Year 7 Pastoral Guardian

Dear Parents/Caregivers, 

One of the greatest joys I’ve experienced as the Acting Pastoral Guardian has been the joyous stories and connections I’ve made with a large number of the students. I get a broad smile and easy talk about what they enjoy doing, from equestrian, swimming, run club, hockey, netball, weekend camping trips or getting away to the coast for a day.

These stories are their happy times, and more often than not, they are expressed in terms of how their parents did things to make these experiences happen. “Mum watched me play netball”, “Dad drove me to the coast, and we had fish and chips for lunch at the park near the beach…” and so on. What we don’t recognise, at times, is how much these experiences tell us about our daughters’ relationship with us, and how much it means to them.

As a parent of two daughters, I find that many of my best moments, the stories I retell with pride, are about my moments together with my children. My best moments are their best moments too. They also tell others these same stories. I overheard my oldest daughter, an adult now, talking to her university friends about things we did together when she was much younger. I came out of these stories with a glowingly positive review (not always the case, especially when we needed to assist her with making wiser choices) and this got me thinking about the importance of the little things we do together, how these helped build mutual trust, respect and a sense of joy. Being present in our daughters’ life is vital. They are craving this connection even if they don’t always show it.

One thing I try to do is let each and every student know that I see them, and I recognise their strengths. Whilst schools are in the business of making judgments, we need our students to feel safe and secure to participate, to learn and to be themselves. Our daughters need to know that who they are is fine, and that they don’t need to measure themselves against some impossible media standard to rate themselves. This doesn’t mean we don’t assist them to be better at times, to be more focused in class, to be more caring in their language and so on. It means that like St Francis demonstrated, everyone is deserving of our love and that just by being born we are worthy of God’s love and the love and respect of all. As parents we become the safe spaces for our daughters to express ideas, to learn, and grow, and thrive, and flourish. We are the caretakers of their weird and wonderful moments as they discover who they are and find their place as they grow into the young women we are already starting to see before us.

There are many resources out in the world that help us understand our role as parents of girls. I highly recommend checking out the Madonna King interview in the Raising Girls page, and the Professor Lea Waters interview in the Happiness and Gratitude page on SchoolTV. The work of Professor Waters in the area of positive psychology is changing the way schools worldwide provide classroom environments that are happy, safe and engaging spaces for learning. She has also written a great book about parenting “The Strength Switch: Strengths Based Parenting” which I highly recommend. 

Recent Year 7 fun!