Dear parents and guardians,

I hope Year 7-11 boys are enjoying the ‘SPRING INTO ACTION’ training sessions and challenges launched this week by the Sports Department … and that the whole family is joining in. The weekly challenge can be found here. It’s a great initiative, but far from the only thing happening at the College.

Our pastoral team – Heads of Houses, counsellors and mentors – has been giving a lot of thought to the wellbeing of both the boys and you, their families. As a result, we are launching the first component of a new wellbeing program – NEWtrition: Wellbeing on a platter, a smorgasbord of activities that will help improve the wellbeing of everyone in your household. 

The first week of NEWtrition will be devoted to ‘gratitude and giving back’. Working with their mentors, the boys in Years 7–10 have already started to come up with some great ideas – including a gratitude think tank and some excellent videos. You can see the rest of the program here. Thank you in advance for getting your son and your family involved. It can be hard to see an upside in our current situation, but this will help create one.

This week we met with the Year 7-11 parent ambassadors to gain their insights into how families are dealing with the lockdown and remote learning.  In addition, and to help us prepare for the remainder of this term and next we are doing another survey of both boys and their families.  Your feedback will help us make informed decisions for our community. Please click here to provide your thoughts – it will only take a few minutes.

And now to our Man of the Week, Marco Costantino 11/FL. His mentor Ms Troncone suggested to him at the beginning of the year that he could cook food for the soup kitchen in Newtown as a service learning initiative. Despite Covid restrictions, Marco is continuing to cook his pasta bolognese every week and deliver it to the soup kitchen. Marco clearly understands ‘gratitude and giving back’. Congratulations Marco – we are proud of you.

Next Wednesday, we are inviting all Year 7-12 parents to webinar with cyber safety expert Yasmin London. If you’ve ever struggled with getting your kids off their games and into bed, worried about the content of the games that they are playing or felt concerned that your child was spending too much time in the digital world, this workshop will be invaluable. You can register for the webinar here.

Once again, I thank you for the support you are giving our staff and each other.