Junior School

- Mr Stephen Nelson, Head of Junior School

Rules for raising children in the age of technology

A recent article in The Weekend Australian highlighted the difficulties faced by parents raising children in the age of constantly accessible technology. American social psychologist, Jonothan Haidt, offers the following notion to parents.

How would you feel as a parent volunteering your first child, aged nine, to be raised on Mars, in an ambitious project to create the first human settlement outside Earth? Your child is keen to do it, and loads of their friends are going as well. But after investigation, you find that no proper studies have been conducted about the impact on children living on Mars and, even worse, the planners do not seem to care about the children’s safety. Would you let them go?

Heidt contends this is exactly what has happened on Earth, before our eyes, in our homes and with disastrous consequences for our children. His thesis is childhood has been transformed by a small group of big tech companies. Since 2007, smartphones have changed the lives of all those who use them. It has been a ‘rewiring’ of childhood, with new technologies. Heidt says most parents are fed up and hate what is going on and they want to change, but don’t know how. He put forward the following tips for parents:

Limit non-educational screentime
Encourage technology free sleepovers
Encourage walking to school
After school is for free play
Go camping and don’t take technology
Learn how to use parental controls and content filters
Shared meals should always be technology free
Don’t allow devices in bedrooms
Consider a ‘digital sabbath’ each week

Staffing

This week we farewell Mrs. Katie Dopheide from the Early Learning Centre. Katie has made a tremendous impact in the Early Learning Centre and with the After School Care program. We wish her all the very best in her future endeavours and thank her for her contributions to College, as a staff member and parent.

House Cross Country - Mirranatwa

Tuesday saw ELC 4 to Year 6 students, teachers, parents and grandparents make the trek to the Victoria Valley for our inaugural Mirranatwa House Cross Country. We were blessed with amazing autumnal weather.

If you have ever spent time in a forested area, listened to the birds and watched the sunshine filter through the trees, you’ve participated in the Japanese practice of ‘shrinrin-yoku’ or forest bathing. Breathing in clean, fragrant air and soaking in the sights of the textured ground and the shapes of the leaves in the sky. Touching the soft, green moss carpeting the shaded stones or the rough bark on the trees. Letting the stillness around you influence your state of mind and make you forget the constant motion of daily life. Tuesday was a sensory experience.

It was an incredible day of cross country running, forest bathing and connecting as a learning community. Mrs. Louise Patterson’s foresight, planning and coordination were top shelf. The students were greeted with an old-fashioned cross-country course with undulations, open ground running and forest thickets. They all did so very well on a really challenging course. Congratulations to Learmonth House on a wonderful win in the House competition.

Results: