Living Jesus and Edmund in Our Hearts - Forever
Parent Teacher Feedback Meetings
Thank you for your participation in and engagement with these meetings on Thursday and Friday. Your support of your sons and our teaching staff is appreciated and valued.
The follow-up conversations with your son, whether he was present or to include him in the process following your conversations are vital.
I offer again the simple framework of:
What am I going to keep doing? (a positive skill or habit and some praise)
What am I going to stop doing? (a habit that is letting me down)
What am I going to start doing? (some feedback that I can work on and apply)
Feast Day of Blessed Edmund Rice
Tomorrow, we join Catholic Schools in the Edmund Rice tradition, Edmund Rice Communities and the International Congregation of the Christian Brothers in celebrating the Feast Day of Blessed Edmund Rice, the Founder of our schools.
Please watch this video message from Edmund Rice students from fellow schools throughout the world made especially for this occasion:
This day is especially significant this year given that Queensland is celebrating 150 years of the ministry of the Christian Brothers in our Archdiocese and Ambrose Treacy College is marking 10 years as a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice tradition.
This special day actually falls on May 5th but we will gather for Mass on Tuesday in thanksgiving for life and work of Blessed Edmund as will all communities throughout the globe. In their practical way, many years ago, the Christian Brothers chose this day as a time when all of their over 250 schools throughout the world are in session and not on term break so that all can gather internationally in communion with one another.
In the Catholic tradition, to be named as “Blessed” there has been a miracle attributed to your intercession through prayer. The Holy See declared that Edmund Rice had interceded in the health recovery of a person through prayers to him asking for his assistance and he was announced as Blessed in 1996. This is considered a pathway to being canonized whereby if a second miracle were to be formally attributed to Blessed Edmund’s intercession, he would be declared as “Saint Edmund Rice”.
Edmund Rice was a successful Catholic businessman born in Callan and worked in the port City of Waterford where he was married, and he and his wife had shared the joy of having a baby girl together. Sadly, Mrs Rice passed away quite suddenly, and Edmund confronted great sorrow and hardship and along with raising his daughter with the support of extended family, turned more and more to his faith and good works of social justice. Eventually, through the inspiration and encouragement of Nano Nagle and her Presentation Sisters in Cork, and his step sister, Joan, Edmund started a project working with the poor boys of Waterford in leadership, learning and service. He opened his first school in a stable in New Street, Waterford, in 1802 and later, his first formal school, Mt Sion which still operates today.
Throughout the 19th and 20th century, Edmund Rice’s vison flourished with Patrick Ambrose Treacy, one of the second generation of Irish Christian Brothers, coming to Australia in 1868.
On May 5th each year, we especially celebrate and give thanks for Blessed Edmund Rice’s vision, sacrifice and dedication. Thousands of young people in Australia were liberated from poverty and hardship and given an opportunity through Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition in late 19th and 20th century Australia. The opportunities we share today are a result of the partnerships, generosity and dedication of the Christian Brothers, lay staff, parents, students and past students of our schools. In a special way, we remember all of these people on this day and always.
As Edmund led his Brothers in saying, and Ambrose did the same in all of the communities in Australia in which he lived and stayed; Live Jesus in Our Hearts-Forever.
God Bless.
Chris Ryan, College Principal
