Week 8, Term 1 2021 - 16th March 2021

Principal's Reflection

Sensible risk taking is an important life skill for us all to develop and practice. 

Often we think of risk taking as an irresponsible endeavour, reserved for those with no regard for safety or consequences.  However, the ability to consider a situation, assess risk and reward, then make astute decisions are qualities of confident and successful people.

We become better risk takers with practice.  Learning this skill early in life is terribly important, because as we get older the stakes rise dramatically.  Practice making good judgements earlier in life while the stakes are low. 

In academic studies at St Mary’s school, our teachers encourage students to be risk takers.  We want them to display the confidence to ‘have a go’ and not fear failure, and rather see failure as an important element to improvement and success.  This mindset is crucial for the overall growth individuals, an important feature of our mission statement.

We also promote this mindset across other areas at school. Encouraging students to perform in front of an audience or attending representative sporting trials are two such examples.  These ‘safe’ activities that take students out of their comfort zone are great ways for students to confront their fears and develop a healthy risk-taking attitude.

In reflecting on this concept, I found a great article from writer Jacqui Hawkins that outlines several ways parents can assist their children to develop a healthy risk-taking attitude.  I hope you enjoy.

A girl aged nine or ten sits hugging her knees on a beach, staring at the surf. Normally, her blue eyes sparkle with determination. Today, though, they’re wide with fear. She has set her heart on a triathlon but she needs to practise something that terrifies her. She needs to swim out into the deep, open sea.

Imagine you’re her dad beside her. What would you say? Tell her there’s nothing to be afraid of? Point out that everyone else can do it? Give up and take her home?

To encourage brave kids, you need to encourage them to understand their own capabilities.

Being a parent is full of dilemmas like this one. You want to protect your kids from failure or hurt but you also want them to be brave and enjoy great triumphs.

In short, you want your children to be adventurers — and not just the outdoorsy ones! Adventurers come in lots of different guises. You’ll find them at scout camps or they might take difficult subjects at school. As adults, they could wear crampons or they might wear a suit and challenge themselves professionally.

Adventurers, put simply, are people who step outside their comfort zones.  Adventurers also have a few things in common. They have big imaginations but are grounded in reality. They seize opportunities but understand failure. They’re brave yet can judge risk.

It all sounds pretty good, right? Who wouldn’t love for their toddler to need less coaxing to try new things or for their anxious teenager to be more resilient and follow their dreams? The answer, oddly, seems to be lots of us.

Are adventurers a threatened species?
Humans are born to be adventurous, explains parenting author Maggie Dent: “All babies are born with what we call a seeking mechanism in the brain. Because the brain isn’t fully formed — it’s completely undercooked, just neurons without connectors — the human being is wired to seek and explore, to build these connections.”

So, why are there so many news stories about children losing their courage and resilience?

According to Maggie, two things changed in recent decades that are messing with kids. First, the world became more risk-averse, so now even walking to school is frowned on by some. Then came the idea of a “perfect parent”, part of which means having compliant, bump-free kids.

You’re likely to have not chosen this. In fact, you might have already decided to fight back. You’ve maybe grabbed a map, a torch and a hat and you’re wondering … what next? Well, it seems the answer is reassuringly simple: it’s to do less.  Let’s take a look at what a few top adventurers had to say about nurturing bravery, curiosity and resilience in kids.

Encourage nature play
In 2017, Lisa Blair became the first woman to sail solo around Antarctica. For 183 days she braved wild seas and freezing temperatures and says she’d never have pulled it off if she hadn’t grown up playing with sticks and mud beside the creek near her Queensland home.  “I wouldn’t say I was more or less brave than your average kid — I think your average kid just needs to be exposed to an environment that allows them to become adventurous,” says Lisa, who, in 2018, also sailed solo around Australia.

Letting children fail takes courage but, when coupled with the right kind of gentle reassurance and support, it also builds resilience.  This wild play builds children’s adventurousness in several ways, explains Anya Perkins from the not-for-profit Nature Play QLD. First, playing with sticks, stones and other found objects boosts imagination because, unlike most modern toys, a stick can be anything from a sword to a broom.  “As a kid I had a wild imagination,” says Lisa. “Sailing around Antarctica solo in my mind was possible because I already had that big imagination. I just had to figure out how to structure it.”

Second, because it’s child-led, they discover their own interests and motivations and can learn about setbacks outside the more structured school environment. These are exactly the kinds of skills children will need if, say, their mast snaps off 1000 nautical miles from land, as Lisa’s did.

“The difference between me and someone who’s sitting on the fence is I took one step forward, then another, then another,” says Lisa. “If I took every ‘no’ that I received, I never would have got here.”

Celebrate Failures
As a teenager, American author and adventurer Caroline Paul also dreamt of doing something big. She didn’t have Lisa’s sailing skills — or any other specific skills, in fact — so she chose a challenge she reckoned anyone could do.

She roped in a friend and called the local newspaper. She was going to set a world record for crawling.

Only she didn’t. She gave up after 12 knee-chafing miles.

“It was ridiculous, it was an aspiration and a dream, and there was an edge of absurdity to it,” says Caroline, an ultralight pilot and ex-firefighter who describes the events in her book The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure (Bloomsbury, 2016). “But it was kind of magnificent, too. And failing at it — well, it didn’t feel this way at the time, but how many people have actually tried to set a world record?”

Caroline learnt that failure isn’t fatal; it’s part of living bravely.

So, let’s all ask ourselves something. Do I celebrate my child’s failures as well as their successes? Do I “helicopter” in when my child is struggling or stand back — then congratulate them for trying?

Letting children fail takes courage but, when coupled with the right kind of gentle reassurance and support, it also builds resilience, say psychologists Dr Dan Siegel and Dr Tina Payne Bryson in The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity and Resilience in Your Child (Random House, 2018).

“Part of widening the window of tolerance is allowing kids to face adversity, to feel disappointment and other negative emotions and even to fail,” they write. “That’s how we expand their green zone [of curiosity and courage]: by lovingly teaching them that they can live with and then move through frustration and failure, coming out stronger and wiser on the other side.

Live adventurously together
So, what happened to that trembling girl on the beach? After talking through her fears with her dad, she did eventually get in the water and swim. She finished her triathlon. And a few years later, aged 14, she got airlifted into a frozen runway just below the 89th degree north. From there, she skied 150km across shifting ice to the North Pole, becoming the youngest woman to do so. Her name is Jade Hameister and in 2016 she was Australian Geographic’s Young Adventurer of the Year.

Since then, the Melbourne schoolgirl has completed more difficult expeditions — across the Greenland icecap and to the South Pole — always hauling her own sled. She has also given TEDx talks about her challenges and being #bravenotperfect.

Her mum Vanessa isn’t quite sure where this courage comes from but thinks family life has something to do with it. “We were always just outdoors,” Vanessa recalls. When Jade was young, she went on training hikes with her dad, a mountaineer. By age six, she had climbed Mt Kosciuszko and spent countless weekends scrambling or jumping between rocks at the beach.

This modelling of courage and bravery sinks deep into children’s brains, says Maggie Dent — even if they’re small things like riding a bike, trying new foods or speaking out in public. Telling adventure stories? That’s a great idea, too, whether they’re about your own childhood or from a book.

“My parents weren’t outdoorsy at all,” says Caroline Paul, whose models were Harriet the Spy and Sherlock Holmes. “I was a really shy kid … but I read a lot of books about adventures. And I wanted them.”

Expose children to risk
In today’s world, even allowing your children to walk to school or climb trees can feel irresponsible. This isn’t just robbing children of their childhoods, argues Maggie Dent, it’s also stealing adulthoods.  Grownups who can’t take risks miss out on the best in life: the top jobs, the exciting travel, the heart-thumping love stories.

This sounds scary, but research shows children who take more risks in play have more self-confidence and are less anxious. Importantly, they’re also better at assessing risk themselves. 

“You’re actually protecting kids when you teach them to take risks in a way that’s responsible,” explains Caroline Paul, who once shot a river on a raft made of milk bottles. “You’re not supposed to go zooming outside your comfort zone from zero to 60. Adventuring teaches you that’s not the way it works — you have to take small, small steps.”

Here’s an example: climbing a tree. Children who’ve climbed trees from an early age naturally listen to their own “little belly feeling” of how high is safe, says Anya Perkins from Nature Play QLD. On the other hand, kids who are new to tree-climbing tend to be less tuned into this warning voice.

So, to encourage brave kids, you need to encourage them to understand their own capabilities, says Anya. You might ask, “How high up that tree do you think you’ll feel comfortable?” or “How can you tell that branch is strong enough?” This way, you don’t neglect children’s safety but you’re not always saying they shouldn’t or can’t. By allowing children to develop their own judgement, you empower them to keep themselves safe.

Let there be gangs
Were you ever a part of a neighbourhood army of kids, invading local creeks or building cubbies in scraps of land?

The sense of belonging, independence and rivalry in these gangs did great things, says Anya Perkins. Naturally braver children had the chance to lead and stretch themselves. More reserved children could watch, see something was possible then try it themselves.

You can encourage gangs back into neighbourhoods — and adapt them for busier ones — by hosting barbecues, asking friends on outdoor play dates and lobbying schools to build nature playgrounds that stay open after class, says Maggie Dent.

A parent can stay within shouting distance and, for very little kids, even parks are a substitute. “What we do know is any time you go to force a child to do something you’ve actually set it backwards,” says Maggie. “Taking them to playgrounds where they watch other children is way more powerful.”

Stay patient
So, what do you do if, after all these things, your child still isn’t the adventurous one? Mostly, relax. If Lisa Blair, Jade Hameister and Caroline Paul have one thing in common, it’s that they’re proof that big adventurers grow from small, scared children.

“Jade wasn’t always that kid who would be out there leaping into the middle of things,” says her mum Vanessa. “Jade was the kid who stood back and watched what was going on.  “We thought it was about letting them believe in themselves and letting them take baby steps.”

Maggie Dent agrees. She says the brain’s plasticity — the way it builds new connections throughout life — means even timid children can learn to be adventurous adults in their own time. We just need to keep gently providing opportunities.

Sounds easy? Of course it isn’t. Watching your child climb a tree is scary. Seeing them struggle hurts. Supporting a child through difficulty is harder than simply rescuing them.  Sometimes, you’ll get it wrong. But perfect parents don’t raise adventurers — brave ones do. So, as parents, let’s be #bravenotperfect. Let’s let the wild adventures grow.

Author: Jacqui Hawkins
 https://www.wellbeing.com.au/kinship/parenting/6-ways-encourage-sense-adventure-in-children.html

From our Principal - Mr Wes Rose

Diocesan Principals’ Conference
Please note that next Tuesday-Friday, I will be attending this conference in Rockhampton.  While I am away, Mrs Leotta will be Acting Principal.  If you have any queries, please make a time to see her.

Personal and Social Development Talk
This Wednesday, we welcome Mrs Kristen Honeyball (Diocesan PSDE consultant) to St Mary’s.  Kristen is visiting to present the personal and social development education curriculum for our Year 6 students, which focuses on changes in the body in boys and girls, the male and female reproductive system as well as who students can talk to if they need assistance or further information.  This presentation is an important time in the development of our students and I thank parents for their support.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

I ask that all St Mary’s parents submit a response to the ‘Just 1 Thing’ campaign, which assists us to engage parents in their preferred ways.  Currently, we have only 36% of families that have submitted a response, a long way from our goal of 80%.  Please see below a snapshot of families who have completed the survey from each class.  Please click this link to complete the short, one-minute form. 

Baby News
Congratulations to the Albert Family who welcomed baby Joseph last Sunday. Joseph is a little brother to Riley (6v).

Quote of the Week

Project Compassion - Holy Week

As we enter Holy Week, we continue to reflect on the lives of people vulnerable to extreme poverty and injustice and how we can respond through supporting Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion appeal. 

Let us take time to remember the life and teachings of Saint Oscar Romero. His many lessons include: live a simple life, commit to bringing peace to the world, speak the truth and of course aspire not to have more, but to be more. Some words from what has become known as the Oscar Romero prayer; “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”

Thank you for supporting Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion Campaign. Your generosity will work for the freedom of those living in poverty, challenge unjust structures, and empower people to work for a sustainable way of life.

Caritas Classroom Tally

Children's Liturgy - Please join us

From our APRE - Mrs Terri Leotta

National Day of Action

On Friday after a class lesson on what Upstanders do, each student will create an Upstander to signify a commitment to making our school a safe, welcoming and homogenous environment. These will be displayed around the school.

An Upstander is: 
A person who takes action when the easiest thing to do is nothing.  We aspire to empower each student to stand up for themselves and others. We also teach students to recognize if they, or someone else needs help, resolve the issue or report the issue to an adult.

Reconciliation Sacrament

Below are the dates for children receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
St Francis Xavier 20^th April at 6pm
St Mary’s  21^st April at 6pm
St Patrick's  (to be advised)
St Michaels, Sarina    18th April after Mass 10am

Mrs Terri Leotta
APRE/Teacher

Harmony Day/National Day of Action against Bullying

This Friday 19th March we will acknowledge Harmony Day which is a time to celebrate Australian multiculturalism. We will also recognise the National Day of Action Against Bullying.

On this day each class will participate in lessons about tolerance, respect and learning skills to resolve conflicts. Each class will contribute to creating a whole school anti-bullying display.

We invite all students to wear ONE orange item of clothing with their uniform. This could be an orange t-shirt, ribbon, socks, etc.

Mrs Terri Leotta
APRE/Teacher

Sport News

Year 3-6 Cross-Country/Fun Run 2021

The 2021 Inter-House Cross-Country/Fun Run will be held on Wednesday 31^st March at Queens Park. Students will need to arrive at school promptly wearing their sports shorts and house shirt. Students will be transported to the venue by bus. Once students are assembled at Queens Park, races will commence.

The order of events and approximate times will be:

• 9:10am  9 years and under (2013, 2012) 2km Competitive Race Boys
                   9 years and under (2013, 2012) 2km Competitive Race Girls

• 9:30am 10 years (2011) 2km Competitive Race Boys
                   10 years (2011) 2km Competitive Race Girls

• 9:50am  11 years (2010) 3km Competitive Race Boys
                    11 years (2010) 3km Competitive Race Girls

• 10:10am   12 years (2009) 3km Competitive Race Boys
                      12 years (2009) 3km Competitive Race Girls

• Fun Run Boys 1km
• Fun Run Girls 1km

Students will choose on the day to compete in the Competitive Race OR the Fun Run. The students cannot enter both. The Competitive Race will have placing ribbons and will be the trial for the selection of the St Mary’s Cross-Country Team. The Fun Run is not for placing, it will be a staggered start with participation points  being allocated for every student who completes the run. At the end of the day, the winning house will be announced.

What to Pack

• Healthy snack to take to Queens park
• WATER BOTTLE
• Hat, sunscreen applied before school

Thank you to the parents who have already offered their help.  I am still after volunteers, so if you are able to stand at a station and cheer on our runners, please send an email to the address below.  The job required is very low on difficulty factor but very high on job satisfaction.

We’re hoping for a fun day finished with tired legs and full hearts.

See you at the track.

Caroline Kerrisk
caroline_kerrisk@rok.catholic.edu.au

Congratulations to Fynn Shears, Harper Shields and Charlie Galea on their selection in the Mackay U11 Rugby League side. The boys will travel to Emerald next term to play in the Capricornia trials.

Congratulations also to Helena Day, selected in the girls U12 team. Helena will also play again in Emerald later in the year.

Touch Footy Draw - Round 6

Please find below this Wednesday's Touch Footy draw.
Remember to wear your crazy socks!!!!
Good luck to all our teams.

This week we introduce you to our girls touch football teams. Both teams are improving each week earning them fantastic results. 

Year 5R Science

In Science 5R have been studying plant and animal adaptations.

Last week we had a visit from Mrs T who taught us how indigenous people used their knowledge of adaptations to survive in harsh environments.  We also learned how sandals are made from the bark of trees. We had a go at making our own sandals from material.  It was lots of fun!

Thank you Mrs T. 

School Banking

Dear families,

If you are interested in your child starting school banking, please visit the following website: https://www.commbank.com.au/banking/school-banking. The School Banking Parent Guide flyer is also available to download below.

You can open an account online or visit the local Commonwealth Bank.  Commonwealth Bank will send out a deposit book and wallet. Simply fill out the relevant details on the deposit slip (child’s name, BSB and account number) and send it to school with their money. I will then enter the child’s details into the system and a Student ID number will be issued. If you have the child’s account details, but have not yet received a book and wallet, we have blank books and wallets available.

General information for new/interested bankers

School Banking occurs every Monday during term time.  

Every time a student has made 10 deposits through the school banking program, they receive a prize. Prize redemption forms will be sent home with the student's wallet when they are due. For a full list of prizes please refer to the school banking website:
https://www.commbank.com.au/banking/school-banking

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me by leaving a note with the office staff, or with your child’s banking.

Happy Banking!

Deb Anderson
School Banking Co-ordinator.

Year 3 Social

St Mary's Trivia Night

Student of the Week

Week 7 Term 1 Student Award Winners

Community News

Marriage Encounter Weekends - Virtual or live-in,  April or May 2021

Worldwide Marriage Encounter invites couples, priests and religious to a Marriage Encounter Weekend to enrich and revitalise your Sacrament.  It gives you the opportunity to grow in your relationship with your spouse or your community.

Virtual weekend via Zoom, 30^th April – 2 May 2021, commencing at 7pm on Friday – concluding at 4pm Sunday.  Contact Julie and Zyg Staszyc: 0437 388 513 Email: sabookings@wwme.org.au

Live-in weekend Friday 28 May - Sunday 30 May at Ormiston (on Brisbane’s bayside).  Contact Maria and David Murphy: (07) 3342 1456, dandmmurphy@optusnet.com.au 

Information website:  www.wwme.org.au