Newsletter: Term 4, Week 4

Dates to Remember:

From the Principal:

Prayer for World Teachers’ Day

Giver of all wisdom and greatest of all teachers, look upon our teachers with love.
Grant them the resolve to nurture our eager minds and to never give up on us who fall behind.

Bless their hearts for they rejoice when we succeed and encourage us when we fail and bless them with gentle patience for the path of learning is never easy.

Kindle a spirit and passion in them, it is the flame that ignites the love of learning in us.

Help them see the potential in each student.
Their belief in us means much more than the grade we make.
Instill in them a commitment to keep on learning.
It shows us to not fear new knowledge and experiences.

Inspire them to touch the future.

They influence how big a dream we dream for ourselves.
Bless our teachers who have come before, for their work endures to this day.
Let the light of your example shine upon all teachers to build up with their words, to love with their mind and to share with their heart.

Amen!

This Friday 28th October we celebrate “World Teachers’ Day” – a day to recognise the dedication by our teachers who make a difference to students in their care. St Augustine’s is very proud and fortunate to have such a dedicated and enthusiastic teaching staff who go above and beyond their call of duty providing all students with a vast range of academic, sporting and religious opportunities. A huge thank you to our teachers – your commitment to Catholic Education is very much appreciated by all.

2023 Foundation Orientation

It’s hard to believe it is that time of year again, but next week we will welcome our 2023 Foundation class for their first orientation session. The series of Orientation sessions is one of the highlights of the year, as these children take their first steps into “Big School”. Moving from kinder to school is a significant transition for the children and families. There is no way of knowing how a child will respond when coming into school for the first time. The school site is much bigger and there are more children present than at community kindergartens and childcare centres.

All Foundation parents (new and old) are warmly invited to the 2023 Prep Information morning, to be held at school on Tuesday 13th December. This morning is a wonderful opportunity to meet new families, key staff who will be working with the children and also hear about how you can best support your child through this transition. Jess Reynolds will continue as our Foundation teacher in 2023 and she is excited to partner with our foundation parents as the children start their schooling journey.

School Assembly Timetable

Year Six –  Friday 28/10                                                                                                                                                          Year Five –  Friday 04/11                                                                                                                                                      Year Four –  Friday 11/11                                                                                                                                                    Year Two –  Friday 18/11                                                                                                                                                    Year Three –  Friday 28/11

Technology friend or Foe

The way we live is changing. Each year, our free time shrinks a little more as computers/phones clamour for our attention. We are a part of, and a contributor to, the change that is associated with a ‘computer age’. The amazing contradiction of our age is not so much the ability to connect to such a wealth of information, but the apparent ‘disconnect’ that is so often associated with social media.

I remember back to 1969 when man landed on the moon. Essential to the lunar missions was a command module designed at MIT called the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). The computer used an operating system that allowed astronauts to type in nouns and verbs that were translated into instructions for their spaceship. While it was handy, AGC wasn’t particularly powerful having 64Kbyte of memory and operating at 0.043MHz. In fact, it was less equipped than a modern toaster.

Today, if you consider the processing power of an iPhone, it’s clock is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and could perform instructions 120,000,000 times faster. You wouldn’t be wrong in saying an iPhone could be used to guide 120,000,000 Apollo-era spacecraft to the moon, all at the same time.

The Australian Government through the eSafety Commissioner published ‘Mind the gap: parental awareness of children’s exposure to risks online’ in February 2022. A summary of the findings of this comprehensive report identified five key finding:

Young people engage in a wide range of online activities and experience many benefits from using the internet:

Many children have gone online for health information, searching for material about mental and, physical health.  

A third of children looked for emotional support online from friends and/or mental health support services.

Significant numbers of children have had negative online experiences: 

Close to half of the children surveyed were treated in a hurtful or nasty way online in the past year. 

A quarter of the children had themselves treated someone in a hurtful or nasty way online. 

Almost all children did something in response to a negative online experience – most commonly telling their parents. 

Many parents underestimate the prevalence of children’s negative online experiences, and many are not aware of their teens’ exposure to negative content or sexual material online.

Children with restrictive parents are less likely to be exposed to harmful content, but they are also much less likely to engage in supportive and protective online activities.

Complementing this study was an earlier US study (2019) that drew from nationally representative surveys of 11 million young people as well as in-depth interviews. ‘iGen’, a book by Dr Jean Twenge, was the first book to document the cultural changes shaping today’s teens and young adults, documenting how their changed world has impacted their attitudes, world views, and mental health. With generational divides appearing to be wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born after 1995, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person – perhaps indicating why some statistics indicate that they are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

Dr Twenge’s studies highlight the point that technology is not the only thing that makes iGen distinct from every generation before them; they are also different in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward many topics; they socialise in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. Anxiety and depression are very closely related to each other, being two sides of the same coin.

Without wanting to be labelled a Luddite, these recent, comprehensive studies are extremely interesting in that almost everything that you can do that is not on a screen is linked to more happiness - spending time with friends in person, going to religious services, sports and exercise, even homework. However, several studies have found that almost everything that is on a screen is linked to less happiness - social media use, ‘serendipitous’ internet searches, texting. Twenge’s studies highlighted two studies that followed people over time and the results concluded that spending a significant amount of time on social media leads to unhappiness but being unhappy doesn't lead to spending more time on social media. Parents and educators cannot afford not to be part of discussions regarding online engagement. There is no doubt that our involvement in the ‘computer age’ will continue to present us with the potential for enormous benefits, and the potential for considerable costs.

Wellbeing:

Mission Day:

Meet the Year 6's:

Community News: