In this newsletter:
- Principal’s message,
- Ms Dunn’s Digest,
- Mrs Resta’s Reflections,
- Parenting with Mr Gilchrist,
- Highlights from around the campus,
- Dates for your diary,
Principal’s message
While Term 4 is something of a whirlwind with a lot of events and activities in every part of our school, it is a time of year which I genuinely appreciate.
The term provides us with the opportunity to look back and reflect on how much our young people have accomplished and grown over the course of the year. This year we have also celebrated the 40th anniversary of the humble beginnings of St Stephen’s School, and how much we’ve achieved together as a community over this time.
Term 4 brings our community together to celebrate the things that unite us, a belief in the value of serving others and a connection to God.
It is also a time which triggers anticipation of warm weather, family fun, relaxation and holidays after another busy and satisfying year of school!
Planning is well underway for our end of year Presentation Evenings, and in our 40th year we look forward to welcoming you all to be part of our celebrations so please make sure you book your free tickets via the link below.
I hope, like me, you can enjoy Term 4 for all the opportunities it presents. I look forward to seeing you soon.
Take care and God bless,
Donella Beare – Principal
Tickets for Presentation Evenings 2024 are now available
We are delighted to present the 2024 St Stephen’s School Presentation Evenings. Please join us to celebrate all that our students have accomplished in 2024. Bookings are essential but tickets are all free of charge.
All attendees, including guests, staff, awardees and performers must book a ticket. Parking will be provided on the oval.
Book online here https://ticketing.humanitix.com/tours/presentation-evenings-2024
Ms Dunn’s Digest
We wish all our Year 12 students well in the upcoming exams and assessments. The educational journey is one for both you as the parent/guardian and your child/children. At our celebratory graduation evening we invite a parent to share their proud moments and experiences. With the permission of Genevieve Hays here are her reflections for the graduating class of 2024. Her speech says it all!
Rosemarie Dunn, Head of Campus
My name is Genevieve Hays. As a family we have a long association with and many points of connection to this wonderful school community. 2024 rounds out 20 years for Derek and I being parents at St Stephen’s. Two decades of time, time we chose to invest into the education of our children. We talk about spending time or wasting time but intentionally spending is investing. In those 20 years we have invested time in: 7,200 trips to or from school, not including the uncounted trips for forgotten computers or correct uniform pieces and left behind musical instruments across those years.
Time spent doing parent hours in classrooms, at fetes, attending assemblies, music concerts, drama evenings, Synthesis exhibitions, cross countries, athletics carnivals, lightning carnivals. Evenings of eminence, science fairs, parent teacher interviews, orchestra festivals and presentation evenings and the like.
Time spent doing over 1000 loads of washing uniforms, including around a dozen different types of school socks across girls, boys, ELC, PS and HS variations, none of which seemed to ever make it into the wash in pairs in our house.
Time spent on spelling words, times tables , reading books, homework assignments, creating book week costumes and googling answers to maths problems to try to help with maths we couldn’t understand.
Time is both a relentless and gentle force in our lives. It moves forward, unwavering and constant and yet it gives us countless moments to cherish, memories made.
For each of us here tonight time has played a unique role in our journey to this day.
For parents – The time between birth and graduation seems to both drag at times and also fly by. A fellow parent sent me a text asking a question about grads day and began the message with “Can you believe our babies are on the verge of graduating?…’ The answer is both yes and no.
The school FB account recently posted pictures of those who have been at the school from the first kindy class of 2011 through to 2024’s year 12s we see here – photos of blonde haired chubby cheeks and pigtails next to, juxtaposed with chiselled jawlines and poised beauty. Photos of time passed. I may have gotten a little teary.
Weren’t they those little cuties only a moment ago?
I remember dropping our children off at kindy, which for us was one of their first forays out into the world beyond our home. I remember the tentative steps, shyness at meeting new people and the tears (mostly mine) that surrounded this time.
The time of school years seemed to stretch forth endlessly before us at this starting point. And now here we are at the completion of that journey. As parents time has afforded us the front-row seats to the growth of our children across their school years where we have witnessed and invested into the ups and downs of their academic achievements and struggles, to their social and personal development – each phase a testament to their time spent here at St Stephen’s School. The excellent and the challenging times.
The graduating of our children forces us to face the passing of time and to both celebrate and perhaps regret how our time has been spent in those years.
Time shifts for our family now…away from the daily routines of school life to a new and as yet unfamiliar rhythm of having no children going to school. Time though with a new freedom in it…especially from the chasing up of Consent-to-Go emails that I always seemed to miss.
To the teachers – Thank you!! Deeply and sincerely we thank you for obvious time and the behind-the-scenes time, the paid work hours of time and the personal investment of time that goes into the excellence and passion that you each have brought to your classrooms and the lives of our children. Thank you for those moments in time where you have seen our child uniquely and met them where they have been at, thank you for the tiresome moments of repeating yourself or of bringing timely rebuke. Thank you, teachers, for investing your time into helping make each graduate here today the people they have become between kindy and year 12.
To the graduating class of 2024 –Today is a day of both reflection and anticipation. Your years at St Stephen’s may have felt long and perhaps arduous at times but now may feel like they are ending suddenly. Your time and how you have invested it up to this point has largely been dictated to you inside the confines and familiarity of the daily routines of the school timetable.
Time for each of you now opens up, expands and grows larger. This ending of one era of time for you is a new beginning of the next chapter of your life’s story.
How will you invest this time?
Time spent at St Stephen’s has afforded you wonderful opportunities to not simply learn in a classroom but to experience the world whether through incursions, excursions, camps, service learning interactions with the communities we live in, of the diversity of lived experiences across our city, experiences of other cultures and school trips; dive tours and overseas trips. These are the experiences that will now launch you into broader opportunities for you to pursue further studies or jobs out of the experiences you have had at school. These experiences have shaped you; have helped to forge your identity and hone your talents and have helped develop in you new skills.
May I encourage you to choose wisely how you invest your time. Choose who and what will be worthy of your time.
Society likes to criticise this generation as being time wasters – too much time spent being consumers of meaningless short-form content etc However I don’t see that. I see a generation ready to invest time in seeking, questioning and critically thinking about the world around you and who you will become in it.
Standford University describes this generation in terms like ‘authentic’ and ‘questioning’ and ‘curious’ and ‘pragmatic’. Ones looking for inter-generational dialogue to help make sense of the world’.
Questioning and seeking and relating to others takes time. They are worthy pursuits in your investment of time.
No matter what you are planning to spend your time on as you leave school, As a person of faith I encourage you amidst your seeking to invest time seeking God. It will enrich your life. In this I encourage you not to let what you may have experienced so far through school, or church or family to be the end point of that search.
In the Bible, in a book called Jeremiah God speaks to us and says:
Jeremiah 29:12-14 NIV
Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you.
What a great promise!
In closing, I encourage you all to embrace the passage of time at St Stephen’s with gratitude and intention. Celebrate your achievements, savour your experiences, make the most of every moment and as parents we congratulate you.
Mrs Resta’s Reflection
Good Luck to all Year 12 students who will be starting their ATAR exams next week and to our Year 11 students who will preparing for their second round of exams and assessments
I would like to talk about active study.
This is exactly what it says it is. Try some of these tips and see if it makes a difference to your study routine.
- Make definition and formula cards
- Actively read, underline, highlight annotate
- Practise under time pressure
Mrs Nicola Resta, Deputy Head of Secondary – Teaching and Learning
Parenting with Mr Gilchrist
Looking after yourself
Looking after your emotional wellbeing can help you navigate some of the challenges of raising teenagers. The following ideas are taken from https://raisingchildren.net.au/ The Australian Parenting website. This site suggests ways to help you to Look after your own wellbeing while parenting teenagers. Consider the following.
- Keeping things in perspective can help with this. For example, if you’re having an argument with your child, you could try asking yourself, ‘Do we really need to fight about this? Can I let this one go?’ When you let go of small issues, you save your energy for more important issues like your child’s health, safety and wellbeing.
- Looking for positives can help with your emotional wellbeing too. For example, if your child offers to help someone out, you might say to yourself, ‘Nice – I’m glad I’ve taught my child to think about others like that’. It’s time to congratulate yourself on all the good work you’ve done to get your child to this stage.
- Activities like mindfulness, muscle relaxation and breathing exercises can help you learn to calm down and relax. This is good for your wellbeing generally, and it can also be useful in challenging situations. For example, these strategies can help you manage natural and common emotions like stress, anxiety and even anger in healthy ways.
- Family rituals can build family togetherness and wellbeing. They can help you all feel positive about your family relationships. And rituals help teenagers feel loved and part of the family. No matter how bored they might seem, teenagers find rituals comforting. Examples might include a regular Sunday night dinner, regular family outings or religious ceremonies.
- Self-compassion helps you be kind to yourself as you navigate the challenges of raising teenagers. Self-compassion is good for you, because it reduces stress and anxiety. And it’s good for your child, because you can better support your child when you’re feeling good yourself. Self-compassion also sets a great example for your child.
Mr Russell Gilchrist, Deputy Head of Secondary – Care
Campus highlights
Congratulations to our Class of 2025 House and School Captains! (some of our Captains were out at other school events on this day)
Alethea – Dean, Mrs Kirra Muni (Acting)
Our Alethea School Captains are Elissa Groves (left) and Isla Blair (second from left). House Captains are Ainsley Montile (next to Dean), Jonathan Groenwald, Jessica May and Macy Carter (not pictured).
Carana – Dean, Mr Stuart Gale
Our Carana School Captains are Amelie Wardlaw and Max McCullough (back row). House Captains (L – R) are Joshwa Ruiz, Alyssa Hardingham, Joshua Lynn and Harrison Harrup-Gregory.
Timae – Dean, Mr Phil Timms
Our Timae School Captains are Luke Herrmann (not pictured) and Emily Charlton (pictured centre). House Captains are Isabel Bradley (left), Isaac Pearson (not pictured), Jacob Atkinson and Victoria Hill.
Dates for your diary
Remember you can always visit the St Stephen’s School calendar for key dates and full details of the below events.
Join us for a wonderful evening of family-friendly fun!
– Food trucks
– market stalls
– live entertainment
– face painting, and
– a cuddly animal farm!
