IONA 13

Practising Gratitude

I have spoken to many families over the last couple of weeks concerned for their children for various reasons.  It is hard not to be concerned.  I am watching my own daughters and their mercurial mood shifts, and also wondering about the impact of this pandemic on their short and long term wellbeing.  Then a niggling voice of truth resonates in my heart, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich).  This is hope.  With the love and support of family and friends the vast majority of us will come through with a renewed appreciation of the gifts and graces we have in our lives.  When we carry an extra burden of stress and worry, it can be hard to focus on the positives, but gratitude for all that is good in our lives, is one of the protective factors for mental health and wellbeing.  Practising gratitude each day so that it becomes habitual is something that we can do with our children as we support them in keeping our current circumstances in context.  This does not mean that we do not attend to the issues and concerns – if they trust us enough to share what they are feeling, we must acknowledge that this is real for them.  It does mean that the conversation needs to be well-rounded, acknowledging all that remains, as well as the fears for all that is/could be lost.

I have included the text from an article based on a TED Talk by Steven Kotler, that offers gratitude as one way to “put your brain in a good mood”:

What gets your brain fired up?  Believe it or not, a good mood.

When you’re in a good mood, your brain is more sensitive to new ideas and more creative.  The opposite is also true. A bad mood limits our brain to what we already know, the tried and the true, the logical and obvious.  When we’re in a good mood, we feel safe and secure.  We’re more willing to take risks.  When we are in a bad mood, we stick with what we know.

How can we make sure we are in a good mood – most of the time?  First of all, we need to find ways to increase our happiness.  There are four sure-fire ways to make us happier: a daily gratitude practice, a daily mindfulness practice, regular exercise and a good night’s sleep.

Gratitude trains the brain to focus on the positive so we filter out negative thoughts.

Mindfulness teaches the brain to be calm and focused, giving our brain time and space for new thoughts and ideas. Take some time to be alone, with all devices switched off, spending quiet time.

Exercise lowers stress levels, increasing feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine.  This lowers anxiety and improves our good mood.

A good night’s rest increases energy levels, giving us the ability to meet challenges.  When we sleep, the brain has time to find all sorts of hidden connections between ideas.

Gratitude, mindfulness, exercise and sleep are essential for the good mood that leads to peak performance.  When life gets complicated, concentrate on these to get your brain fit and ready to deal with problems.

Acknowledgement – TED, Steven Kotler in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.

Our partnership with Real Schools provides some great insights to support our staff and students to put our current situation into context.  Here is a snippet shared by Adam Voigt, Founder and CEO of Real Schools.

“… if you’re currently teaching or leading in a school trapped in a lockdown, I wanted to spend this message encouraging you with the right words.

That’s my mission because I’d contend that some of the wrong words have been creeping into the public discourse about school closures in recent times – and I’d like to set the record straight.

I’m talking about the sudden horror at “days lost” when it comes to counting the toll of school closures on our kids’ educations.

Let’s be clear:

• Days attended is not the measure of an education. You don’t get an award at the end of Year 12 for merely turning up 25,278 of the possible 26,000 days in your school education. Days are not our currency – progress and growth is.
• Very few of (y)our students have lost any days at all. It’s not a day lost when a teacher busts a gut to teach a Microsoft Teams lesson to you, when a teacher connects you with classmates in a Zoom breakout room and when a teacher checks-in on your wellbeing.  It’s just a day harder.
• The negative impacts of school closures, as real as they are, are not irretrievable. As much as these are not “days lost” they are also not “days unrecoverable”.  In fact, we will most definitely help our kids recover and grow … that’s kind of our thing.

Let’s treat this disruption like getting out of shape (that’s relevant for me anyway as Netflix has replaced the gym and as Twisties have replaced carrot sticks).

When our students return full-time, they might not be in the best educational shape… but we can fix that.  When it’s time, we’ll get them back on a nutritious diet of academic achievement and a training regime of connecting positively with others.

My prediction is that they’ll lose their pudginess in quick time and be back on track for a healthy life of learning and love.

In the meantime, can we just be kind to each other and ease up a bit on the Twisties?

Keep fighting that good fight.”

Social Justice Sunday 

We celebrate Social Justice Sunday on the 29th of August.  It draws from Scripture, from the theological tradition, from Catholic Social Teaching, and from the wisdom of the world, including the insights of the First Nations.

The Australian Bishops’ Social Justice Statement, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, invites us to join in responding to Pope Francis’ invitation to take a seven-year journey towards total ecological sustainability guided by seven Laudato Si’ Goals. The Statement provides theological foundations to ground and inspire our efforts to care for creation while responding to the needs of the disadvantaged and excluded. More information: ACBC Office for Justice, Ecology and Peace, www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au 

Ever present God,

through Christ,

in whom all things are made and held in being,

we pray for the power of your Spirit:

to transform our words and actions,

to care more deeply for all creatures,

to save what is threatened,

to mourn what is lost,

to seek Christ in the cry of the earth

and the cry of the poor,

and to give glory to your name through all creation. Amen

Parents or guardians, and students are invited to meet with the Principal, Head of Students and myself on Monday 6 September. This provides us an opportunity to outline the final weeks of your daughter’s schooling at the College and the arrangements, for the various celebrations being planned, to acknowledge our Year 12 students. A Google Meet link will be sent to families next week. We look forward to connecting with you then.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged all of us, including our kids. So, RCH wants to help.

The below links are from a parents session held on Wednesday 25 August with a panel of experts talking about how you can support your child’s mental health throughout the pandemic and also beyond.

‘How to support your child’s mental health through the pandemic.’ Presented by RCH.

RECORDING HERE – https://www.facebook.com/rchmelbourne/videos/266941898337228/

OR ON YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/y1DizMUOeng 

Due to the current COVID-19 extended lockdown, the Scholarship Testing date has been rescheduled and registration has reopened. New dates are as follows:

Registration closing date is Friday 29 October 2021

Scholarship testing date is Saturday 6 November 2021

Details about the scholarships on offer and online registration are available on the College website.

This year the writing competition is based on a descriptive or reflective piece (of approximately 500 words).

Your piece should be typed and emailed to Mr Harrison and must be original.

There is a book prize for each category of junior, middle and senior students.

The topic for this year is:

A LIFE IN LOCKDOWN

It may be humorous, or you may simply wish to get things off your chest.

It must be your best possible writing.

Features of Reflective Writing:  communicating your response to thoughts and feelings in personal writing

Features of Descriptive Writing: communicating thoughts in images and the use of the senses.

All entries are due by 19 September, so start writing! We look forward to reading all of your submissions.

On Thursday 26th August, the de Lacy community honoured Sister Mary Baptist de Lacy for whom our House is named. 

Sister Mary Baptist de Lacy, first name Alicia, was the only one of the Pioneer Sisters who entered the Sisters of Charity, specifically for the Australian Mission. She was trained in Nursing and was the Foundress of St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, which was the first hospital opened by the Sisters in Australia.

Like Sister Mary Baptist de Lacy, may we live with courage in all that we do, and have compassion towards those less fortunate in our community. 

Today I spoke to the de Lacy community about the wonderful  work that Briar Terrace, our House Partnership, does to support those in need in the wider community.  Briar Terrace, a cottage in Fitzroy, was first established by the Sisters of Charity in 1997 and works in partnership with St Vincent’s Hospital. This cottage offers the socially isolated a place of companion and a sense of day security. Briar Terrace offers a friendly and safe place where the friends of Briar Terrace can grab a snack, hot drink and engage in conversation with others. The de Lacy community is currently in the process of collecting toiletries for Briar Terrace. The hope is that we will be able to share these with Briar Terrace very soon. 

Considering the unprecedented times we are currently experiencing, the de Lacy House prayer is very fitting and I would like to share it with you. 

House Prayer: 

Dear Lord, 

May we be inspired by the life of Sister Alicia de Lacy. May we follow her example of courage, determination and strength to face the uncertainties of the world.

May we show this through our brave actions when we are dealing with the unexpected challenges of our everyday lives. May we always work together with faith and wisdom in all that we do.

We pray for the de Lacy community and hope that we shall always walk together in the footsteps of the Sisters of Charity.

I would like to thank Mikaela Mihocic, de Lacy House Captain and her House Representatives in assisting in putting together our Feast Day Liturgy.

St Columba’s College celebrated Languages Week from Monday 23rd August to Friday 27 August. Students participated in a variety of online activities in the comfort of their own homes such as virtual tours to different galleries and places in France, Italy and Japan, cultural immersion activities, a quiz competition and cooking.

To celebrate Languages week during classes, the Languages teachers invited students to share a cultural activity with their class. It was wonderful to see the diverse activities our students engaged in as part of their cultural heritage and the different cultural dishes they regularly share with their families at meal times. 

Students of Italian from Years 9-12 participated in the annual Dante Alighieri Poetry Competition which was done virtually this year. Many students worked hard over the last few months, attending lunchtime workshops to practice and perfect their poetry recitations. Their practice paid off with many students reciting their chosen poem to an excellent standard.

Some photos of dishes our students made at home:

Students sharing their Cultural Heritage 

These are called Flaounes and are traditionally made in Cyprus where I come from. They are usually made at Easter time. They are basically dough and inside is a mixture of haloumi and mint. They are delicious. You can also make sweet ones with ricotta and sultanas.

Tracing their heritage back to the homeland.

The Year 7, 8 and 9 students have been working on the Olympic Tomodachi Connect project for the past two months. The project was devised by the Australian Olympic Committee to build connections between students in Japan and Australia. They have created videos on aspects of their lives and on Australian culture. These have been shared with the boys from Salesio Gakuin, a Catholic boys’ school in Yokohama. The boys have also shared videos with our students. This program connects students from Japan and Australia, giving them the opportunity to learn about each other’s culture and traditions.

To celebrate National Science Week and this year’s theme Food Different by Design, Google cloud engineers used machine learning (ML) to train a ML model to create completely new recipes.  

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that uses computer algorithms designed to identify patterns, provide insights, make decisions and predict outcomes based on analysing vast data sets. The systems automatically evolve and increase in accuracy without being explicitly programmed. ML allows computers to learn on their own without the need for coding or human assistance.

For the Girls Day out in STEM Challenge, the machines were loaded with  data (in this case recipes) in a generic algorithm. The algorithm the machine builds is the logic based on the given data. The output from the machine? New recipes to try for the Girls Day out in STEM Challenge! 

Year 8 student Charlotte Mollica participated in this year’s challenge and has shared the recipes generated by the machine learning model.

Girls Day Out in STEM Challenge

For those of you who didn’t know, the “Girls Day Out in STEM Challenge” was still able to continue this year. Usually it is a live hands-on workshop, however this year, due to COVID, the coordinators were able to convert this challenge online so people could complete it from the comfort of their own homes. This year, the task was a special baking challenge. The challenge was named “The Great Machine Learning Bake-off” and included a series of recipes to make at home. These recipes were created by a machine and had mixed and matched different recipes to create one awesome new tasty treat. One was called a “Breakie”, (a mix between a bread and a chocolate chip cookie), and the other a “Cakie”, (a mix between a chocolate chip cookie and a cake). These two recipes are shown below.

I decided that I wanted to make the “Breakie”. We had to choose someone to be a sous chef, so I chose my mum. We made the “Breakie” on the 22nd of August and there are some pictures below. My mum and I found the process fun to follow. If you’ve made either bread or biscuits before then it’s hard to go wrong but definitely needed a little attention to detail. The end result was fun to share (at A COVID SAFE distance with my neighbor and grandma). My grandma said it was the best biscuit she’d ever tasted. A great way to spend a lockdown weekend.

For those of you who didn’t know, the “Girls Day Out in STEM Challenge” was still able to continue this year. Usually it is a live hands-on workshop, however this year, due to COVID, the coordinators were able to convert this challenge online so people could complete it from the comfort of their own homes. This year, the task was a special baking challenge. The challenge was named “The Great Machine Learning Bake-off” and included a series of recipes to make at home. These recipes were created by a machine and had mixed and matched different recipes to create one awesome new tasty treat. One was called a “Breakie”, (a mix between a bread and a chocolate chip cookie), and the other a “Cakie”, (a mix between a chocolate chip cookie and a cake). These two recipes are shown below.

I decided that I wanted to make the “Breakie”. We had to choose someone to be a sous chef, so I chose my mum. We made the “Breakie” on the 22nd of August and there are some pictures below. My mum and I found the process fun to follow. If you’ve made either bread or biscuits before then it’s hard to go wrong but definitely needed a little attention to detail. The end result was fun to share (at A COVID SAFE distance with my neighbor and grandma). My grandma said it was the best biscuit she’d ever tasted. A great way to spend a lockdown weekend.

The Year 12 VCAL students have been working closely with Fitted for Work during Term 3. Fitted for work is an organisation that helps disadvantaged women get work, keep work and navigate their world of work. St Columba’s College has worked with the organisation for many years and we are proud to continue supporting such a worthwhile cause. One element of our project was to design and print tote bags with inspirational messages of hope for the women receiving donated items. We have also designed tote bags which we are selling through the school online shop for $5 to raise money for Fitted for Work. If you would like to purchase a tote bag via the online school shop please do so by clicking on this link. Thank you for your support of this wonderful organisation.

Application for Enrolment for Year 7 2023 has now closed. If your daughter is currently in grade 5 and you have not submitted an application form, please contact me by emailing  registrar@columba.vic.edu.au as soon as possible.

Notification of students intending to leave St Columba’s College at the conclusion of the 2021 school year would be greatly appreciated as planning for 2022 is underway. We would like to be able to finalise any possible enrolments as there are families who are seeking places for their daughters at the College in Years 8 – 12.

The notification process is for a formal letter or email of notification to be sent to the Principal, Ms Rita Grima. A reminder that the College’s Fee Policy states a term’s notice is required if you are withdrawing your daughter from the College. Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.