Leading our Middle School

A big thank you to the Middle School Leaders, who have worked consistently and diligently all year finishing off this term with making gift bags for women in domestic violence situations and fundraising for Christmas gifts for low-income families supported by Salvation Army in our local area. Here are photos of these last few activities.

Brave New World of Parenting – Cyber Safety

A few weeks ago we hosted Susan McLean from cyber safety solutions to speak to the students on important laws and legislation around social media. You can find out more about this company by clicking on this link. Did you know it is illegal for under 13-year-olds to have social media sites such as Instagram, Tiktok and the like? Susan spoke very well and as a result, we are hosting her next year and have included a parent session in the evening. I strongly recommend all parents attend and encourage you to spread the word and invite other people to attend with you. This session will be held on Thursday 26 March in the evening.

Recently I was made aware of a very worrying situation where students had an Instagram account their parents could see but there was also an additional hidden one that parents were unaware of. The hidden Instagram account had hundreds of followers – most of whom the child had no knowledge of outside of what they posted on their Instagram account. The world of grooming and to a lesser but just as worrying extent, the normalisation of many behaviours and attitudes that occur through the messages sent on these social platforms, is real and insidious. I strongly encourage parents to ensure they have full access to all aspects of their child’s technology and the ability to view what they are doing at any time. This can be achieved by applications that you place on your child’s phone. Remember you are the adult, they are your child whom you need to protect and care for. It’s important to have oversight of what they are doing in all areas of their lives and providing ways to help them learn how to best respond or negotiate tricky situations as well as those occasions where things have gone wrong. The cyberworld is the brave new world of parenting and I encourage you to be the parent so you can guide your child to learn how to manage this as they grow into independence.

The cyberworld also provides wonderful tools of engagement and ways for us to be productive in the world we live in. Last week some of our Year 7s joined students at Matthew Flinders College to learn about and develop an app. You can read about this in this article.

This week Middle School has had their Alternative Activities Week 

Please enjoy the galleries of photos for these activities.

Year 7

• Billy Carts
• Coolum Beach Water Park
• Glasshouse Views and Lavally House

Year 8

• Kings Beach Walk This is an activity that builds awareness for those in other parts of the world who don’t have ready access to fresh drinking water.
• Community and service activities

Year 9 

• Climb Mt Coolum Rites of Passage Day
• Senior School Preparation
• Celebration Dinner is on this evening – photos are coming soon

Christmas Holidays

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our students – it’s a pleasure to work with these fine young men and women. However, I equally would like to thank our parents and the students’ other family members because we work together on this, hand in hand as we support these young men and women to grow another year older not only in their knowledge and skills but into people of character, kindness, humility and thoughtfulness. On behalf of the Middle School staff, we wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas time.

Jacq Vreeling, Head of Middle School