Head of Secondary School
House Spirit Fair
On Thursday 15 September, the Yr 12 Student Leadership Team will be hosting the House Spirit Fair. Through this event Yr 12 hopes to promote House and School spirit while raising funds for the School’s scholarship fund and the class of 2022’s legacy gift.
Students have lots of fun activities planned, including dodgeball, 3v3 basketball, a lip sync battle, live music, the famed chess competition, and more! There will even be a few teacher vs student events, which always draw a crowd. Students are encouraged to gather a group of friends together to form teams, and sign-up via the QR codes provided on the promotion posters. these posters will be located around the school and available in Tutor period.
Online Safety Parent Updates
The recent Redlands Parent CyberSafety session supported parents to more meaningfully engage with, and understand, the complexities around teenagers and technology. At Redlands, staff value the important partnership between parents and the School when it comes to supporting and protecting young people in the digital space. It’s not simply the responsibility of any one entity – the School, the students and the parents share responsibility in this respect.
Two online platforms that parents should be aware of are Discord and BeReal.
Whilst Discord is marketed as a ‘place to hang out’ there is a great deal of highly offensive communication. Launched four years ago as a way for people to communicate while playing video games, Discord is free and accessible from mobile devices and computers. It allows users to talk to friends or strangers in real-time via voice, text or video chat. For these reasons, it is very appealing to young people. However, the chat groups are unmoderated and the language can be quite confronting with use of profanities or unsuitable topics for children/teens as well as enabling them to engage with strangers online. We strongly encourage you to dissuade your teenager from using this platform and if they do currently use it, to engage in regular monitoring, as an important protective factor.
BeReal is fast becoming the latest obsession for Gen Z and has started to make an appearance on the Senior Campus. BeReal was invented in 2020, but according to trending news website Social Media Today, downloads of the app have risen by 315% since the beginning of the year, now ranking fourth in the list of most downloaded social media apps, behind Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. BeReal users receive a notification at a random time once a day saying ‘Time to BeReal’. This opens up a two-minute window for the user to post a picture of what they are currently doing. The purpose of this is to capture an authentic, unfiltered snapshot of a user’s life – the opposite of the curated Instagram or SnapChat photos. When posting on BeReal, the app takes a picture using both the front and back camera, so other people can see what the user looks like and where they are. The user can only see other peoples’ posts after they have posted their own.
There are positives and negatives to this platform. Because of the time restraint, photos aren’t as polished or aesthetic and there is less pressure to create the perfect scene and gain approval from followers, which is why it has been marketed as a refreshing way to use social media. Concerningly, BeReal has the possibility to disrupt a student’s concentration and focus, as the prompt appears at any time during the day. The purpose of BeReal image also causes issues with privacy as the post may capture other people in the frame who have not consented to be included in the post. The app also has a SnapMap type feature that allows the user to see where their contacts are throughout the world which may cause further issues for privacy. For these reasons, we also request that parents talk with their teenager about the risks of using BeReal, as we are doing at school via pastoral care conversations during Tutor period.
Kids Giving Back Program
Daniel Benoliel and Luka Gordon participated in the community programs at Kids Giving Back during the July School holidays. These two student are among over 500 young people who produced over 13,500 hot meals, soup, salads, fruit kebabs, breakfast boxes, snack packs, care packs and decorated tote bags, with empathetic, positive messages, which were distributed to 13 charities around Sydney. Volunteering in the school holidays was especially valuable as the twice weekly soup kitchen provided almost 1000 servings of soup in the cold and rain, to those who needed warm food and support. The student volunteers were also especially helpful in folding and packing new clothes for over 12,000 vulnerable people, many of whom were affected by this year’s floods. We deeply appreciate their service to others and the kindness they have extended.
Yr 11 Camp
Yr 11 students have been letting us know their preferences for activities they will undertake on Yr 11 Camp in Week 1 of Term 4. An information letter has been emailed, and is available for parents on Pulse. It promises to be an exciting week down at our High Country Campus with activities including cross country skiing, snowshoeing, bushwalking, horse riding, rafting, biking and canoeing.
Please take a few moments to provide our Camp provider, OEG, with your child’s medical details via this link.
Uniform Shop
Term 3 Holiday Opening Hours
The Uniform Shop will open Friday 23 September, Thursday 6 October and Friday 7 October from 8am – 4pm.
Appointments are recommended and can be booked online. Please click HERE to make an appointment.
Student are required to wear full summer uniform from the start of Term 4.
Blazers Requiring Embroidery
Uniform Shop staff will collect blazers from the Senior Campus on the last day of term, Thursday 22 September during lunch and after school until 3.30pm. Please ensure blazers are clearly named, badges removed and pockets have been emptied.
New Sports Training T-Shirt
Students in Years 7–12 may now purchase the new Sports Training T-Shirt which can be worn at training sessions outside normal school hours only. Students can then change into their clean sports polo on Thursdays. Sizing is the same as the current sports polo and can be ordered online through Flexischools or by visiting the Uniform Shop.
If you have any queries placing orders or making an appointment, please call us on 9968 9850 or email uniformorders@redlands.nsw.edu.au
Ms Gemma Van de Peer
Head of Secondary School
gvandepeer@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9968 9811