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Dear parents, Eddie McGuire famously used to introduce The Footy Show saying, "It's been a big week in footy." Well, to paraphrase, it has been a big week, month, term and year so far at school. Yesterday's farewell to the Year 12 graduating class was a fitting tribute to the capability and perseverance of students and support of their families. The graduands were gifted with Rosary Beads and a Bible to help with keeping up daily prayer. In a particularly moving part of t

Dear Parents, When Australia's first national census was taken 10 years after Federation in 1911, there was no confusion about the religious question, nor about the answer. 96% of Australians were happy to report Christianity as their religion. That 96% statistic was Lyle Shelten's point of departure for his address at this week's excellent Albury Wodonga Prayer Breakfast. The world needed God as much then as it does now. God doesn't change, but the world seems to have mo

Dear parents, Once Norway led the world in the adoption of EdTech and one-to-one iPads; now it is leading the world in the other direction, having banned phones in classrooms in 2024, funding paper textbooks rather than laptops and heavily restricting the student use of AI. Reporting an extraordinary 60 per cent fall in school student mental health interventions, an uptick in academic achievement and a reduction in bullying since these measures were taken, the correlative e

Dear Parents, Last week was National Vocations Awareness Week, which coincided with the visit of Vianney College seminarians and Fr Jomer Calma. Fr Jomer works especially with the first year seminarians. As an aside, I am particularly grateful to Bishop Edwards for allowing Fr Jomer to visit. All the priests of the diocese were called to Wagga Wagga that day for a meeting of priests and principals, save Fr Jomer. It was the feast of the Transfiguration, but, as it fell just

Dear parents, I've heard it said that growth comes outside of one's comfort zone. If this is true, there will be much growth this term amidst the large number of challenging events and activities. Representative athletics carnivals held this week and next, the Kinder 100 Days, Book Week, Science Week, Careers Night, Fathers Day Stall and the Festival of the Arts are just a sample of what is to come. Pride & Prejudice is testing its cast and crew, though not beyond limits

Dear parents, The College received a certificate of appreciation this week from the Australian War Memorial in recognition of the "exemplary behaviour and conduct ... and the level of respect for the commemorative role of the Memorial and involvement in the Education Program" during the recent Year 11&12 trip to Canberra. At both the War Memorial and Old Parliament House, experienced tour guides commented that our SMMC students were the best groups they had worked with. While

Dear Parents, In the previous newsletter, I spoke about the SMMC response to AI and the shift in schools more broadly to a focus on learning integrity rather than digital literacy. While many schools that have adopted one-to-one laptops, iPads and digital texts are finding this shift to be an agonising reversal of policy, practice and strategic resourcing, this is not so at SMMC. In part this can be explained by an innate wariness of screen overuse and the tendency of the i

Dear Parents, AI continues to draw intense interest among educators. Universities seem to be genuinely grappling with the phenomenon of AI-generated assessments; for them the question is more around how to build AI capacity while ensuring academic integrity. For schools, the issue is more around learning integrity than capacity-building. If a university education is geared to professional pathways, school is about foundational learning. In this way AI marks a genuine shift

Dear parents, All bar one of my children have moved out of home or are studying full time in Sydney, and my youngest is spending this weekend with her siblings in the harbour city. Nappy-changing and nighttime get ups is a long way in the rear vision mirror, but how to be present to my children in this new phase is a real challenge. I once asked an older friend what his strategy was and he said that he set aside time, an appointment if you will, with each of his children

Dear parents, Everywhere I turn, it's Michelle Milthorpe. When I catch up on some news on YouTube, there she is again. We don't get a residential postal service in Jindera, but that's not stopping Michelle Milthorpe. When I unlock the parcel compartment of the letterbox, I half expect to see her jump out to hand me a flyer. The Farrer by-election feels quite different to a general election, which tends to be marked by the de facto presidentialisation we are long accusto