Kia ora e te whanau
​
Term two is often the toughest of part of the year. The novelty of arriving at a new school and beginning a new year has passed and what is left is the everyday business of learning – which isn’t always easy. It is a time when our values can be tested by the normal frustrations of our daily life and these provide our young people with an opportunity to discern right from wrong, between good and bad, what is truth and a lie, and what is better and best.

We learn the answers to these things – from each other, from friends and family, from society at large and also online. Some of these sources are better than others! I encourage parents to try to monitor what your child is engaged in when it comes to online activities. At St Peter’s College, we will enhance our values to prevent unwarranted behaviour from entering the College and causing disruption, but this is also a partnership between home and school. How we react to a problem is often 90% of solving it.

We continue to experience disruptions with the 7 day grind of isolation periods at varying times for both staff and students. This calls us to be flexible and adaptable in all areas of the school. My gratitude goes out to our staff who have taken on extra class supervision and increased their workloads to support their colleagues and students. My congratulations to parents who have managed to keep their families together through these constraints. Keeping a structure and home routine going during these times is heroic. Well done to our young people who have turned up every day for their lessons without grumbling despite the obstacles of online learning.

Fighting the good fight, finishing the course, and keeping faith is the mission of our learning. Our direction as a school is about looking forward, working towards the goals in our strategic plan that we all contributed to, and putting the students at the centre. Full school assemblies have now been restored and this is to encourage every student to have a sense of the whole and to reinstate our community connections.

"I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the race,
I have kept the faith"
(2 Timothy 4:7)

Keeping the faith is difficult. But we know life is difficult. Keep going today and tomorrow.

Charity Fulfils the Law.

​Tara Quinney,
Principal

Kia ora e te whanau

We are built for connection. We are not solitary people. We are connected in families, in partnerships and marriages, in friendship groups, in teams and by many other social links. When we are disconnected, we feel lonely, and it isn’t a pleasant feeling. This week is Anti-bullying awareness week. It’s an issue that has grown in significance during the pandemic. When we feel left out or are purposely excluded from friendship groups it can be extremely lonely and it is a form of bullying.

- We can feel lonely when we are with our friends, our family or our social group - even when we are in a crowd.
- We can feel lonely or detached if we feel left out of certain conversations or activities.
- We can feel lonely because we have no one to discuss a problem with, in confidence. This can make us realise that the relationships that we have are fairly shallow.
- We can feel lonely if we sense that we’re out of tune with others’ expectations because ours are starting to drift in a different direction.

There are probably some members of our community reading this who would describe themselves as feeling lonely right now.

​In terms of our mental health, loneliness can result in depression, sleep difficulties, anxiety and low self-esteem. Over time, loneliness can also affect our physical health. We lose fitness, our energy levels reduce and even our immune systems can be impaired. This is why it is important for us to learn some strategies to handle loneliness.

Jesus had times when he was lonely. The Bible uses words from an Old Testament prophecy to describe his experience, particularly at the crucifixion: “We despised him and rejected him; he endured suffering and pain. No one would even look at him – we ignored him as if he were nothing.” (Isaiah 53.3) Jesus’ final words as he died - ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27.46) - indicate the total loneliness that he felt. Christians believe that this is a sign of how closely Jesus identifies with us and sympathises with us when we experience loneliness. I overheard a group of year 7 students discussing why Jesus would like pink shirt day this week- they said: He would like it because he was bullied too!

This is why, in creating his Church, Jesus emphasised that it was to be a community of people in relationship. St Paul expands on this by likening the Church to a body, with many different limbs and organs connected together. We are built for connection.

Loneliness has always been around; it isn’t a new phenomenon. To alleviate it, we can try some of the following:

- Volunteering at a local charity.
- Doing an unexpected favour for someone in our community.
- Smiling and saying hello to complete strangers.
- Exercising. Our bodies will automatically produce endorphins and we never know who we might meet at the gym, on a walk or on a run.

Tara Quinney,
Principal

Kia ora e te whanau

It is great to see so many of our students back at school, wearing their uniform correctly and following the wearing of masks expectation. We do not feel that we are ready to make mask wearing optional yet. There is still a long tail of Covid cases in the south and we are hearing from schools that have lifted the mask mandate that Covid cases are rising again. More than anything we really want to avoid any further rostering of year levels home, school closures and most of all sick students and staff members. Even if we have already had Covid, I am sure we all have family members and friends who may be immune compromised who we want to keep safe. Our case numbers are getting very low, and we are hopeful that we can be back in whole school assemblies and gatherings soon.

​It was lovely to be able to celebrate the Academic Blues recipients yesterday in person at the Blessed Sacrament Church. These achievements have placed our students as top academic leaders within the region and well above the Government’s measures of student success in NCEA and University Entrance. These achievements and experiences in and of themselves are special and deserved today’s accolades. We are very appreciative of the work and encouragement that you as parents put into these students to bring them along with us on this journey.

Next Friday is Pink Shirt Day in NZ schools and we encourage our students all to wear something pink to school that day just not hair dye or nail polish please. This will be a free mufti day to raise awareness of anti-bullying in our society. No school is immune to bullying and we take it very seriously when students are experiencing any form of bullying. At this week’s assembly I talked about cyber bullying in particular. Our young people spend a lot of time on phones, tablets, social media sites and messaging apps, so they are more likely to come across it. A survey in 2020 found that seven out of ten children aged 10 to 15 years who experienced online bullying said that it was by someone from their school. Nearly the same number were emotionally affected by the online bullying behaviour that they experienced.

Just because the bullying is taking place online does not make it any less harmful. Cyberbullying can have devastating and sometimes long-lasting effects on the person involved. It is important to know the signs so that we can put a stop to it. Anyone who makes threats to us on the internet could be committing a criminal offence. In NZ, it’s against the law to use the phone or the internet to cause alarm or distress to others. If we post abuse online about anyone or send threats, our internet provider has records of our activity. The police can require internet providers to share this information. Cyberbullying can have a massive impact. It can cause a range of emotions and feelings, including embarrassment, worry, loneliness, hopelessness and feeling overwhelmed. As soon as a message has been sent, it cannot be taken back, so it is important to consider the effect that our message or post could have on others. Cyberbullying often starts behind a keyboard, which may lead the bully to think that they are untraceable, giving them further confidence to post abusive comments.

When cyberbullying continues, it can feel relentless. It may result in victims not wanting to come to school or go about their usual activities. They may withdraw from friends and family, and sometimes, their feelings can even lead to self-harm and suicide. The most important thing is not to ignore or hide what is going on. Otherwise, the bullying may escalate. If students are being bullied, whether it is happening online or in person, they must tell an adult whom they can trust. This could be a parent, a member of school staff or a helpline advisor. There are actions available to put a stop to bullying; we do not have to put up with it. Most social media sites have a button for reporting abuse; making a report can result in the perpetrator being blocked or deleted from the site anonymously. We can also block anyone on social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram so that they cannot message us again. It is a good idea to take a screenshot of any abusive messages to use as evidence.

We wish Mrs Kate McGowan all the best as she goes on maternity leave and we know her year 7 homeroom class will be in capable hands with Mrs Liza Wilson coming back to teach this class until the end of the year. We will be re-advertising the Learning Support Coordinator role later in this term.

Tara Quinney,
Principal

Kia ora e te whanau

Refreshed and refocused. That’s how we hope to begin this school Term under new Covid requirements. It would be great to be able to say that this Term will be less disrupted by illness and home isolation than last Term, but we must not become complacent. Covid is still very much active in our community. We are hopeful the main ‘Covid surge’ will be behind us soon. Masks continue to be one of the most effective measures to prevent the spread of air borne infections and all staff and students will continue to wear these next week, when it will be re-evaluated again next Friday.

Case numbers in the South are still high and Dr Michael Butchard, the Medical Officer of Health for the Southern District Health Board shares this statement strongly encouraging the wearing of masks:

“When you leave your home, wearing a well-fitting mask when indoors is still one of the very best ways to protect yourself, your whānau, and those around you from Covid-19. The Southern DHB region currently has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 in New Zealand, higher than all of the North Island DHBs and the larger South Island DHBs, so please still keep up your mask wearing.”
Dr Michael Butchard, Medical Officer of Health

This Term, we will begin to move towards more in-person gatherings, in well ventilated and larger venues, for our students. We know that the opportunities to get together, as larger groups, have been very limited over the past three Terms and we want to ensure we can continue to build community, especially for our younger students who have just joined our learning community. We will have whanau conferencing later this term in school and more information about this will be available in the coming weeks. We were so thankful to be able to run our annual cross country this week and it was lovely to have parents back onsite again showing the children encouragement. We look forward to celebrating the Academic Blues Excellence recipients next week at the Blessed Sacrament Church and welcome all family members and supporters to attend.

Encouragement is an important word and concept in our vocabulary. In an online dictionary, it is defined as, “the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope.” It is the action of cheering someone up, uplifting them. By encouraging others, we are giving them “courage.” We are scaffolding others’ self-esteem and belief in themselves as being able to keep going and slog on through. Runners of marathons often say that it is the encouragement and cheers from the crowd that keep them going even when it is hard.

By giving encouragement, we embolden and empower people to know that they are doing a good job, or they are doing all right and their efforts are appreciated. Everyone thrives on praise and on being told that they are doing a good job, they are good at something. Who doesn’t like to get a smiley face or positive comment on their work or even a sticker?

Why is it, then, that, most of time, the first thing we say is a negative word or a criticism? If we include our own self-talk in this, then I have no doubt that you are your own harshest critic. Why so often when we are given compliments do we simply shrug them off and find something negative to say about ourselves or our performance instead. Words of affirmation and encouragement are so important – in the way that we speak to ourselves, but also in the way we talk to others. I encourage all of our students to talk nicely to themselves and use encouraging words:

When you get a test result back and it’s a high grade, don’t think, “I’m so rubbish, I should have got the top grade”, try to think of something positive. Remember, there may be someone sitting next to you who is not capable of getting the grade you got, let alone the top grade.

Try to encourage your siblings if you can or even tell your parents what a good job they’re doing (even though it might not always feel like they are). I am sure they’re probably being negative enough about themselves so don’t need you to be!

Try to catch those negative thoughts before they cause you to spiral into a day of negativity.
If all else fails, take a deep breath and focus on one good thing that you can see. If it’s not you, it might be your friend. If that’s the case, tell him or her. Give your friend some encouragement.

Charity Fulfils the Law

​Tara Quinney,
Principal