Health Update
Doctors in Secondary School
How is your child's Asthma?
We have a GP and nurse attending the high school clinic every Tuesday during term for all your students health needs.
During winter and heading into spring, we would like to offer free asthma education, updating asthma action plans and government funded influenza vaccinations to all students with asthma.
If you would like your child to take advantage of this great service, drop in on Tuesday and bring all your asthma medication with you.
How parents can help
students in the senior years
of school - Andrew Fuller
When you have a student completing the
senior years of school, everyone in the family
is doing Year 11 or 12. Here are a few ideas
for coming through these years flourishing,
and having everyone’s dignity intact.
Parents have a vital role in helping students:
Manage time, Manage energy, Manage stress.
Manage to get everything in at the right time
and in the right place.
In addition to this you have to manage
yourself.
Developing the System:
Regular planned times for study throughout
the year creates better results. Short regular
sprints of learning are more effective than
long study marathons. To create this you
need to work out a system.
Sit down with your student and map out an
ideal week including-
Times for sleeping (at least 8 hours a night)
Times for unwinding and relaxing
Best breakfast foods
The best times for study
The best time of the week for consolidating
notes and extending memory
Time to catch up with friends
Required school hours
Time for part time work (less than 10 hours a
week)
How to handle invitations around exam
times.
Without a plan, you are simply left with doing
what you like when you feel like it and often
feeling like studying is not the most likely
emotion in teenagers’ lives.
Study sprints should be ideally 20 minutes
long and never longer than 50 minutes with a
ten-minute break between study sessions.
Usually on the weekend, have some time set
aside for organising information and testing
memory of new information.
Patiently, talk through the system until you all
feel that you have the best plan. Ask them
how often you should remind them of the
system when they don’t seem to be following
it.
You may also need to discuss minimizing
distractions- excessive social media use,
listening to music while studying, multitasking
or chatting with friends online is not
compatible with studying. Multi-tasking is just
splitting your attention and means you’ll need
to study four times longer than you need to.
As a parent of a senior school student, keep
yourself informed. Come to information
sessions and parent-teacher meetings
yourself. Stressed students don't always
store detailed information well so take notes
of key dates and requirements.
Steering students back to the system:
It is hard to get through Year 11 or 12 without
some meltdowns. When a meltdown occurs,
rather than starting a long conversation
about it or providing a motivational pep talk,
think about what your student needs- Food?
Rest? Exercise? Some social time? Try to
quietly arrange for this to occur.
How to deal with the catastrophic thinking:
Pacifying or reassuring the unsettled senior
school student is a fine art. Acknowledge to
yourself in advance that anything you are
likely to say is probably going to be heard as
the “wrong thing”.
Generally what you do is more important
than what you say. Providing meals, comfort
and for some, reassuring hugs is often more
powerful than words.
Some teens “freeze up with fear” and want to
avoid schoolwork completely. Try to avoid
getting into lengthy debates about the merits
of the current educational system or their
own intellectual ability. Instead, go back to
basics. Feed them. Hydrate them. Rest them.
Then gently bring them back to the topic. Ask
them to tell you what they do understand
about an issue. If they will initially reply with,
“I know nothing’ say, “Well, tell me what you
think you know”. Slowly rebuild confidence.
What to do when the system breaks
down:
When you are planning the system develop a
rule of “never miss twice”. We know there are
days when even the most well thought
through system falls into tatters. Accept this
but also plan never to miss twice. For
example, I can take a complete break from
my study routine for one day but not for two
days in a row.
Around August is the most common time for
students to become disheartened and
lose motivation. However the work done in
August and September probably adds more
to the final results that any other stage of the
year. The reason is that by this time most of
the basics have been covered and we are
now able to add the higher order thinking and
deepen understanding.
If taking on new information seems too much
at this time, go through the process with
them of organising information, drawing up
flow charts, making memory aides and
consolidating notes.
What if my teenager won't listen to me?
Have a confidential chat with one of their key
teachers so that they can have a
conversation with your student directly about
their progress and study strategies.
How to deal with the build up to exams:
Here is the time to trust the system. Keep
things as calm and consistent as you
possibly can. Ensure that your student has
enough sleep, good food, exercise and social
time.
Consider ceasing part time work in the lead
up to exams. Also discuss not using or at
least, lessening the use of social media sites.
If your family has major birthdays during this
period it may be worth delaying celebrations
until after the exam period.
It is not the end of the world:
Your student’s Year 12 result is not their
future. There are many other more important
and powerful determinants of success and
happiness in life.
Many people who did not get the Year 12
results they wanted find careers where they
thrive.
Above all, remain calm and believe in your
student. Adding an anxious parent to a
panicking teenager is always a recipe for
disaster.
Andrew’s most recent book is “Unlocking
Your Child’s Genius” (Finch Publishing, 2015).
Mark Metcalf
School Nursing Program Coordinator