From the Principal
Anne Hastings – Principal
New Kindergarten classrooms
A very excited group of Kindy children began Term 4 in their beautiful new classrooms yesterday. Our old Art Block has been renovated into a colourful and welcoming space for the children (see the article under Jewish Life about the dedication of these rooms for more details). We are very grateful to Nathan Waller, a member of our Building Committee, who has overseen this project, and to our builders, Carrington, who have been fantastic to work with throughout the project, as we transformed what was a very tired space into a vibrant and imaginative classroom for the littlies. We will be featuring the space in later Ma Nishma articles, so that you all get an understanding of the children’s excitement to be in such engaging classrooms. Congratulations and thanks also go to the Kindy teachers, Emma Buzo and Carmen Yunis, as well as our maintenance team and the Kindy Hebrew teachers, who worked very hard to move the classrooms at the end of last term and to set up the new rooms so beautifully.
Celebration of the commitment of our staff to the School
On Monday and Tuesday morning of this week our staff were at School for professional learning. I’ll write about the substance of these days next week. On Monday afternoon we held a celebration to show our gratitude to our staff for their great dedication to the School over their years of service. Each staff member who has been at the School for 5 or more years received a beautiful certificate of thanks, and staff with 10 or more years of service were presented with a metal ‘leaf’, engraved with their name, to be placed on our gratitude tree in the Administration building near Reception.
Amazingly, even though we are only 33 years old as a School, we have 8 staff members who have been with the School for over 20 years (Erika Katalav, Tanya Jeckeln, Garry Case, Ray Francis, Carol Lee, Margaret Lowe, Sandy Lipworth, Anna Economou) and another 9 who have been here for between 15 and 20 years (Tina Greenhill, Lara Ephron, Esti Lipson, Elena Rosin, Adam Carpenter, Natalie Lijovic, Karon Rom and Sam Bauer). We also honoured Greg Churm who was with us for 18 years and retired at the end of last year, and Lana Woolf who was also a long-serving teacher. A further 35 staff have been here for more than 10 years.
Emanuel School would not be the school it is without the dedication of our staff and we are very grateful to them for their hard work, great care of our students and focus on guiding them to grow into exemplary adults. We thank our staff sincerely and congratulate them for their outstanding contributions to Emanuel School. When you are next in the Administration building, take a moment to look at our newest installation, the gratitude tree.
Welcome to Daniel Samowitz
On Monday we welcomed Daniel Samowitz to our staff. He is joining the Jewish Life department as an Informal Educator, taking over some of the role of our Shaliach, Or Mordo, who left us at the end of last term. Daniel is an ex-student of Emanuel School and has spent the last eight years in Israel working with youth groups and both university and school students there. He was the World Youth Leader for Habonim for a number of years. He is working with us three days per week, and is also working with the Emanuel Synagogue.
Mazal tov to:
- Danielle Rutstein (Year 8) and Oskar Beck (Year 9), for their success at the Combined Independent Schools Athletics carnival in the last week of Term 3 (see report re HS Sport in this issue)
- Sara Bortz and Ashne Amoils (Year 10), who volunteered to assist with with the B’nai B’rith Kids Club recently. I received an email from the organisers who said: “Both girls were a delight to have with us and are a credit to your school”.
- Those students and staff who joined the Emanuel Mud team on the first weekend of the holidays to compete at the central coast, and especially Mr Dean Kaplan for his initiative in organising the event.
Coming up
- School closed Monday 17 October and Tuesday 18 October for Sukkot
- HSC Explained for parents of the class of 2016, 19 October 10:30 am, LLC
- School closed Monday 24 October and Tuesday 25 October for Shemini Atseret and Simchat Torah
Quote of the week
‘Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students’. [Solomon Ortiz]
Best wishes for a relaxing weekend.
