A message from our Chaplains

Friends

Many students think that when they come to school it’s to learn about reading, writing, number, music, art, sport and the like. While that is true, very few students recognise that school is also a place where we come to learn about how to be around other people. What it takes to have friends and to be a good friend to others.

Jesus modelled good friendship to us, as we see as recorded in the Bible. He had his close friends (John, Peter and James) as well as a wider circle of friends (known as his ‘twelve disciples’) but he also showed us what it meant to be a friend to everyone.

Learning how to be a good friend is a skill. Like other skills, it needs to be talked about, practiced and evaluated in order for it to be developed. There is a certain amount of self-awareness that is needed in the process of becoming a good friend too!

This is why our Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) lessons will soon start focussing on helping students in this area. We will be running a program called Fun Friends for our K-2 students and Friends for Life for our 3-6 students. Through these two programs, your children will be thinking about their own and others’ feelings and the way our body gives us cues about them. They will be learning about their thoughts as either helpful (green thoughts) or unhelpful (red thoughts) and they will be learning what it means to have friends and be a good friend to others. 

Please take this opportunity to talk to your child(ren) about what having friends, and being a friend, means to you. And encourage them to take the opportunity that school provides to practice this skill.

Kate Bracks

Prep School Chaplain