Year 12 Pastoral Guardian

After a Term out of College on long service leave, I have been interested in catching up with how the Year 12 cohort is travelling and how they are leading the college, managing balancing their lives, studies and achieving their individual goals. It was enjoyable to meet our senior cohort “young adults” whom I last saw in late November 2021. I acknowledge that Term 1 was certainly challenging in so many respects, yet students have been able to navigate to the best of their abilities to be supportive of one another, to engage positively in college life and to complete academic tasks successfully in their final year of studies. 

As a cohort, I encouraged the students today to consider the legacy that they will be leaving when they graduate by considering how they meet and exceed college expectations in their “Aspire to Inspire” leadership goal for 2022. 

As young adults individually, I encouraged them to be proactive in their own wellbeing by conscious attention to sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindfulness and balance in their lives to focus on achieving their unique potential, leading to a successful future. In SchoolTV, one theme this week with informative video interviews with Dr Michael Carr-Gregg is Nutrition. Professor Felice Jacka (Director of the Food and Mood Centre Deakin University and Founder and President of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) was interviewed. She discussed the positive impact good nutrition has on health and her team’s research on the mood-food link on how quality of diet clearly links to mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. She stated that diet, exercise, and sleep are modifiable risk factors that impact on wellbeing. 

The benefits of the Mediterranean diet with fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, fish, and healthy oils underpinning brain networks that underpin intelligence was explained. Discuss with your young adults their personal responsibility for good nutrition at this time of Year 12 study commitments and balancing the busyness of life. 

I look forward to accompanying the Year 12 cohort as Pastoral Guardian on the last part of their schooling journey in 2022.

Karen Farrow

Year 12 Pastoral Guardian