Head of Secondary School
Recognising and Celebrating International Women’s Day 2023
Yr 12 students: Jamison Houchall, Taylor Riddell, Phoebe Barnett, Claudia Lalich
On Wednesday March 8, students and staff participated in a range of events at school and away. A fantastic assembly led by Yr 12 student leaders enabled Yr 10 to 12 students to hear from a mixed gendered panel who shared stories of the strong women in their lives and how to overcome barriers and enable agency and autonomy. From IWD breakfasts to female and mixed gendered panels, Redlands students across Yr 7 to 12 had the opportunity to be inspired in a number of ways, such as the Women in Sport Panel which was held in Redlands Hall during lunch on Wednesday, where a number of past and present female athletes gathered to share their experiences and respond to questions. Head fo Sport (Acting) Mr Cam Ellis was approached by Grace Durrant (Yr 11) to offer students the opportunity to hear about the challenges faced by women in sport today. The panel members consisted of:
Renae Garlepp (Camino) – current Redlands Director of Coaching: Basketball. Renae has a strong history in Basketball with a long career in the WNBL. She battled through a number of injuries and is currently regarded as one of the great up and coming female coaches.
Jemma Donoghue – Redlander (2018) Jemma is the current 1st VII Netball coach and also a Training partner with the GWS Giants Netball team. Jemma made her Suncorp Super Netball debut in 2022, and was also named in the Australian U21 Netball team last year.
Tatum Bird – NSW Waratahs – Tatum is one of the first 30 women contracted to Rugby Australia. Tatum has played across the world in her short rugby career representing Australia & NSW at Junior 7s levels.
Suzy Walsham – Suzy is an accomplished athlete who represented Australia at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Suzy still currently holds the U18 & U20 1500m Records, and more recently has been competing in the Towerrunning World Championships.
Wellbeing Support Session for Parents
Tuesday night saw our inaugural Secondary School Student Wellbeing Support Session for parents and carers in Yr 7 and 8. The evening was well attended with over 75 people, who listened, laughed, shared stories and asked questions. The full presentation can be found at Your Relationship With Your Teen and Understanding Their Development. Stay tuned for our next Session scheduled for Term 2.
Study Schedules and Independent Home-Learning
Many of you made contact to ask for clearer versions of the Study Schedules published in last week’s Note Day. Please access the original and deidentified examples of Study Schedules as well as some Skeleton Schedules here. You should be able to view and then copy to your own drive, which will then enable you to edit with your own teenager. Please don’t do it for them. We are really encouraging students to have a detailed Study Schedule this year, but it’s definitely something we need to do with them, in a collaborative fashion, as a significant part of success is understanding the process of how to make and effectively use a Study Schedule. Also included in this folder of schedules is a Best Practice Read Me First! support document and another document which provides information on Independent Learning How To! which outlines the ideal time students should engage independently learning and top study tips for moving from surface to deep learning.
As we move through the first assessment season for the year, it is essential that students have backward mapped all assessment tasks and identified when they will ‘work’ or ‘focus’ on unpacking, understanding and completing these assessments. Students have one important job – to be a student. If your teenager is aimless, procrastinating, engaged in activities which are not healthy or purposeful, then please keep them busy! Support them to schedule their life – build in reward, affirmation and reflection. Self-discipline, self-management and self-efficacy are essential to personal excellence. We have seen some extremely positive examples of students gaining confidence and motivation via the use of a Study Schedule. You can direct your teenager to their Year Advisor, or Dean of Studies (7-10), Dean of HSC or Dean of IB, who are all eager to support. Or reach out yourself, and we can facilitate a check-in with your teen during the school day.
Sport Success
Getting through to the Finals is an achievement. Getting through to the Semis is also an achievement. Sometimes, just getting to the end of a match is an achievement. As we move towards the end of the Summer Sport season, our teens have excelled in their capacity to work together, demonstrate self-discipline and be resilient in their sporting endeavours. We look forward to the final games over the coming days.
Tomorrow (Friday) our CIS Cup Girls Football squad will be travelling to Pymble Ladies College for Round 1 of the CIS Cup. This knockout competition is a great experience for the girls in the lead up to the ISA Football season.
On Saturday we will see the Finals of the ISA Summer competition with a number of teams competing in both Basketball and Touch Football. The 1st Girls Touch Football will take on Kinross Wolaroi School at 12:45pm at Macquarie University Sporting Fields, this is the first time the Redlands 1sts have been in the Final. The 1st V Girls Basketball will be playing Barker College 1 at Penrith Valley Basketball Centre at 10:20am on Saturday morning. This team is pursuing their 4th straight ISA Division 1 Championship which is a huge testament to the Basketball program. Special mention must go to Kate Seebohm (Basketball Administrator & 1st V Coach) as well as Renae Camino (Director of Coaching: Basketball) for all of their efforts in creating such a great program and supporting the players to excel.
RULER Your Emotions
Last week a group of Redlands staff successfully completed an online RULER course through Yale’s Centre for Emotional Intelligence, led by Marc Brackett. The RULER team was made up of me, Deputy Principal, Ms Sabine Partington, Head of Prep School, Ms Ainlsie Breckenridge, Head of Junior School, Mr Ari Guha and our Deans of Students Ms Katie-Louise Clinton and Ms Marita Jansons.
“Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.” Salovey & Mayer, 1990
Emotional intelligence is about what we do with our emotions. It provides a framework for harnessing the power of emotions, as well as enhancing our attitudes and mindset about the role that emotions play in our lives, what we can learn from our emotions, and our ability to attend to and manage emotions.
Emotional intelligence consists of five skills, which we refer to as the RULER skills.
Together we have worked on learning the strategies to activate the RULER method at Redlands. Over the coming weeks, I look forward to sharing some of our learnings with you, and communicating how we intend to activate this valuable strategy at Redlands.
Ms Gemma Van de Peer
Head of Secondary School
gvandepeer@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9968 9811