Middle Years 

Last week at the Discovering Positive Education Conference, we spent time reflecting on our Positive Education journey. One thing was clear, we all agreed that wellbeing is important in our schools. Justin Robinson said that Positive Education was a philosophy, a proactive approach to life that complements what families and teachers already do. We intuitively care about the wellbeing of children and our goal is to enhance their wellbeing, build their resilience, build their optimism, build engagement and their performance in all areas of their lives. Our goal is to teach the skills of wellbeing. Wellbeing is not a spectator sport, you need to be actively attending to your wellbeing, you must actively engage with the ideas and try new ways to improve your wellbeing.

This week I was asked, what are the three key areas of importance in Positive Education, and my answer came easily;

POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS:

Help students build strong relationships, referring to adolescents’ emotional and social intelligence. This means having the capacity to be kind. This means forgiving friends when they make a mistake, and displaying strong ‘friendship skills’.

POSITIVE AND OPTIMISTIC MINDSET:

Help students develop positive and optimistic mindset. We encourage students to focus more on positive emotions rather than the daily negative emotions. Gratitude is something I look for every day, and is a simple way of shifting to positive thinking.

RESILIENCE, GRIT AND GROWTH MINDSET:

This means ‘dust yourself off and get back into the arena’. We need to fail, recover, fail, recover. Students need to show grit and foster a growth mindset.

I encourage all families to learn more about Positive Education interventions. I use the analogy: it is like ‘watering a garden’. I have tried many interventions in my own life, and I will only ask students to try an intervention that I have actively used. Everyone is on their own journey, and some interventions will appeal and some interventions will not.

Elevate Study Skills Seminar

This week our Year 7 to Year 9 students participated in study skills workshops to help them to study efficiently. The advice given to our Year 9 students was relevant, and here is a snapshot;

Rule 1 – pay more attention

Rule 2 – be more efficient

• Turn off your phones. Put phones away completely.
• Control the noise; study in a quiet area.
• Study alone and without interruptions.
• Sit at a clean desk.
• Study in short sharp sessions – 25 minutes, then have a short break and study for another 25 minutes.
• Don’t multi task. Our brain needs to focus on one thing (eg: close tabs on your computer)
• Be in a state of active learning.

China Review Night

The China Review will be held next Wednesday 15th May at 5pm in the Simons’ Auditorium. Parents and friends are most welcome, and all Year 9s are expected to attend wearing full uniform.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Phoebe Russell who played in the U15 Victorian Girls’ Hockey Team which played in the national tournament in Sydney over the holidays.

Julia Winter Cooke