FROM THE PRINCIPAL

TERM 1 - WEEK 2

To the St Nicholas School Community,

Parents are the first and foremost educators of their children! As a fellow  parent of two beautiful children I understand how challenging this can be. As an educator I also understand it is the responsibility of the school to work diligently on forming a positive relationship with our parents, a crucial requirement if our students are to reach their vast potential. This message is delivered beautifully in the poem Unity.

UNITY

I dreamed I stood in a studio

And watched two sculptors there

The clay they used was a young child’s mind

And they fashioned it with care.

One was a teacher, the tools he used

Were books and music and art;

One a parent with a guiding hand,

And a gentle, loving heart.

Day after day the teacher toiled,

With a touch that was loving and sure

While the parent labored by his side

And polished and smoothed it o’er.

And when at last their task was done,

They were proud of what they wrought,

For the things they had molded into the child

Could neither be sold nor bought.

And each agreed he would have failed

If he had worked alone,

For behind the parent stood the school,

And behind the teacher, the home.

Anonymous

St Nicholas School staff desire a strong working relationship with our parents. We want to work with you. Communication is the cornerstone to any successful relationship and we welcome this opportunity with our parents.

Like any professional organisation, at St Nicholas School there is an etiquette parents need to follow when communicating with staff. With the intention of providing clarity to parents, to save any embarrassment and to ensure your time is not wasted, I would like to outline important elements of this etiquette .

Emailing: Parents are provided with their teacher's email address and are encouraged to use this. Parents should not expect an immediate response. Teachers should respond between 24 and 48 hours. Please be considerate with the time of the day you are sending emails to staff. Staff have their own lives, families and commitments/appointments, so anything after 6p.m or on weekends is not considered to be "school hours".

Meeting in person with a staff member: Parents are encouraged to meet in person with staff. Every day is an opportunity for a parent/teacher meeting, though the meeting must be booked in advance. No staff member at St Nicholas School is available for an 'on the spot meeting'. To meet with any staff member, please either email a request to the teacher or contact the front office. A mutually convenient time will then be organised.

Meeting with Executive: Parents are very welcome to request a meeting with any executive member of the school. If the reason for the meeting involves a classroom concern, out of courtesy we ask the issue be raised first with the classroom teacher.

Facebook: Each class has a Facebook page. Parents are encouraged to join the page and use it as a platform to ask questions and share information.

Social Media: Please don’t be offended if teachers do not accept friendship requests. Messenger is not an appropriate tool for communication.

Respect: Effective communication is always delivered in a respectful manner. As Principal of St Nicholas School I will never tolerate any form of communication that is abusive.

I thank you in advance for following St Nicholas’ etiquette when it comes to communication and reiterate our desire to work with you as parents to give our children every chance of meeting their enormous potential.

Have a wonderful week!

John Clery

Principal

RECOMMENDED READING FOR PARENTS/CARERS ....

Let's Not Bubble-Wrap Our Children Against All Risk

(An article by Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian)

Richard "Harry" Harris was settling in for a half-hour kip at noon on Sunday.  It is a crazy time for the 54 year old Adelaide anesthetist and cave diver.  Everyone wants a piece of him, especially after he and fellow cave explorer Craig Challen were announced as joint Australians of the Year.  Part pure miracle, part human tenacity, the two men joined the international team that rescued  12 young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave in the Chiang Rai province of Thailand last July.

As if that's not enough, both made towering remarks when they received their award last week.  Nothing groundbreaking, mind you.  Just sharing some old style common sense.  Except that today it sounds revolutionary to talk about the roles of resilience and responsibility.

Those words clash spectacularly against an array of new works that capture a fragile generation.  They challenge the orthodoxy where intellectual fashionistas talk about hurt feelings and try to turn masculinity into a toxic social disease, where university campuses embrace "safe spaces: and "rigger warnings", where students go in search of "unconscious bias", find offence in so-called microaggressions", and routinely no-platform speakers with different views.  

Could this be the year for an insurgency of common sense?

Instead of that Sunday nap, Harris spoke to me, keen to explain his plans for 2019.  "Wow!" I thought by the end of our conversation.  Harris is gracious, generous, honest and humble.  And brave.  Not just for what he did last year helping save those young boys from almost certain death.  Also for what he is saying now about our children:  parents need to back off a bit from over-parenting, and kids need room to be kids.

When accepting the ward, Harris said he feared that "kids today who live in a risk-averse society will not learn to challenge themselves and to earn grazed knees and the stubbed toes that really are necessary to build resilience and confidence".

He joked that it might sound strange that "having just rescued some kids from a cave, I would like to promote kids to come underground", but his point is that kids need to find their own boundaries and to test their own limits.  Harris implores parents "to relax a little" and to let kids have the freedom to explore the world around them.

He told me that building resilience might just turn around the intellectual and mental fragility afflicting our society.

Conscious that he is delving into child psychology and child development, areas outside his medical expertise, Harris is concerned enough to speak out about the human costs of raising a generation of bubble-wrapped kids.

"As a pragmatic person and someone who does work with children and as an observer of society, I have a couple of concerns.  One is the increase in anxiety and depression in children," he says.

Certainly, greater awareness and reporting of mental health accounts for increased numbers, he says.  But Harris is certain that there is a link between being more physically robust, confident and resilient and being mentally fit.  That includes being intellectually open to hearing other ideas.  "We seem so scared of offending people, "Harris says.

"Kids do not seem to be as robust, they are more fragile in terms of being prepared to enter into a robust debate in case they offend someone, or upset someone and all those skills about debating, and arguing and having an opinion are incredibly important as life goes on, as you become an adult and you have to justify what you feel and what you think.

"I am absolutely sure there is a link because I know from my own experience that when I have done some physical things in my caving and diving that have both frightened and challenged me, and when I find myself in a difficult position at work, which is usually more a mental challenge than a physical one, I often think back to myself: "Well Harris, you got yourself out of that cave, or you did that 12-hour long dive in six-degree water, this is pretty straight-forward compared to that."

Harris mentions his childhood in Adelaide, those long days when he was told to be home for tea.  "The rest of the day we would disappear on our bikes.  We would often ride up to the local park and dam up the creek, and see if we could make it flood, and catch tadpoles .... We put ourselves in a little bit of harm's way and came away with a few bruises and scratches, but it is all part of normal development.

"Anyone can do that.  There is nothing special about me, it doesn't depend on wealth.  All you need is a friend and a bike."

Harris tells me that modern parenting is the biggest hurdle to this great equalising experience for kids.  "I know many people my age who are very supportive of what I am saying.  But parents in their 20s and early 30s may be quite uncomfortable about what I am saying.  That might be the target audience."

Speaking on ABC Radio on Monday, Challen, the other heroic cave-diver, echoed Harris's concerns.  Challen encouraged parents to expose their kids to risks and challenges to build resilience in them.  Kids need to learn the skills to "live with a bit of discomfort".  "Everything is not going to be sweet in their lives," he said.

Last week the darling husband of someone very close to me died.  Very suddenly.  Too young.  Full of life, laughter and love on our big Christmas Eve, a few weeks late he was taken from his young sons and his wife, Sue.  In the midst of her grief, Sue wrote a short beautiful post on Facebook about the two Australians of the Year.

This award made her day, she said.  Sue works with Harris in Adelaide.  "He is one of the most down-to-earth people and so deserving of this award," she told me later.  "When he returned home, he couldn't' believe the amount of recognition and appreciation that they received worldwide.  I'm very proud to say that I know him."

No not everything in life is sweet.  Sue and her boys are confronting the worse that life can deal up.  The boys were raised with lashings of love and freedom to explore.  No bubble-wrapping for them.  Their father would be proud.  Resilience makes it easier for us to navigate the difficult and dark times.  It empowers us to sift the important from the bucket load of trivial, to work out what we can control, what we can and should take responsibility for.

If Harris and Challen keep up this revolutionary talk about resilience and responsibility and if we listen, they will become heroes for reasons beyond being part of the most extraordinary story of the year.

FAMILY INFORMATION PACKS

A reminder that the Family Information Pack was sent home last week.  This needs to be returned asap.  For the safety of your child, we ask that you complete all information as requested.   All family and medical details need to be updated each year.  Any queries, be don't hesitate to contact our office staff.