SECONDARY NEWS
From the Assistant Principal

Miss Kim Bailey
kbailey@arm.catholic.edu.au

Good luck...

Good luck to our basketball teams, who are playing in the annual diocesan competition in Tamworth today. Thanks to Mr Uebergang, Mrs East, Miss Majetic and Mr Jeffery, who coached the teams.

Inverell Breakfast Toastmasters Youth Communicator of the Year

Congratulations to Hannah Bourke, Jessica Hill, Maryann Otieno, and Elkie Sargeant, Holy Trinity's Youth Communicator of the Year 2024 nominees.

The girls have been nominated for their excellent communication and leadership skills. They will attend the dinner on Friday night and put these skills into action. Good luck!

Glen Innes Beef Extravaganza

Good luck to the Holy Trinity Show Team for the Glen Innes Beef Extravaganza this Friday and Saturday. The show team has been busy preparing the animals for many different events this season. Thanks to Mr and Mrs Townsend and Mr Squire for all the work they do in this area.

NSWCCC Athletics

Good luck to all students heading to Sydney next week for the NSWCCC Athletics Carnival.

Service in the Community - Legacy Merchandise Selling

Holy Trinity students were involved in Legacy fundraising last Friday. This community service allows our students to contribute to the local community. Their generosity, cooperation, and willingness to be involved in community activities are commendable and reflect positively on the students. It is hoped that as they mature into adults, they will continue to give their time to volunteer work.

Thank you to the Year 10 students listed below, who sold the merchandise last week, and Mrs Hollis, who accompanied the students.

Alix	Baker
Cheyenne	Brown
Mollie	McCudden
Eliza	McNamara
Maryann	Otieno
Griffin	Sanderson
George	Taylor
Tom	Taylor
Yanna	Toledo
Colby	Walker
Georgia	Wilson
Yinyin	Xue

Excursions

Parents can pay for the latest instalments for the upcoming excursions via the Compass Portal.

If financial assistance is required, please contact Mrs Rainger as soon as possible.

Consent forms for various activities may still need to be signed and returned for excursions.

Catch up Vaccinations

Students who missed vaccinations earlier in the year can catch up on these on Thursday. Mr Koch is coordinating this, so please contact him if you have any concerns.

2025 Stage 5 Elective Information Session - For Students in Years 8 & 9

Thank you to the families who came to our information session last week. It was an excellent opportunity to talk with teachers currently teaching the elective courses.

Students will make their choices at a later date to be advised.

A PDF of the booklet is attached below.

Stage 5 Elective Choices 2025.pdf

Summer Uniform

With the arrival of Spring, students can wear their summer uniform. We remind students to wear either summer or winter uniforms, not a mixture of both. It is also advisable to check the forecast as early Spring weather often has great temperature fluctuations.

Local Careers and Employment Expo for Students in Years 9 & 10

Exhibit Career and Employment Expo (1).pdf

Year 10 Term 3 Calendar and Assessment Outline

Year 10 were given a calendar and assessment outline for Term 3. It is a busy term, and this may help their time management and planning. They were given a hard copy, and an electronic copy was emailed. The schedule was also posted to Compass for both Year 10 students and families.

Year 10 T3 Calendar & Assessment Outline 2024.pdf

STUDY SKILLS TIP

Top 10 Tips for parents to manage and communicate expectations about schoolwork and results

If parental expectations are too low, students may not strive to achieve their personal best. If parental expectations are too high, this can contribute to high student stress levels.

So, how can parents find the right balance? Some areas to consider are:

Understand your own motivations: Why do you want your child to achieve particular marks in their studies? Is it because you are pressured by family/friends/society about what your child will achieve? Do you want them to follow in your career footsteps? Do you want them to have opportunities you never had as a child or young person? Understanding your motivations will help you balance your expectations of your children.
Help your children set realistic goals: Keep talking to them about what they want to achieve, in individual subjects, at school overall and in other aspects of their life. Their career goals may mean they want to focus intensively on something like art or music, rather than maths or science. Helping them to identify their goals will enable them to determine what subjects they need to focus on and what marks they are likely to need, which means that effort can be concentrated on the areas that will help them achieve their goals.
Be involved in your children’s learning: Talk to them about what they are studying throughout the term. Ask them to show you their bookwork and homework. The more you understand about what they are doing and how they are going along the way, the better you will be able to set and manage your expectations.
Make sure you really communicate what you expect: Many students feel like they are not meeting their parents’ expectations. Often, this is a result of poor communication about expectations between both parties. Reflect on your motivations (see 1 above) and consider how you communicate your expectations to your children. Remember to praise them for the effort they make rather than the results they achieve; this way, they are motivated to keep on trying, even when learning is difficult.
Develop an understanding of the school’s assessment and reporting structures: Assessment and reporting systems change over time and are different in different schools, states and countries. Making sure you really understand what your children’s reports mean may help you to understand what they are actually achieving. Sometimes, students are excelling in certain skills or areas, but reporting structures may not highlight these.
Remember, nobody is perfect: Even the brightest, most highly motivated child will struggle at times. They may struggle to understand a particular topic or concept, or they may struggle with motivation, particularly for a subject they don’t particularly enjoy. Problems with teachers or peers can also contribute. It is unrealistic for anyone to work with 100% effort all the time.
Provide practical homework and exam support: Provide practical help to your children with things like proofreading and reviewing drafts, checking work and listening to speeches. Remember though, it is not your work, so don’t make changes, rather make suggestions and provide guidance.
Spend time together doing something fun: Make sure your relationship with your child is about more than homework and study. Allocate some time to do fun things together. This is the time in which your child is most likely to open up to you about the things that they are struggling with, and you can work out how best to help them. Ideas include going for a walk or run together, having a dinner date (even to Maccas) or having them show you the latest funny videos they like.
Support your child to do their best: You can do this by providing healthy, nutrient-rich food, opportunities for exercise, rest and relaxation and an environment that is supportive of and conducive to study.
Keep alert for the physical and mental signs of stress: Familiarise yourself with how your child responds to stress. Do they withdraw? Act out? Work harder or stop working? When you notice that your child is stressed, provide them opportunities to discuss what is worrying them and work with them to identify how you can help them. You may wish to involve the school counsellor, a teacher or a tutor at this point.

iDisorder

Dr. Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University has a must-read book for parents called ‘iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us’.

In this book, he discusses changes that occur to the brain's ability to process information and the ability to relate to the world due to daily consumption of media and use of technology. This obsession with technology can result in signs and symptoms of psychological disorders (which Dr. Rosen has labeled iDisorders) such as stress, sleeplessness, narcissism and a compulsive need to check-in with our technology.

However, it is important to note the word ‘obsession’. Dr. Rosen is not anti-technology, far from it. Instead, he argues that we need to become more aware of issues that can arise from over-use of technology and then implement strategies to deal with these. Self-awareness and a move towards restorative balance are essential.

Some of the ideas Dr. Rosen discusses are:

Ensure your child gets a full night’s sleep and that mobile phones are switched off during the night and ideally in a different room. If a student wakes in the night and checks their phone, however briefly, this will interrupt the sleep patterns for that night and disrupt essential memory processing.
Convene regular family dinners (3-4 times a week for 30-40 minutes) where technology is forbidden at the table – parents included! Dr Rosen points to the fact that many parents are also obsessed with technology and are modelling these behaviours to their children, for example, not paying full attention when their child is talking to them, instead answering email on their smartphone at the same time. Rosen believes we are massive self-interrupters, and we are training our children that if something buzzes, beeps or vibrates, we should jump and immediately check to see if there is something we should attend to right now.
Given the pervasiveness of technology in our lives, as well as the fact that technology evokes high levels of mental activity, we need to start taking technology ‘time-outs’ to reset our brains and refresh our capacity to process information. It is important to recognise that the constant lure of multiple technologies and our obsession with them is overloading our brain. If we want to avoid iDisorder and ensure our use of technology does not make us exhibit signs and symptoms of psychological disorders, then we need to reset our brain on a regular basis. You may decide to take a 10 minute break from technology every 2 hours or you may even decide to allocate at least one day a week where you focus your attention 100% on real life and shut off your technology for a significant portion of that day. During this time you could laugh or talk with friends or family, experience nature or do something active. The aim is to give the brain a chance to slow down and rest by doing something that does not involve electronic devices.

We live in a connected world and we can’t turn the clock back and take away all these fun new technological tools. So the message is, we need to learn to take care of our brains and take some small proactive steps to avoid a potential iDisorder.

REMEMBER to accept the invitation to Google Classroom Guardian Summaries

Device Policy

Students are not permitted to use their devices unless instructed by a teacher. This includes both the classroom and the playground. The students are aware of this policy and receive constant reminders in Pastoral Care and their teaching classes. There are also many posters displayed all around the school.

If a student needs to use their device, they must first seek permission from a teacher and use it in an area designated by the teacher. This is usually under their direct supervision or outside the Secondary staffroom.

If students cannot follow this policy, their phones are confiscated and placed securely in Miss Bailey's office, where they are collected by the student at the end of the school day.

Teachers record each time a device is confiscated. After it is confiscated for a second time, it remains at school until it can be collected by a parent or carer.

Making Contact with Teachers in the Secondary

If you have any questions or concerns about your child's learning or wellbeing, please contact Miss Bailey, your child's Pastoral Care teacher or their subject teacher. We are only too happy to assist.