This year has offered us many new insights as individuals and as a school. Now we have time to reflect on this learning and use it to enhance the experience at St Mary’s School and further develop as a place of belonging. We wish the Form V girls and a number of other girls who leave St Marys, well as they embrace new environments. To the staff who leave, Mr Strydom, Mr Parenzee, Mrs Stapelberg, Mrs Oosthuizen, Mrs Whitfield and Mr Watt, we thank them for their contribution to our school and we wish them well.

Our lives are busy during the academic year and we have many demands placed on us but it is rewarding to look back over the year and assess what we have achieved as pupils, teachers and the school.

Dr Ela Manga addressed parents at a recent Muse Morning and I want to use her words to reflect on our busy lives before we breathe out and embrace a time of rest:

“With little time for rest, I realised that sometimes our deepest state of rest can be experienced in the midst of doing something we love. We can keep going when we choose to surround ourselves with the people who love and support us. We replenish our energy when we shift our perspective from fear to gratitude, when we can respond to life with an open heart and will, when we can listen deeply to the wisdom of our bodies as part of nature, when we can laugh at ourselves, celebrate our humanity and honour our divinity.”

My Christmas wish for you is: as we celebrate God’s birth into our world as Christ this Christmas, may God inspire us to gaze with the eyes of children at the wonder of God’s presence in each other and in all creation. A blessed Christmas to you all.

Deanne King

Head of School