Guidance Counsellors’ Message to Our Students and Their Families 

With the holidays and Christmas around the corner, we hope that you will all have a wonderful, enjoyable, safe, and blissful time.

This period away from school can be a wonderful opportunity to catch up with family and friends and - not to forget - check in with yourself. It is also a time for stillness, reflection, and reconnecting with your true spirit, your lovely surroundings, activities you enjoy and unstructured time. 

While unstructured time provides a great opportunity to rest, review, and reset, it also provides an opportunity for potentially problematic behaviours to take further root and create habits that are hard to break when it is time to return to school the next year. One of those behaviours is the issue of screen time. Our SchoolTV resource on our school website has a Cyber Safety Series, which covers the topics of online gaming, managing screen time, impact of gambling, internet addiction, online pornography, digital reputation, sexting, and cyberbullying. In support of your efforts to manage your children over the holiday break we encourage you to take a look at the series, please see the link here - SchoolTV Cyber Safety Series.

Finally, we all know that sometimes, things do not go as planned. Also, young people might feel a bit isolated during the holidays or find themselves trapped in thoughts and unpleasant emotions.

During the holidays, assistance for you, your friends and your families is still available.

Take very good care! Looking forward to reconnecting with you in 2025! 

Peter Graham, Katharina Lane and Havva Murat-Maksuti

Guidance Counsellors