Faith & Wellbeing 

WELLBEING

Ripple Trial, Term 3

This week all students from Years 3-6 began their Ripple Trial. P-2 will begin when they return next week.  In week one of this term, an Operoo was sent to all families in regards to a Student Wellbeing Survey through a program called Ripple.  Students are given a code name and their birth years are generic to their year level. The Ripple is completed on a Tuesday and Thursday of each week. 

This data is invaluable in giving classroom teachers an insight into what may be affecting a student’s learning ability, which helps us to provide the right support to get the student back on track.

A number of factors can impact a child’s readiness for learning each day. These can be physiological, such as being tired or hungry, or psychological, such as feeling unwell/unsafe or friendship issues at school. These factors could be early indicators of students whose academic and behavioural performance are at risk of decline.

Students will choose from a series of emojis to record how they feel across the following areas: food, sleep, safety, friendships, confidence, happiness, calmness, concentration and health.  An example of this has been provided for you. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions. 

Gregory Nicolau - Rippleis also more than happy to answer any questions. gn@ripple.com.au

Take Care and Enjoy Coreys article with a cup of your favourite anything at the moment.

Mrs Georgia McNamara

Student Wellbeing Leader

gmcnamara@stjamesbrighton.catholic.edu.au

Reflection

In the words of my parish priest in Rowville, Fr Kevin Dilion: “Here we go again”. He was referring to lock down 5.0.

Hopefully by the time you read this it would be all over.  But right now at the time of writing this article, that is an unknown.

I was talking to Mrs McNamara about what people experience in facing another lock down, she gave me a wave metaphor.  It is like you know there is this big wave coming and it is going to hit you.  But you can’t be up or down, you just have to keep in mind it won’t last forever and keep steady.  It reminded me of my surfing days in Perth.

When I was growing up in Perth, one of my passion’s was to go surfing. It was often all I thought about.  But when I look back there was a lot of uncertainty I had to face.

There was the threat of being dumped by a big wave, getting stuck in the breaking zone, getting into a fight with the other surfers, embarrassing myself by failing to ride a good wave, and on top of that, the thought of sharks.

But I still paddled out, I was after that amazing ride!

The times when I faced my greatest anxiety in the ocean - was the big sets. I couldn’t see them until I had the vantage point of the wave before the big set.  We call it a “big set” because it was normally about 5 big waves, one after the other and I had limited time to paddle to safety.

The feeling was a heart in throat moment, especially when I knew I wasn’t going to make it under the wave. Then, I would end up in the breaking zone and the rest of the set would inevitably break on my head. It meant physical pain, and emotional loss of an amazing ride.

What if we put everyone in our state of Victoria out in the surf, where would everyone be placed?  We would all be spread out. There would be a lot of people in the so called safe zone, where you paddle out past the breaking zone. There is no chance of getting dumped but there is no chance of catching a wave either. Then there are others in the breaking zone, getting “pounded” by large waves and holding one's breath till it passes. Teachers and parents are in the breaking zone, during lockdowns, and particularly business owners who have to shut down.

Using my surfing experience of the breaking zone, what advice could I give?  Well, I kept in my mind I need to be relaxed and to protect my head.  Tensing up meant fighting the inevitable and loosing energy that could be used to get me out past the breakers. Tensing up meant it would hurt more and I could get a cramp.  A cramp put a bad situation into an unbearable situation.  And the best way to deal with a cramp, was to relax.  Not to stretch it, but relax and feel it and wait till it passed.  Any attempt to fix it caused added tension and pain.

The best advice I have had for dealing with unwanted emotions is the same. Don’t resist them, feel them and let them pass. Resisting them only holds the pain in the body longer.

To explain the feeling of the breaking zone I recently saw an interview with a famous actor John Voight, it aired yesterday.  He shared very vulnerably about a time in his life when he was in the so called breaking zone - “a lot of problems” he said: Divorce, career problems, his kids disowning him (perhaps you have heard of his daughter Angelina Jolie).  He found himself on the floor, alone in a small house, “really suffering”, crying, saying out loud: “It is SO difficult!…. it is SO difficult!”.  No other person there, he heard a voice say:  “it is supposed to be difficult”. 

“Can you believe that” he said to Tucker Carlson the interviewer.

This is NOT the advice many of us would give, am I right? We would probably say “it will all be okay” or “don’t worry about it”.  But this voice he heard was…different.

He said it was a voice of: wisdom, clarity, kindness, it had so much resonance. Voight said it shocked him. But what it meant for him was: “I am not alone, everything is known, I am known”.  He knew in that moment someone was “rooting for him” and telling him “not to give up”, there is a “purpose here”, “You have a ways to go, son”.

Voight felt great, and the next morning he knew that when he prayed he was being heard. And he knew he had to do better because there was someone with him, rooting for him and he didn’t want to disappoint.

As a man, when I heard this story I just felt so moved.  Firstly, that this is a man that reached his absolute limit, no strength left, he was broken. He had no entitlement left to rely on, no family, no career to demand something different.  In his poverty, he called out - it wasn’t even a prayer, it was a complaint, a statement.  But the God of Jacob, the God Isaac, the God of Abraham , the God of John Voight, responded “I am with you”.

He is with us… in our difficulties. He is rooting for us, even when: “it is supposed to be difficult”. But nothing can separate us from that love… for us. (Romans 8:31-39).

If this is article has helped in any way, perhaps think of who you could share this with? Especially if you know a farmer doing it tough with loss of produce, that would need to be thrown out. Or perhaps you know of a couple who were planning to get married during this lock down. At least we can pray to God who is with us, for us, knows us and is listening to us.

Take a breath and dive in.

Corey Payton

St James Chaplain

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

A message from St Vincent de Paul Conference, St James.

Dear Brendan,

In June I was the Conference member on duty. My visiting partner and I had six calls to make on the Saturday. Our cupboard was bare. Then, miraculously, the cupboard was full again and we could prepare the food parcels that we needed. In all our visits, always, we say that the food is donated by the children of the St James' School.  Every year, twice a year, the children deliver.  It is a wonderful act of charity.  I know that there is a lot of work behind the bounty and my heartfelt thanks go to the teachers and to yourself.

With kind regards,

Alberto Sabato

For Parish Newsletters, please refer to the new Parish Website

https://www.baysidecatholicmission.org/ 

Emma Herbert

RE Leader

eherbert@stjamesbrighton.catholic.edu.au