Year 10 Pastoral Guardian
Courtney Daniec
Is your daughter feeling overwhelmed? Workload increase, deciding a career path, managing a part time job, maintaining a social life, extracurricular activities, relationships, revision, and study prep. The list goes on of girls in the cohort feeling like they are trying to walk a tightrope balancing many plates in either hand. Our young girls are navigating through an exciting but eventful time where they now have an increase of responsibility, increase of decision making all while balancing everything else that happens in our day to day lives.
The true sense of overwhelm is completely normal; But it’s about building capacity to cope.
Recently the Year 10 cohort had Careers Immersion Day and experienced a keynote speech from Liz Crowe. An expert in her field she shared her story and evolution of her career. From school to now, she shared the highs the lows, the brutalness life can throw you as well sharing what it takes to achieve things she had never dreamed of. She highlighted being a teenager is hard, and it’s meant to be.
On this journey with the girls, it’s not about tapping out when things get hard but its about building the capacity to deal with it. It might be a difficult conversation that needs to happen or stress levels might be heightened due to workload but if we can build the skill set to understand what can be controlled and what needs to happen, we will see them increase their capability and take this into their future endeavours. Risks, hard work, stress, and fear are all apart of the process and can create this sense of overwhelm for our young people.
As adults we need to encourage them to take this in their stride and build their capacity. We can’t guarantee certainty around decisions and problems they may face, but what we can do is we can give them wellbeing strategies to help them grow and flourish. I encourage you to view the SchoolTV resources as well as model strategies yourself and talk through different scenarios you may have faced and how you have built capacity during your journey.
I am absolutely enjoying building connection with the Year 10 community. I appreciate the parents who have reached out, it has been a pleasure to get to know you. As the term progresses, I look forward to seeing you all in person at college events coming up. As always, I am here to support you and your daughter please reach out if you need.
Courtney Daniec
Year 10 Pastoral Guardian