This well attended workshop provided parents with an opportunity to learn more about applying for Secondary School and how to support your child with the transition.
Our children love to meet our elderly friends from the local community and there is much that the older and younger generations can learn from each other. As a thank you for being invited to St Mary's to enjoy School events, the residents of Bentley Court arranged a collection. We welcomed them to a special worship in order for them to share their generous donation, which will benefit our children's education!
St Mary's were happy to welcome our local community to a Ladywell Ward meeting, attended by local Councillors and representatives from Lewisham council. As part of the meeting, we were proud to share our Forest School garden and say thank you for the Lewisham NCIL funding that helped us to create the garden.
A special worship was held for each class to share their Courageous Advocacy projects, which they have chosen to benefit the local and wider communities that our school is blessed to be a part of. We were delighted to welcome back Ladywell Ward Councillor Laura Cunningham to St Mary's, she commented "It was so moving hearing about the local, national and international community projects the children are leading. What a special assembly full of talent, joy and kindness. I can’t wait to come back and see how you are getting on. Thank you to everyone."
Year 2 love to visit the Therapeutic Garden as part of their community work. They had lots of fun learning how to construct a compost heap in order to make the garden sustainable. The children have helped to create a beautiful and peaceful garden for the local community to enjoy.
Many of our parents, carers, pupils and staff speak languages other than English. St. Mary's is proud of the diverse and multi-cultural background of our families. Sometimes when families first arrive in the UK language can be a real barrier to obtaining information and settling in. It can be very hard and isolating for parents and children.
So at St. Mary's we are creating a database of language leaders amongst our parents, pupils and staff so that we can quickly get help in translating conversations for newly arrived parents and children and help them to settle in quickly. These parent language leaders came to an information session to learn more about the role and they appear on our website here: https://st-marys.lewisham.sch.uk/language-leaders.html. If you would like to be a language leader, please let Mrs Tildesley know. St. Mary's campaign for better housing continued with an action outside Lewisham Town Hall last month. We gathered there with people representing 17 local institutions from Lewisham Citizens to call time on poor housing in Lewisham.
Our school council designed some beautiful cards asking for houses to be made into homes as we highlighted that some accommodation is far from perfect. One of our parents spoke brilliantly about how poor accommodation affects everyday life as well as her physical and mental health. The children made lots of noise to attract attention and we then delivered the cards along with photos of current conditions that families are living in to Councillor Sophie Davies. Housing is a huge issue affecting our families - please join us for our next Housing Action Meeting in the near future! Lewisham Mental Health Support Team (MHST) work in schools with the whole school community – including staff, young people, and families – to support emotional wellbeing. They run individual and group interventions as well as things like assemblies, staff training, parent workshops, and supporting the school’s wellbeing strategy.
Today they provided a workshop for parents on managing children's fears and anxieties. We learned about how to spot the signs of fear and anxiety in our children - flight, fright, freeze, submit - and the things that might reinforce those anxieties. Finally we looked at ways of coping and encouraging our children to overcome their fears;
Planned and organised by our amazing children's Faith Group, the school community joined together to raise money at our Easter Fayre. The money raised will be donated to the charities supported by the Bishop of Southwark's Lent Appeal - including projects in Zimbabwe and Jerusalem. The children in the Faith Group included many exciting activities that were enjoyed by everyone - a cake sale, Easter egg hunt, egg painting, hook an Easter duck and an egg and spoon obstacle race.
We are extremely concerned about the state of some of our families' temporary accommodation, and this prompted us to take action.
This month, working alongside South London Citizens, Lewisham Refugee & Migrant Network and other local schools including Grinling Gibbons, we met with Lewisham Mayor Damien Egan and Councillor Sophie Davies to discuss some of the key issues facing residents in temporary accommodation. We also held a Community Conversations meeting in our Community Hub, where parents and carers were invited to come and share their stories, for example if their accommodation is covered in mould, they have repairs that are not being dealt with, or they have been bidding for a property for a long time without success. All these stories enable us to feed back to the decision makers in a bid to effect some positive change. |
Community ProjectsFind out about the community projects we are working on Archives
May 2024
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