TAS Talks Term 4 Week 8

We live in a challenging and fast-changing world and while school may once have been a place for study and co-curricular activities alone, pastoral care has been a critical component of school life for some time now. At TAS this occurs through a network of homeroom teachers and advisors who meet daily with students to support and guide them. These staff members know their students incredibly well and should be the first port of call at school for parents for any day school questions or concerns.

Of course, we also have a Director of Pastoral Care and a range of other specialist staff available for students. In recognition of the growing number of students, their requirements and concerns, next year we will be adding to our pastoral team with Year Level Coordinators from Year 7 upwards. These staff will be attuned to the needs of their year level, and able to identify and manage the specific issues or concerns of both the day and boarding students. The staff appointed to these positions for 2022 are:

Year 12 – Mr A J Whalley

Year 11 – Mrs Genevieve Chick

Year 10 – Mr Jordan Lane

Year 9   – Mr Michael Keenan

Year 8   – Mrs Fiona Taber

Year 7   – Ms Yolanda Kreuzen

We have also taken the opportunity to build Personal Development lessons into the timetable at Years 9 and 10 as a pilot program. Led by the Director of Pastoral Care, Mr A J Whalley, the curriculum will be designed by TAS staff to reflect the needs of our students. It will be skill development and discussion-based rather than theoretical and is intended to help our students to develop life skills, covering areas from consent to self-regulation.

Finally, from me this week, end of term events are already well underway. I was delighted to attend the Year 5 graduation dinner last Friday evening. It was a joyous occasion with much of the input on the format and performances having come from the students themselves. Thank you to all the generous staff and parents who assisted in putting the evening together and congratulations to our Year 5 students for making the most of their time in Junior School at TAS and finishing in such a wonderful way.

Dr Rachel Horton
Principal

Parenting and Family Support Centre

Online Triple P for families of children with eczema 

A team from Griffith University, the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Queensland Children’s Hospital is working hard to find better ways to support families of children with eczema. An exciting new research trial, led by Dr Amy Mitchell (Griffith University/UQ), aims to find out whether a brief online parenting program can improve outcomes for children with eczema.

The team needs to spread the word about this trial to as many families as possible. Every day, thousands of Australian children suffer the effects of eczema, and families struggle with managing children’s eczema and behavioural and emotional adjustment.

Healthy Living Triple P is an adaptation of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program that offers practical ideas and support for parents of children with eczema. This innovative online program is designed to help parents manage their child’s eczema more easily, help children cope with their eczema and emotions, prevent and manage difficult behaviour, and reduce the impact of eczema on families.

It offers evidence-based strategies to help parents maintain good eczema control, reduce child and family stress, and communicate well with other caregivers. In addition, it equips parents with the skills to prevent and cope with their child’s anxiety, and use effective discipline strategies to prevent and manage difficult behaviour.

Over the next few months, parents of 2-10 year old children with eczema are able to access Healthy Living Triple P online free-of-charge as part of this clinical trial. Parents will be asked to complete three sets of assessment measures (questionnaires, monitoring, and eczema severity assessments) over a four month period, as part of the study. Parents complete the program and all assessments from home, with no need to travel.

You can find out more about the study here: https://exp.psy.uq.edu.au/eczema/

This research project has been approved by the Queensland Children’s Hospital (HREC/21/QCHQ/73923), the University of Queensland (2021/HE000945) and Griffith University (2021/311).

Many thanks for considering our request. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns, or if I can provide further information.

Kind regards,

Dr Antonia Kish

BPsySc(Hons), Ph.D.

Research Officer

Project Coordinator, Healthy Living Triple P with Eczema
Parenting and Family Support Centre
School of Psychology
The University of Queensland
Brisbane Qld 4072 Australia

P&F Meeting Tonight

The next General P&F meeting is on TONIGHT (Wednesday 24 November) at 7:00pm. As this is the last meeting for 2021, we will be face-to-face, upstairs at the Whitebull Hotel (Manny’s on Marsh).

We will not have a Zoom link available, so please join us in person.

Christmas Puddings

Contact the P&F Executive

If you have anything you would like to raise with the P&F Executive, please send us an email on pandf@as.edu.au

Mr Paul Gaddes
P&F President

Moyes

On Tuesday evening the ArtSound Showcase took place in the Hoskins Centre. A stimulating mix of Year 11 music compositions inspired by Year 11 artwork. What an amazing group of students we have in our performing arts classes and talented teachers who work hard to bring out the best in our clever artists and musicians. A special mention to Mrs Xeros, Mrs Harvey, Mrs Roobol, Mr Collett and Mr O’Connell for the way in which they bring the performing arts to life at TAS.

This week will be our final week of sport training. In what has been a disjointed and slow return to sport, I commend the students and staff for their involvement and commitment to TAS Sport. Next week students and staff will be involved in the Activities Program, predominantly held at TAS, the days will run from 8.45am – 3.30pm and involve a range of activities across Years 6-11. This is a fantastic way to end the year and I encourage all students to engage wholeheartedly in the practical activities. I have no doubt they will be challenged in a variety of contexts.

NIAS Triathlon training weekend 4-5 December in Tamworth and Gunnedah.

2022 NIAS Triathlon – Training Weekend

NIAS FC Holiday Clinic Programs – Click on the flyer for more details

ATA – 21 -22 December Camp

Holiday Tennis Camp – Click on the flyer for more details

NIAS FC 2022 Holiday Clinic Flyer

Mr Huon Barrett
Director of Co-curricular

Almost – it’s close, now

Academic work does continue, though it’s gear is more activity based where possible – ‘loose ends are being tied up’: practices for music, our final assembly, and Speech Day (next Thursday) will occur, and of course boarding students will soon begin the clean-up in their houses. Further, my strong advice to all in the last two meetings indicates that this clean up extends to all students as the academic area needs a very thorough clean up as well. In short, while in relation to general activities we are acutely aware of imminent end-of-year activity, we continue as we must.

Special thanks go the Year 6, 7 and 8 staff for their meticulous organisation of the many and varied activities that our students are about to enjoy over the next week. On behalf of all, I want to thank these people for their support of your children not only during the term’s, but the year’s, second last school week! These people, and in fact all staff who support them, are deserving of a long, restful holiday break. There’s no other description for it – the combined organisation of the week by all staff members is in earnest.

2021 has been ‘full’ and I want to begin to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support of us. Overall, it’s been very productive, and I believe we’ve only been able to achieve what we have because of wonderfully hard-working staff (and students) all of whom have been accommodating, especially over the last term; being absent, as we were in Term 3, can make this job of teaching more difficult but it has ‘paid dividends’ in re: learning for your children, and this has been so important. Of course, there have been occasions when, for whatever reason, ‘things’ have been tricky, but these situations have been managed well enough and all they do is confirm that we’re normal. To be perfect all the time is almost impossible – especially when we remind ourselves that we’re dealing with young adolescents.

So, soon we’re only a week away from the year’s longest holiday break: whatever it is you, I know you know that La Nina is back, so here’s to further (good, hopefully) soaking rain.

Good wishes to all,

Mark Harrison
Head of Middle School

Junior School End of Year Celebrations

As we wind our way towards the end of the term you will have received an invitation to our Junior School Speech Day. This and a number of other events have been advertised recently in TAS Talks and are on the School website calendar. If you have any questions, please contact the School.

I was on leave last week and as I have often said, having such a strong team supporting our program in Junior School is very reassuring. So again, I thank all our staff, particularly Mrs Christine Wright for stepping up and holding the flag high while I was absent. It was a very busy week and from all reports, another very successful one at that.

Year 5 End of Year Dinner

I would like to congratulate Mrs Grania Fawcett and Year 5 for what was a fantastic end of year dinner held last Friday night. It was an extremely well organised and planned evening, one of celebration and reminiscing, of poetry, percussion, photos, fine dining and a good deal of storytelling. Congratulations to all of our Year 5 cohort; they have had an absolutely wonderful year and capped it all off in style. You will see a good deal more from them as they assist in hosting our Speech Day and as they help in other roles throughout the final day of school.

Step Up Orientation Day

I know that everyone enjoyed the opportunity to step out and step up into a new space, heralding the move to new classroom with a new teacher and some new friends. Last Thursday, all students experienced a little taste of what next year might hold with a number of activities designed to introduce them to the year 2022. It was a great morning of fun and activity which from all reports ticked all the boxes. With three new classes next year, it will be a very busy start to next year. It has been a very busy time for our Enrolments team with a number of inquiries and interviews still taking place.

Junior School Fundraiser – Friday 26 November (Gold Coin Donation)

The entire Junior School is very welcome to join with both Middle and Senior Schools in a fundraiser this Friday. In a joint effort, funds are being raised for a number of worthy causes, but primarily for Men’s Health, with a focus on Movember. Staff and students are welcome to wear casuals – predominantly the colours of black & white or blue on the day. It is a very worthy cause and a gold coin donation will be collected by the school prefects. We will be finding out more details in the next few days so please mark this one in your dairies.

Happy Birthday

Nate Blair-Pevitt, Revant Das and Libby Ditchfield all have a birthday this week so best wishes to you all for your special days.

Mr Ian Lloyd
Head of Junior School