The Season of Advent
By Mr Stuart Ralph, Principal
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all members of our community a safe and very merry Christmas and holiday period.
Within the Church's liturgical year, we are currently celebrating Advent. Advent serves as a period of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas.
This year, Advent started on Sunday 3 December and will encompass four weeks, with each week dedicated to a specific theme represented by the lighting of candles on an Advent wreath.
The themes of each week are hope, peace, joy and love. The use of distinctive candle colours, such as purple for penance and royalty and pink or rose for rejoicing, adds symbolic depth to the observance.
I encourage all students and their families to celebrate Christmas at one of our Parish services.
Academic Success
This week, we celebrated the Academic ceremonies for our students in Years 7-9, and it was wonderful to have so many parents in the audience to be a part of these special ceremonies.
Our service awards are a reminder to us all that leadership manifests itself in the value of service. Jesus himself, recognised as a leader, used his influence to serve others. It has been encouraging to witness how our students have grown in confidence, faith, knowledge and understanding during the last twelve months.
For those who received an academic award, I wish to congratulate them on their personal achievements and for being wonderful role models for their peers, modelling what it takes to be a learner at St Brendan-Shaw College. Our Endeavour award recipients have modelled commitment, hard work and determination; for this, they are congratulated.
Our Year 9 staff has been busy preparing for The Rite Journey in 2024, spending the last two days with the founder of the program, Mr Andrew Lyons. For our Year 9 parents, you will be invited to an evening early next year, where the program will be explained to you in detail, along with important dates for parental involvement.
I would like to congratulate our senior students, who have received their results this week. St Brendan-Shaw College students have once again performed very strongly, with preliminary results released. We will publish more specific details celebrating the outstanding achievements of our students shortly.
College School Bags
Midford, the uniform shop located at the College, is now restocked with our College school bags. A reminder to families that students in Years 7-11 are required to have a College school bag in 2024, and these are subsidised in-store and selling for $35 until the start of the 2024 school year (this price is not available online). For students in Year 10, a reminder that you will be given a bag as part of your fee structure for 2024. You will receive an email regarding collection from the uniform shop.
Congratulations
We congratulate Chloe Casey, who has been selected for the Tasmanian U17 and U19 Women's cricket teams in Brisbane.
We look forward to seeing Year 7, 11 and 12 students return on Wednesday 7 February, and Year 8-10 students on Thursday 8 February.
Have a wonderful and joyous Christmas period.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Stuart Ralph
Principal
