A message from Emily

Dear parents and carers,

Last Saturday night, some of children from the Three Hub celebrated the Sacrament of Eucharist in front of their families and parishioners of Our Lady's Church. It was a lovely celebration. I would like to thank Jordan, Molly, Jenna and Karen for their leadership and preparation of the children for this very special sacrament.  I would also like to thank the children of St John's Choir and Helen for their time in preparation for this celebration and for their singing and presence on the night. It was great to have you there to contribute to this special event.  I would also like to thank the families of the children who attend as part of the choir and ensuring that we were able to have children singing as part of the mass. Please check out Jordan's item of this newsletter on the Learning and Teaching page to see more.

On Friday 4th August, the staff attended a professional learning day at St Joseph's by the Sea in Williamstown led by Andrea Downie from Project Thrive. Some staff mentioned that it was some of the best professional learning they had been a part of and it was a great way for us to be together in a beautiful setting. Andrea led us through very thought provoking research about wellbeing and wholebeing. We explored the difference between hedonia and eudaimonia wellbeing. Hedonia is a quick hit of feeling good with the absence of distress. It can be described as the "fast food of happiness". It's the joy that we feel when we get the latest phone, new car or shoes. We feel a spike in our happiness but this is often short lived and then our happiness returns to our baseline or sometimes below. Eudaimonic wellbeing is about meaning, purpose, authenticity and personal growth. 

People who focus on more eudaimonic activities not only report feeling greater satisfaction, stronger positive emotions and more meaning in life, but those feelings are also more long term and can be sustained into the next day known as a “happiness hangover”. Research tells us that the pursuit of eudaimonia results in happiness (eudaimonia yields hedonia); however, the opposite isn’t true. Other studies have shown that eudaimonic behaviour also has huge health benefits, such as increases in longevity.

Andrea also talked about us, and children, needing to experience all emotions. Too often we only want our children and ourselves to feel happiness and try to create environments that spark only happiness, shying away from other emotions in order to have 'positive wellbeing'. Research is showing that this can have the opposite impact to what we are intending for ourselves and more importantly, our children, and has been linked to mental health problems such as depression. If you'd like to find out more I encourage you to check out this link . 

Next week, each family will receive information about MACSSIS 2023. I encourage as many families as possible to access the survey and provide valuable feedback to us as a school to support our planning for 2024 and our School Review which will also take place in 2024. All staff and children from Years 4-6 will also complete a survey to gather their voice about their experience of school at St John's. Please watch the short clip below to find out more.

Reminders:

• Tomorrow we wear orange to promote Bullying. No Way! Day
• Next week is Book Week. See the flyer for what's happening.
• Children from Years 4-6 start their intensive swimming program in two weeks. Please make sure you return the form that details your child's competency in the water to support groupings for these lessons.

Warm wishes

Emily