Joey’s Matters

A Message from the Principal

Mrs Pauline Long

Dear Parents and Carers,

 

Friendships

Friendships are an important part of our lives and children love to come to school to play with their friends. Sadly, sometimes friendships can also cause hurt.  Parents have an important role to play in helping their children navigate friendships. Sharon Witt (a writer for Michael Grose’s Parenting Blog) has written many books on helping students build resilience; she suggests parents can help their children develop friendships by:

  1. Discussing with your child the qualities we look for in a friend? Good friends are honest, trustworthy, fun to be with, kind hearted and they are forgiving. 
  2. Leading by example through modelling their own positive friendships. Good friends keep in touch, set aside time to spend together & do kind things for each other. 
  3. Responding to your child in a positive way if he/she is upset by another child’s actions. Use this as a teachable moment to help your child walk in the other child’s shoes. Sometimes we don’t know what is going on in other people's lives but we can choose to treat others with respect and kindness.  Was the child left out of a game and then in turn left your child out? Could the incident be a misunderstanding? Good friends do have disagreements but they also learn to resolve conflict, move forward and forgive.

Our Living Well Learning Well framework encourages students to take ownership of their role in making our school a happy and safe place to learn and play. The ‘Character Strength’ we are focusing on for this week is Forgiveness. We will be encouraging students to not hold grudges but to give their friends a second chance if they do something that upsets them. 

 

‘In order to have friends, you must first be one’ Elbert Hubbard 

 

Virtual Canberra Activities

This week our senior students have an action packed week learning more about our Capital City Canberra and how our country is governed. They will be virtually visiting and having zoom sessions with many significant places in Canberra: the National Art Gallery,  National Museum, the Australian War Memorial, the Royal Mint, the Electoral Centre, the Institute of Sport and Government House. 

  

Have a wonderful week

Pauline Long

Principal