Year 7 Pastoral Guardian
Colleen Goodin
Dear Parents/Caregivers,
Welcome back to Term 3. It is amazing how fast the year is going. I hope you enjoyed connecting with your child’s homeroom teacher to discuss their educational wellbeing and they have some strategies that can be put in place for the rest of the year to help them improve their outcomes.
The Year 7’s are excited, and a little bit nervous about the upcoming camp. The purpose of the Camp Program is to develop positive relationships within self, peers, the environment and adventure. Activities are specifically targeted to the theme “Connections”, where students are required to physically and emotionally rely on and support each other. Critical thinking around behaviours and attitudes of what hinders building positive connections is explored, serving to develop behaviours and attitudes that help create and maintain positive connections. Here are some photos from camp so far!
Digital reputation is the theme on SchoolTV this week and is a very important aspect of our digital world that needs discussing with your child. Friendships, relationships, and even future job prospects are all at risk. As a parent, it is very important that you are aware of what picture they are painting of themselves online. What students find hard to understand is that once information is online it is almost impossible to remove it. It is not simply as easy as deleting it. It is essential that you manage the privacy settings on your child’s social media sites to protect their digital reputation. I invite you to read about this topic further by following this link.
Another issue with social media is that it keeps teenagers up at night. Some of the content they read may have them up worrying all night. It is not uncommon for messages to be sent very late at night and this also disturbs the sleep of your child, and therefore it is recommended to remove all devices from the bedroom to enable them to have an uninterrupted sleep.
I have often had students ‘liking’ my posts at times when they should have been in bed many hours earlier! A recent research study found that ‘having night-time access to a phone undermined the ability to sleep, which, in turn, led to a decline in both self-esteem and the ability to cope with everyday challenges.’ (Damour, 2019) Sufficient uninterrupted sleep is an absolute necessity of life and when we deprive ourselves of this sleep it can lead to emotional fragility and have severe impacts on our coping strategies.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any issues or concerns.
Colleen Goodin
Pastoral Guardian – Year 7