St Denis School Newsletter

Term 3 Week 3

Friendship Skills
1st Holy Communion Friday 9 August
Speak Up Awards
Pupil Free Day
Green and Gold Day Information
Father's Day Liturgy and Breakfast

Prayer

Feast Day of St. Mary MacKillop – 8 August

Holy God, source of all goodness, you show us in Mary MacKillop

a woman of faith who lived by the power of the cross.

Teach us to embrace what she pioneered:
new ways of living the gospel
to respect and defend the human dignity of all in our land.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen

Thursday 1 August: Year 3 & 5 Religious Education Assessment
Friday 2 August: Green & Gold Day
Friday 2 August: Year 2 Assembly & MJR Award (8.50am)
Monday 5 August: Year 3 STEM Excursion to Servite College
Tuesday 6 August: School Photos (Kindy to Year 6 and Family)
Wednesday 7 August: School Photos (Pre-Kindy and Year 6 Leaders)
Thursday 8 August: Constable Care Incursion (Kindy – Year 3)
Friday 9 August: Sacrament of 1st Holy Communion Mass – Year 4 (5.30pm)
Monday 12 August: School Advisory Council Meeting (5.30pm)
Thursday 15 August: Feast of the Assumption Mass – All Welcome (9.00am)
Friday 16 August: Pupil Free Day

Dear Parents and Members of our School Community,

FRIENDSHIP SKILLS MUST BE TAUGHT NOT CAUGHT by Linda Stade

When a child is born, they know as much about friendship as they do about mathematics. Yet for some reason we spend a decade or more teaching maths and next to no time teaching them about friendships. Given that healthy friendships will nourish a person for the course of their whole life, it just doesn’t make sense.

WHY ARE FRIENDSHIPS IMPORTANT?

Humans are social animals. We vary in our socialisation, but regardless of whether we prefer a few close friends or large groups of acquaintances, we need to be connected. Research from the Mayo Clinic tells us that healthy friendship:

Increase your sense of belonging and purpose Boost your happiness and reduce your stress
Improve your self-confidence and self-worth
Help you cope with traumas
Play a significant role in promoting your mental and physical health.

Friendship is particularly important in adolescence. It is at this stage in life that our children move their focus away from their parents and onto their peers. They begin to learn about their place in social webs and hierarchies. Any tween or teen can tell you exactly where they fit (or don’t fit) in the hierarchy.

In all the social maneuvering that happens in this stage of life, kids get hurt. They are unskilled and it shows. They blunder through the tricky landscape of social interaction and do varying degrees of short and long-term damage.

Parents and teachers are left to pick up the pieces after friendship firestorms and we throw our hands in the air wondering, why is this happening over and over and over? The answer is our kids’ friendship skills are caught instead of taught…. and often they’ve caught the wrong ones!

WHAT FRIENDSHIP SKILLS DOES A CHILD NEED TO LEARN

Most people underestimate how many skills are involved in building, maintaining, and sometimes moving on from friendships. The following is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is food for thought.

MALADAPTIVE FRIENDSHIP SKILLS ARE CAUGHT INSTEAD OF TAUGHT

When children aren’t taught friendship skills, they catch skills by watching and listening. They watch:

their friends who are as unskilled as they are,
film and television,
family, particularly their parents,
older siblings, and
social media.

Sometimes they get it right and all goes well. However, often they ‘catch’ maladaptive skills. The most common of these maladaptive skills are often classified as relational aggression. Relational aggression is what we commonly recognise as ‘mean girl/boy behaviour,’. It looks like belittling, gossip, the silent treatment, conditional friendship, and exclusion. These behaviours are often played out within friendship groups, and it seems everyone has a turn at some stage.

This sort of behaviour is gut-wrenching. It breaks our kids’ hearts and keeps parents and teachers up at night because it is so difficult to shut down without causing even more problems. It is often the domain of school-aged girls, but it is becoming increasingly common among boys.

The thing about kids who employ the skills of relational aggression is that they are usually doing it because deep down they want to fit in and belong. They have learnt that when someone else is ‘out’, they are ‘in’. When someone else is off-balance, they feel balanced, and when others feel uncomfortable, they feel more comfortable. The tragedy is that they would experience the same feelings of belonging and empowerment if they had been taught and practised healthy friendship skills. There would just be less collateral damage.

It’s little wonder kids learn these maladaptive skills… they’re everywhere! Have a look at reality television: Bachelor in Paradise, Big Brother, MAFS. It may be entertaining but the drama is born of maladaptive skills. Even programming aimed at children often contains unhealthy social interactions to create drama.

This all ignores the obvious complication of what is going on in the background for our kids. Many arrive at school with a history of trauma, grief, loss, learning difficulties, mental health issues, and a slew of other problems. All of these will contribute to their behaviour, interfere with learning healthy skills and exacerbate an already difficult situation.

HOW DO WE TEACH SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS?

If we want kids to avoid catching maladaptive skills, we must overtly teach healthy friendship skills. How do we do that?

Social-emotional learning happens when children:

have real emotional experiences,
are guided through them in a constructive way,
by adults who role-model healthy reactions and actions, and they
practise.

One of my favourite psychologists, Kristina Morgan says, “Your children didn’t know how to tie their shoelaces until they watched you do it. You talked it through and then they practised repeatedly. Learning social-emotional skills is the same.”

WHOSE JOB IS IT TO TEACH FRIENDSHIP SKILLS?

Parents are a child’s first teachers. Whether we know it or not, our kids are always watching and learning from us. They are learning the good and the bad. It’s a sobering thought! It is a parent’s responsibility to model and teach the skills we expect from kids, starting when the child is very young.

Friendship curricula in schools are rare. (At St Denis we are luck to use the URStrong Program) I’ve been fortunate to be given the opportunity to teach friendship courses at a girls’ college for a couple of years. It is eye-opening to see what kids don’t understand. For example, they are obsessed with the idea of a BFF (Best Friend Forever). They often don’t understand that they need lots of different friends or that friendships sometimes end and that’s okay. They have problems with:

making new friends
having boundaries
disagreeing in a way that isn’t destructive
repairing after conflict
And that’s just off the top of my head!

We need to remember this when we start to believe other people’s kids are ‘bad’ rather than unskilled beginning learners.

Although I acknowledge schools are ridiculously over-burdened with the expectations of what society thinks they should be teaching, it is the ideal environment to teach friendship skills… in partnership with parents.

We fill schools with hundreds of children and then keep them together for seven hours a day, five days a week, for years. School is where friendship problems are most likely to occur. It makes sense that schools should partner with parents to teach healthy friendship skills whilst in situ.

FINALLY…

If parents and teachers can’t or won’t engage in teaching friendship skills, nothing will change. The same maladaptive skills will continue to hurt our kids and be passed from generation to generation. We can do better. Teaching friendship skills deserves the same commitment as teaching mathematics!

St Denis Families can access helpful material via the UrStrong (Friendology) website: https://urstrong.com/f101/

1st Holy Communion

Please remember to keep in your prayers the Year Four class who are preparing for their 1st Holy Communion. The Holy Communion Mass will take place on Friday 9 August at 5.30pm.

Speak Up Awards

The Speak Up Awards are an annual event held by the Freemasons society. The competition aims to provide students with the opportunity to speak about a topic they are passionate about with confidence and to demonstrate their oral speaking skills.

In Term Two, all Year 5 and 6 students did an outstanding job of researching, writing and presenting a speech on their chosen topic within their classes. Six finalists from the two classes went through to the next round and three have been chosen to represent St Denis at the state semi-finals. Congratulations to the following students:

Zavier Aylmore Year 6 – AUKUS
Indie Procopis Year 6- Dreams
Sofia Murray Year 5- Greyhound Racing

These students will be representing St Denis on Wednesday the 14th of August. We wish them all the best!

Advanced Notice

Please be aware that Friday 16 August is a Pupil Free Days.

Save the Date

Father’s Day Liturgy and Breakfast – Friday 30 August. More details to follow in subsequent newsletters.

Student Departures

Families of current Kindy to Year 5 students who are not returning to St Denis in 2025 are requested to please email the Administration Office by Friday 30th August 2024. This information assists with class planning and resourcing.

Green and Gold Day

St Denis School will be showing support for the Australian Olympic team by participating in Green and Gold Day.

Pre-Primary -Year 6 will participate on Friday, 2 August 2024.
Kindy class will participate on Thursday, 1 August 2024
Pre-Kindy will participate on Wednesday, 31 July 2024

This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to come together and cheer on our athletes in a fun and vibrant way. On the day, staff and students are encouraged to wear green and gold clothing and/or accessories to school. We invite everyone to get creative and show their spirit through this colourful display of support. Please ensure that all clothing and footwear are appropriate for school activities.

There is no donation required to participate in this event. It's all about community spirit and celebrating the values of teamwork and excellence that the Olympic Games represent.

Thank you for your support and enthusiasm. We look forward to seeing a sea of green and gold at school!

With regards and best wishes

Justin Tuohy
Principal