Middle Years 

Welcome Back to Term Four

Welcome back to Term 4, and I hope all families had a restful and enjoyable holiday. S

A special welcome to new students, Charley Falla and Trent Ng. Term 4 is a busy and important term as students prepare for camps and the End of Year Examinations. Students need to quickly settled into class and homework routines, and I encourage them to clearly communicate with their teachers as this shows increasing academic maturity.

One of the core values at College is optimism, and as we go through Term 4 this will be one of the themes discussed in myPEC. Optimism is a tendency to expect the best possible outcomes. We can learn strategies to be more optimistic. If we are optimistic we tend to see more solutions. We tend to be more successful as we believe they will work. We stay motivated. Flexible, realistic optimism is about seeing the rocks in the road as well is the path through them.

Optimists do better academically, socially and enjoy better health than pessimists. Looking on the bright side is a significant life skill to develop. When children think they can succeed they are more likely to give things a try. Optimists look at the flip side of negative events for some good, some hope and some reason to be positive. It means having a strong self-belief and confidence to deal with situations.

There are five cornerstones of optimism:

• Having a go
• Practising
• Understanding success and failure
• Planning for the future
• Having the belief and confidence to try again

Some people are natural optimists. They are born with optimistic temperaments and have natural dispositions to deal with challenges and problems. Others expect the worst and tend to see catastrophes where small challenges exist. Children learn their optimism from their experiences of success and through their interactions with parents, teachers and significant others. Optimists explain adverse events as temporary, and the event is likely to get better. They tend to be more rational in analysing the events. Pessimists tend to build mountains out of molehills and give up before trying.

To promote optimism in our children;

1. Model positive thinking and optimism.

2. Challenge negative or unrealistic appraisals.

3. Teach that they can look for the good things that happen in life.

4. Teach to positively reframe. When something unpleasant happens or failure occurs they can actively look on the bright side, "I pranged my bike but at least I came out unhurt"

I would like to acknowledge that last Wednesday was World Mental Health Day. The aim of the day was to challenge negative perceptions around mental illness and encouraging people to take a more positive view mental illness.

I encourage you to adopt flexible realistic optimism in your lives.

Julia Winter Cooke