Term 2 Week 9 2024
From the Principal
Dear Families,
Well the nasty bugs that are going around have well and truly hit St Francis. We have had a large number of staff and students away each day this week. I ask that you help support keeping our school healthy by keeping your child/ren home if they are unwell. Hopefully the upcoming holidays will give everyone the break they need and we all return to school healthy in Term 3.
On Tuesday our Preps will be participating in their annual Bike Day. This is a highly anticipated event for our Prep students where they will be put through their paces around road and bike safety. For this reason our car park will be closed on Tuesday morning from 8:45am until 11am. If you are staying in the morning, I ask that you please park in the back carpark or on the road.
I have spent this week reading report cards. It has been wonderful to read about the areas of growth and areas for improvement for our students. What has also been heartwarming is to read the many comments about positive work habits and students being inclusive of their peers. Just a reminder that reports will be released on Friday afternoon. You can access your child/rens report via Compass. If you cannot log into Compass, please see the Office before Friday afternoon.
We held a FACE Meeting yesterday afternoon where the topic of discussion was around family engagement. Next week you will receive a short survey to help inform the future of our FACE Group. I ask that you take a few moments to fill it in so that we can better plan our meetings.
If you haven’t put in your child’s Prep enrolment forms for 2025, please get them into the Office ASAP. Round 1 is closing on Monday. If your child will be moving to BCHS next year and you are still to submit enrolment forms, please be aware that Round 1 is closing on 21st June. I encourage you to make these forms a priority over the weekend.
Have a wonderful week.
Take care and God Bless
Amanda
UR STRONG
Quality over Quantity in Friendships
Quality vs Quantity. Friendly vs Friendship. Fitting-in vs Belonging. These are important distinctions in friendships!
Our Founder, Dana Kerford, was interviewed in October 2019 for the Sydney Morning Herald. Here is the interview with journalist and author, Kasey Edwards:
“Be friends with everyone”.
I don’t know how many times I’ve given my two daughters this advice. And it’s not just me. I’ve heard many other parents say this same phrase, it comes right out of the Good Parents’ Manual.
Rather than focusing on the quantity of friends, we should be teaching our kids about the importance of quality friends.
We say it because we have a genuine desire to raise good human beings. We don’t want our kids to be deliberately cruel and hurtful.
And, if I’m really honest, my “be friends with everyone” advice also comes from a place of fear. No doubt influenced by my own schoolyard baggage, I essentially treated friendship like a numbers game: the more mates you have the less likely you are to end up being a Nigel No Friends.
Friendship skills expert and founder of URSTRONG Dana Kerford doesn’t mince words when she says that telling kids to be friends with everyone is a very bad idea.
“If parents are telling kids to be friends with everyone they are giving dangerous advice because not everyone is good for us,” says Kerford. “Some people bring out the best in us and some people bring out the worst, and children should not have to be friends with people who are not good for them.”
If you’re not convinced, Kerford encourages parents to think about the consequences of the “Be friends with everyone” advice for their child later in life.
“What does that advice mean in romantic relationships? That’s not when we want our kids learning the importance of being selective for the very first time”.
This isn’t to say that we should raise our children to be anti-social and exclusionary. We can still encourage our children to be kind and respectful of everyone, without telling them they must be friends with them all.
This is the same social standard that applies to adults. We don’t expect adults to be friends with everyone. While you probably endeavour to be polite and respectful to all your colleagues (mostly), you don’t feel compelled to share your secrets and your toys with every single one of them.
Nobody is telling you you have to invite that irritating person in the next cubicle who never shuts up to your birthday party.
“The message we want to give our kids is choose wisely,” says Kerford. “What’s so special about friendship is that it’s a relationship that we choose”.
Rather than focusing on the quantity of friends, we should be teaching our kids about the importance of quality friends.
“Quality relationships are based in trust and respect and we feel good when we’re with that person. We feel like we can be ourselves, we have fun. And that isn’t everybody, we don’t have that connection with everyone and that’s okay,” Kerford says.
The desire to be friends with everyone can force children into a situation where they try to “fit in” rather than “belong”.
As social scientist and author Brené Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection, “Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
But in order for people to “belong” they have to be prepared not to “fit in”.
“[M]en and women who have the deepest sense of true belonging are people who also have the courage to stand alone when called to do that. They are willing to maintain their integrity and risk disconnection in order to stand up for what they believe in,” Brown said.
To put that in kid-speak: Only give your friendship to someone who likes you the way you are and you like them way they are.
Kasey Edwards is the author of the young adult series The Chess Raven Chronicles under the pen name Violet Grace.
Learning Corner
What do learners have in common with ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’?
It is always interesting to monitor groups of children as they progress through their years of primary schooling. It is amazing how their achievement standards change as they move through their schooling years.
We can quickly identify the hares and the tortoises. The hares are the children who are more than ready for school and approach all activities enthusiastically, producing work of a high standard. Teachers are kept on their toes, planning activities to keep them engaged and learning.
On the other hand, our tortoises find school routines difficult and the work expected exhausting. Tests are administered, observations are made, and advice is sought on how to best respond to their needs. Their parents are on the sidelines, supporting, encouraging, and celebrating each achievement. The tortoises continue their way through their education, having to focus and use all their energy to learn and show what they have learnt.
The hares, instead, are having a confident and successful journey, basking in the congratulations of their easily achieved results. Sadly, they do not need to focus closely or pay close attention to all instructions and explanations and, therefore, do not learn the skills the tortoise needs to progress. They are so confident in their own ability that, as the story goes, they rest with the thought that they will always be successful.
However, during the schooling journey, they realise that learning is no longer ‘easy’ and that the tortoises they considered ‘slow’ have overtaken them.
Teachers often have the opportunity to learn about a child’s journey through school and often beyond. There is sadness for the ‘hares’ and joy for the ‘tortoises’.
The key to personal success is perseverance when faced with challenges, respect for everyone and a positive attitude to learning.
The saying, ‘Slow and steady wins the race’, applies so well to the classroom!
Thank you to parents who contact their child’s/children’s teacher when they are concerned about their progress and learning. Thank you also to parents who respond when the teacher raises a concern.
We encourage children to ask questions in class; we also encourage parents to ask questions of staff.
I look forward to your questions.
Enjoy the cooler weather.
Rita
Book Fair
Community
