Welcome to Term 2.  I trust that you and your families had a very happy Easter and an enjoyable break, surrounded by loved ones and friends. It was great to see all students return full of energy last week to what is shaping up as a busy term.

We have had a wonderful start to the term. Our ANZAC Day commemoration service recognised and remembered the fallen. Kilbreda Performing Arts Week is in full swing with outstanding performances delivered by all in the Kilbreda Festival auditions. Our Badminton players and Debaters have excelled at their respective tournaments, our Model United Nations representatives are busy researching how the UN operates, our Year 8 students are bubbling with excitement for the Year 8 Camp and the various cocurricular activities that have been on offer have provided our students with fantastic opportunities to learn new skills and to strengthen connections with their peers.

This term we continue to unpack our 2023 College value, Courage:  Speaking and acting with integrity.  This will be a key focus of our Term 2 Assembly on Tuesday 16 May and will underpin our Refugee Week and Reconciliation Week initiatives.

Strengthening our capacity to be a just community where positive relationships flourish and the dignity and rights of all are respected is a key focus of our Pastoral program. This week, feedback was sought from students regarding their safety at the College and their relationships with community members. The Student Wellbeing Team is collating this data and this data will be used to shape action plans to ensure that all members of our community consistently embody our College motto of Strength and Kindliness each day. Each Tuesday throughout Term 2, Kingston Youth Services will be present in our school community and will work with our students to promote prosocial behaviour and to facilitate a range of activities designed to strengthen and unite our student body.

Goal Setting

Term 2 can be stressful for our Years 9 to 11 students as they prepare for end of semester exams, and for our Year 12 students as they are presented with many challenges. Our College works hard to equip students with the necessary tools to support their academic and general wellbeing. This includes working alongside students to assist them to establish short and long term goals, and in the process strategies that will allow them to realise their goals. Over the past week, students have been encouraged to use the SMART Goal framework to create an academic, wellbeing and personal goal for the term.

We know that having goals is unhelpful unless some essential thinking and mindsets are undertaken. This includes:

• Avoiding negative self-talk. This includes seeing setbacks as opportunities to reset goals, rather than times to tell yourself you are not good enough.
• Comparing yourself to others can be demoralising and hide your own unique pathway.
• If the goals are big, then breaking them into measurable, smaller steps is important.
• Remembering not to invest everything in one goal.
• Ensuring you have goals for more than just academic pursuits. Thinking and planning for health, wellbeing and for relationships is essential for success now and into the future.

Parents, you are encouraged to have a conversation with your child about their goals for the term and to discuss with them ways you may be able to support them to achieve this. You may also wish to talk to them about essential thinking and mindsets that have been found to be critical in goal attainment.

Parent Webinars

Managing Career Uncertainty and Anxiety:  The Power of Career Conversations

Career uncertainty has been defined as the inability, as a teenager, to articulate a career ambition or occupational expectation for adult life. As transitions from school to further education, training or work have become more unpredictable and employment markets more competitive and fluid, career uncertainty in young people, both in Australia and internationally, is increasingly common.

In this webinar, Dr Jo Gleeson (Monash University), lead author of the forthcoming myfuture Insights Paper ‘Managing career uncertainty and anxiety: the power of career conversations’, will talk about the findings of her research in this area, and share a questionnaire that can help you to facilitate career conversations with your child.

This free webinar will take place on Wednesday 7 June from 5.30pm to 6.30pm. 

Online Relationships and Consent: Sending Nudes and Sexting

This 30-minute webinar facilitated by the eSafety Commission is designed for parents and carers of young people in secondary school.  It will address:

• The impact of sharing nude images without consent
• Practical suggestions for starting the chat about respectful relationships, consent, and pressure to send nudes.
• Where to get support for a young person who has experienced abuse.

This webinar will take place on:

• 25 May from 12.30pm to 1.00pm
• 14 June from 7.30pm to 8.00pm

Stephanie Smyth
Assistant Principal: Wellbeing and Engagement