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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

Dear parents, The House Cross Country will be run and won this coming Tuesday at the Jindera Country Club. While it is the most accessible sporting carnival, it is also the most testing of students' resolve and persevering spirit. When will I give up, is the question that may not become consciously considered even while it is being actively implemented. At the end of his life, St Paul talks about being spent, literally 'poured out in sacrifice.' "I have fought the good fi

Dear parents, The skeleton. Not the one in the Science lab, the one at the Winter Olympics. Have you seen it? It's when someone rides a mechanic's creeper on their tummy, headfirst at 140k/h on a thin track composed entirely of ice and death. The latter looks to be a heartbeat away, which I suppose is why we watch it in horror, but watch nonetheless. Lent can feel like the skeleton. We dive in head first only to wonder early on whether we've made a terrible mistake. But,

Dear parents, What a delight to welcome students back to school this week! I hope you've had a happy and relatively productive start. Sometimes it's the anticipation that kills me, while the getting-back-into-it is a relief. The first day of school coincided with the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in which Simeon's long-held anticipation of the Saviour's coming was rewarded by the sight of Jesus. His expectant faith was a sign of the trust that issued from God to S

Dear parents, In the course of a recent Religion lesson, where Year 11 has been learning about the virtue of magnanimity, I asked the students to collaborate with a partner on a list of the 3 most admirable people in human history. The list could not include Our Lord and include only one saint. Of the lists proposed, two of them included a member of the SMMC teaching staff (though not me!). I have to admit that their feedback was pleasantly unexpected, but nonetheless gra

Dear parents, I was struck by how capably SMMC students handled the debate topic at this week's House Gala Day. The proposition read thus: In one of his novels, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that "Beauty will save the world." This is true now, more than ever. Though I leaned towards thinking, or perhaps just wishing, that the affirmative had the stronger case, I found myself agreeing with and fascinated by the arguments presented by each speaker, whether they be for or agains