One of the challenges schools and organisations are facing in wake of our world’s COVID experience is how to continue to have involvement from our communities while meeting our COVID obligations.

Our school community needs family involvement in the lives of our children. There are many things we are not able to provide for our children, if parents are not involved, volunteering, and helping out. One example is reading assistance. Many of our children benefit from having an adult sit and read with them. We know that unless our young readers get the opportunity to read to others, they will not experience the success they could in reading development. Some of our classes do activities in Art time that could use an extra pair of caring hands. We have various sporting events throughout the year and having a few extra caring, supportive adults at the events can make all the difference. We also run several afterschool basketball teams, and the majority of these are coached and led by our parents. We are really struggling at the moment to have enough parent coaches/assistants to have these teams operate. We need families to help and support our kids and their learning and experiences, and we also need families to support the parents who do take on this role.

There are a couple of things I am sure of in our Prescott Primary Northern community and that is we all care deeply about our children, and we are supportive of each other. Most of us have not experienced anything like the times we are now living in and even though the temptation is to shrink back to the security of looking after ourselves, Pr Fabiano, our Chapel speaker last week, gave me a wonderful reminder through quoting a Traditional African Proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” It has been ringing in my ears all week and resonating strongly.

If you would like to help out with volunteering at school, it would be much appreciated. We have Working With Children Checks and Reporting Abuse and Neglect programs that must be completed first, but we are more than happy to help with those things.

Have a great week with your kids,

Mark B