From the Assistant Principal

How Not to Spend Your Lunch Break

I’m fascinated by the things our students come up with to spend their lunch breaks. With such a small space and so many kids, break times can be chaotic. But somehow… it works. Three different soccer matches happening on the soccer field, two different football games. Students in the gym for dance club, or drawing in the art room, singing with the choir, or chilling in the library. Poetry club. Wool club. Comic club. We try to cater for a little bit of everything.

Growing up, my primary school was blessed with acres of space. Acres may be a stretch, but certainly more than we do. There was a bare dust field as far as the juvenile eye could see, and a playground with an always out-of-order, arm-breaker of a flying fox. My primary school recess and lunch times were spent doing much of the same things that NLPS kids do.

Except for the spiders.

I don’t know how or why, but one activity my friends and I got into was spider hunting. We were in Grade 4 - so the fact that maybe we should have known better is… a grey area. Our school oval, with its hard summer dirt, its cracks and crevices, and random spattering of trees on the perimeter, led to prime spider hunting conditions. Find a stick from a tree (or snap one off - trees don’t have feelings, right?) and huddle around the tiny round burrows that were littered across the grounds. We were after trapdoor spiders. We would take turns driving a stick into the hole, and more often than not, when we pulled it back up, a thick brown trapdoor spider would spring out and show its fangs before diving back into its home. The intense emotions we would feel! The intrigue, the fear, the relief… the fun!

This game didn’t last long. Because at the next assembly, we were told how irresponsible, how unkind, how dangerous we were being. Breaking tree branches. Dragging spiders out of their burrows. How reckless could we be? Rumours of how venomous these creatures actually were spilled through the yard too. They were probably dreamed up by the teachers. Say whatever you can to stop the childish children from making terrible decisions.

From spiders we moved to soccer. I remember streams of tears running down my face after I lost a lunchtime soccer match because I was distracted while I was supposed to be goalie. What a big deal that was! All these years later and I still distinctly remember the ball rolling through my legs, and my friends screaming their disappointment at me. Shattered. Over a game of soccer at lunchtime. I didn’t even like soccer. But I liked them, and I wanted to be part of the group. That moment mattered so much at the time. 

Now… maybe not so much.

So much of what happens during lunch and recess - whether it’s a club, a conflict, a quiet chat on a bench, or a high-stakes soccer match - is part of the real work of growing up. Of learning how to be in a group, how to win and lose, how to fix things when they go wrong.

At NLPS, we take this seriously. We offer a range of lunchtime clubs, provide calm spaces for those who need them, and we work hard on restorative conversations when friendships fracture or tempers flare. We also have CCTV across our grounds (see our policy here), which many families may not know. It’s primarily there to keep the school secure outside of hours, but in some instances, it can help us piece together what’s happened between students when things are unclear or complex.

But here’s the big thing: whether it’s getting in trouble for hunting spiders, a friendship splintered by unkind words, or a football game gone wrong, these moments aren’t the end of the world. They’re learning moments. They matter at the time - and they pass.

As adults, we understand how small moments can feel big when you're a kid - and how those same moments often soften with time. Our work is to meet children where they are, steady them when things wobble, and help them keep growing.

They’re growing. They’re learning. They’ll go on to do remarkable things.

And those moments? They become the stories we tell, long after the tears (or the spiders) are gone.

Mat Williamson

Assistant Principal (and spider enthusiast)