a Restorative Community. This is not a decision we have made lightly. We’ve been observing and reflecting on what is happening in the world of education when it comes to creating a strong school culture, building effective relationships, resolving conflict and improving student behaviour and bullying; and we believe that Restorative Practices provide the most effective way to enhance our work in this area. 

Working restoratively is really all about asking the right questions of students when things go wrong. You see, most approaches have us putting our detective hats on and focusing everything in the past. It really doesn’t get us very far because we never get to the present or the future. Put simply, when something goes wrong, a Restorative Approach involves us asking children questions like:

• What happened?
• How has that made people feel?
• And what action needs to be taken to make that better?

The process provides opportunities for us to teach young people how to take responsibility for their actions and, over time, to help them do that better and better and better.

There is, however, a lot more involved with Restorative Practices and we will provide a significant amount of information to families over the course of the year. Our ongoing Partnership with Real Schools is supporting and resourcing us to make this change, so stay tuned for more information on this exciting development for our school.

God Bless

Mrs Angela Myles

Executive Principal

Catholic Schools Week was a showcase of the amazing community at St Matthews. A large number of families were able to join us across the week for our ‘Open Classrooms’, the Staff v Students Touch Football and the St Matthews Spelling Bee. This support continued for students heading to Coolah for the Diocesan Cross Country and also to Dubbo with the Netball NSW Schools Cup. Amongst all of the busyness and activities throughout the week, we also presented an information session to families across the Mudgee community who are interested in having their children start Kindergarten at St Matthews in 2024. A very big thank you to all involved on a very successful week. 

Information has been emailed to families this week about the 2023 Gulgong Eisteddfod taking place in Week 5 this term, on 25th & 26th May. Prior to this date, on Tuesday 23rd of May, we will have a rehearsal for all classes in the school Gym. With 21 classes, we have had to separate this into three sessions as follows:

• Infants (K-2): 9:30am - 11:00am
• Years 3 & 4: 12:20pm - 1:20pm
• Years 5 & 6: 2:10pm - 3:10pm

With many families unable to attend in Gulgong, we invite any families who wish to watch their child/ren perform, to join us at any of these times.

The primary campus will soon begin a vegetable Garden Club on site and hope this will provide the opportunity for students with a genuine interest in this area to assist. To begin this will occur during one break each week, supervised by teachers. We hope to share this program with other members of the community in the future and encourage those interested to keep an eye out for further information in coming newsletters.

Justin Yeo

Head of Campus, Primary

Catholic Schools Week - Experience the Spirit of Community

Last week our school community celebrated Catholic Schools Week. 

The theme for this year’s celebrations was: Experience the Spirit of Community. 

Throughout the week we had the opportunity to explore this theme by participating in activities in and out of the classroom. Catholic Schools Week is about strengthening relationships between all those who make our school the wonderful community that it is – students, staff, families, priests, parishioners and members of the wider community. 

One of the highlights of the week was our open classrooms. Thank you to all those families who were able to join us. 

Service 

This term sees our St Matthews Way value of SERVICE take centre stage. It’s a word that we try to instil in our students at St Matthews but more importantly, it's a term that we want students to live out in our community. Jesus taught the importance of service. He fed crowds of hungry people. He washed His disciples' feet. He healed the sick. The concept of the St Matthews Way was to enliven the values and service was all encompassing of the other four. Our purpose is to be good examples of Jesus' message and we can do that by serving others. How can you share the message of service this week?

Project Compassion

Speaking of Service, the school community would like to congratulate all our families on their contributions for our Caritas and Project Compassion. Once tallied the final total was over $2400. This is a great achievement going towards a very important cause for those less fortunate in communities all over the world. 

Confirmation

We are deep into the program for Confirmation and are looking forward to the Retreat day coming up on Tuesday 30th May, followed by the Sacrament of Confirmation being celebrated at St Mary’s Parish on the weekend of the 3rd and 4th June. 

Ross McKeown

Leader of Mission

Our annual St Matthews Stage Spelling Bee took place last Friday. It was such a success, with a huge congratulations to all students who represented their grade. We acknowledge all students who participated and demonstrated courage by standing in front of their peers to battle it out for a top 2 position and the opportunity to represent our school in the next stage, at the Diocese level.

During the Stage 2 Spelling Bee we saw Harper, Quinn, Nash, Abel, Bonnie, Phoebe, Mateo, Alexia, Carmelina, Kobe and Rafferty compete against each other. Round 1 saw Phoebe eliminated, followed by Abel in round 2. Carmelina and Mateo made it through to round 3 and Nash and Rafferty were knocked out in round 4. In an intense final round Harper and Quinn were eventually eliminated with Bonnie and Kobe making it through to the next stage. Well done all Stage 2 participants. 

Stage 3 saw all students making it through the first round, with Jayde and Isla knocked out in round 2. Jonathan and Adam were eliminated in round 3 and Olivia, Stephanie and Holly during round 4. Skylah and Ameila were fierce competitors making it all the way until round 7, until they were eliminated. Arlo, just missing out on top 2, was eliminated in round 8, leaving Oscar and Violet victorious. 

All students will be acknowledged with certificates at this week's Primary Assembly. We congratulate Bonnie, Kobe, Violet and Oscar all the best for the Diocese Spelling Bee to be held in Wellington during Week 5. 

Mellisa Hunt

Stage 3 Coordinator

Flexischools

 

Don't forget the Primary Canteen is offering Birthday Buckets and Classroom Cupcakes, available for order via the Flexischools app. Please note these items must be ordered a week in advance.

Alicia Cowden

Primary Canteen Manager

Change of Opening Hours 

Please note a change of opening hours for the Midford Uniform Shop. From the beginning of Term 2, we will be open on Tuesday's and Thursday's from 8.00am to 4.00pm. 

• Online orders for primary will be delivered to the school office on Tuesday's & Thursday’s at 1:30pm. Cut off time for ordering is 1.00pm.
• Online orders for secondary will be delivered to the school office on Wednesday's and Friday's at 9.00am. Cut off time for ordering is 3:30pm the day before.
• Online orders for shop pick up - pick up only within the shop hours, please allow 1 hour after ordering for collection.

- EFTPOS only, no cash.