A Letter from Our Principal, James Goodlet - Term 3 Week 8

Spring has now unwrapped the flowers, 

Day is fast reviving, 

Life in all her growing powers, 

Towards the light is striving. 

All the world with beauty fills… 

So wonderful to see Spring in all its glory at Orana. Children are joyful, birds are singing and the blossoms are bursting. We have had the honour of hosting many visitors to our school lately and it is such a pleasure to walk through our colourful grounds, full of life, and greeting friendly, engaged students. 

We have been fortunate to have Lisa Devine, a Eurythmist (among other things), from Sydney visit us recently. I have known and worked with Lisa for about fifteen years. She has been working with Orana staff over the last few years and did her first sessions with Orana students on Tuesday 1 and Wednesday 2 September. She did lessons with Kindergarten, Yr 1, Yr 2 and Yr 3, and she did a session on Tuesday with the College of Teachers and on Wednesday with the EC staff. Eurythmy is an expressive movement art that turns speech and music into visible physical gestures. It was created in the early 20th century by Dr Rudolf Steiner and his wife, Marie Steiner-von Sivers. The name comes from Greek roots meaning "harmonious rhythm". It is distinct from mime or conventional dance; every sound in language or note in music has a specific corresponding movement. Along with Bothmer gymnastics, it enriches our HPE program by bringing soulful, heart-centred movement to our students’ (and teachers’) lives. Steiner/Waldorf schools in Australia work with Eurythmy in different ways. Some schools have specialist Eurythmy teachers on staff taking regular sessions, others have visiting specialists, others have class teachers incorporating it, and some have a combination of the above, and some have no Eurythmy at all. Orana has had little or no specialist Eurythmy teaching students in the last 12 years As part of our Strategic Plan 2024-2027 we are committed to gradually introducing Eurythmy to the school. We have introduced it to Orana teachers with sessions in professional learning days and faculty meetings with the view to them incorporating it into their teaching practice and now younger students have been introduced to a specialist in a small way. Our plan, in the next two years, is to build up to eventually having more regular specialist lessons and experiences throughout the whole school. 

There have been recent discussions and deliberations in our school community and more broadly on how or whether we can convey images of students and staff on public platforms and the risks of AI generated content. It has highlighted the need for us to have real connection with each other, to be physically present, as this is the most effective way we can determine if something or someone is real or true. We are fortunate to be able to have these real engagements with students in a school setting but it is becoming harder for us to engage in this way between adults nowadays. Our interaction with the virtual world has seen a decline in our interest and skill in real life interactions. Parent meetings and information sessions are not as well attended as they were in the past, which is the case in most schools it seems. Is this because people are too busy or not interested in learning about child development? Or are we reluctant to put ourselves in new social situations? Maybe, parents are worn out by the chaos in the world outside and don’t want to have to think about other things? At the recent Orana Secondary School Learning Journey it was heartening to be in real conversation with people, discussing the work the students are doing and checking in on our parents to see if we can improve in our communication and engagement. From this brief show-of-hands survey in the Overture Hall, it seems that parents are engaged with communication in the form of this newsletter, class chat groups and Schoolbox and not so much with social media. There was some concern about the large amount of email traffic, although there was an overall sense that communication was going well between the school and parents. We would like the whole Orana community to feel a sense of belonging here and any feedback as to how we can do this is appreciated. There will be a survey sent out for parents and guardians in Term 4 which will capture this and other information.  

I look forward to seeing you (in real life!) at events and festivities in the last few weeks of term.