Sunday, August 18, 2013

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Next week we host Paul Ferris and his team from the Catholic Review Office. They will come
into our school to look at how our school’s Special Character manifests itself. The key phrase I
believe in this is “our schools” special character. All schools are different because they serve
different communities or Parishes comprised of different mixes of people.
St Mary’s special Catholic Character will be subtly different from other Catholic Primary Schools;
we are the only surviving full primary, we are the only Catholic School on the Taieri, we have
children from rural and urban families, our ethnic mix and the backgrounds of our staff,
pupils, parents and parish will be unique. Even our physical setting in a new school is unique.
The challenge for us all is to ensure that within our unique setting we ensure that our school lives
the values and Charism of The Mercy Sisters and the Catholic Church. That our pupils live by a
moral compass based on the Gospel and that as a school at the beginning of the twenty first
century we ensure that we are instilling in our pupils all that they need to be Catholic Christians
in an ever changing modern world.
John Wayne in his epic film ‘True Grit’ said “looking back is a bad habit” and to a degree I can
see what he means. We don’t want to become focused on the past and things that we can’t
change, but we equally need to consider the saying “those who don’t learn from history are
doomed to repeat it”. What we need to do is to learn from the past to give our young people the
skills, values and attitudes that they need to work in the present and to move confidently into the
future.
Have a great week.
Mike Brosnahan
Principal

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