Dear College families,

It has been an enormous week in the life of the College, with the Executive team attending a Leadership Conference and planning days, as we dream and envision what God might have planned for the College across the next 10 years. Throughout this process, reviews of our current Quality Improvement Plans uncovered the extensive amount of work that our College staff and community have been able to achieve across the past 6 months. I’m excited to share that information with you in the coming weeks.

Design & Technology and Music HSC students have completed their practical examinations this week and I have been encouraged by the feedback received from our staff who have tirelessly educated, inspired, encouraged and uplifted students in order to realise their full potential. I, along with each of our students await their results and in the meantime, please keep them in your prayers.

And finally, this morning’s Father’s Day breakfast was a tremendous celebration of the roles that fathers and significant men in the lives of our students play each and every day. Thank you to all of those who were able to be here and we look forward to opening the campus once again to our community next Tuesday, for Grandparent’s Day.

Felicity Marlow
Principal

I have always been the type of person to really enjoy Spring and Autumn, not so much the seasons of extreme cold or heat. I prefer the milder temperatures rather than feeling the heat of the sun or the cold winter winds. I like to be able to enjoy being outside without complaining about the weather. So, now that we have lived through another Winter and have entered Spring, I notice a newfound energy and ‘spring’ in my step.

Farmers certainly have a very good understanding of the value of each season and what this means for their work on the land. Gardeners also understand what needs to happen for their plants throughout the seasons in order for them to produce fruit. The Bible also talks about the seasons and that each season has it’s worth “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. Eccl 3:1”

I would imagine that God enjoys every season, even the times of extreme heat and cold. These extreme temperatures are not a distraction as there is a purpose behind it all which sometimes is not always obvious. Snow is an excellent insulator, protecting plants and trees until Spring arrives. When the summer months are too hot, the tree's ability to photosynthesise slows or stops completely during the hottest parts of the day. The tree does this to protect itself and save energy as the enzymes are unable to work efficiently in such a climate.

The Bible often refers to the seasons, producing fruit in season and being planted in fertile soil. During one of the College’s Professional Development days for staff, our talented Librarian, Sarah Frost, created a stunning painting of a tree planted by a stream. Teachers and staff watched over the days as the painting slowly came to life and it reminded me of how God often works in our life over time to create a beautiful masterpiece. This work happens over seasons of drought, waiting and persevering through winters and summers and then, at the right time, flourishing and blooming into a spectacular creation. Galatians 6:9 says ‘And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.’ I am so thankful that God is God of all seasons and He is working to create good things regardless of the season.

Suzi Scott
Director of ELC and OSHC

Grief was once thought of as a linear process. Grief Counsellor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross explained the model as the Seven Stage of Grief:

Shock
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance and Hope
Processing Grief

Research now suggests that it a process that can take months, years and perhaps decades for people to process. As part of that process, they go in and out of loss-oriented to restoration-oriented grief in our everyday life experiences life we are in a black hole, and we come out for a while into life then something triggers us back into that black hole.

Sometimes people hide their grief, or they don’t think it is socially acceptable to cry or go in and out of joy and depression. The truth is that if we deny our physical bodies the ability to grieve it affects our physical and mental health. Grief is a strange thing it can catch you unaware when you are least expecting it, and one minute you are laughing and the next minute you are crying. The graphic below shows the oscillation between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented grief. We can move between both states through our everyday life experiences. Disenfranchised grief is chronic grief, and the word came from a study of parents who had children with a disability – that they would never get better and that they would miss out on all the opportunities and stages for growth that children without a disability have.

What helps us to process grief?

We can journal our feelings and let them out as write about what we have lost.
Focus on a picture that helps us focus on our grief and give words to it. It may be a bare tree in winter it looks dead, lifeless, isolated, abandoned, rejected, alone and without purpose.
It may be a picture of a bush fire destroying all the landscape around it.
We can develop our own metaphor for how we feel - like floating in the ocean desperately clinging to a life raft.
We can watch sad movies that help us let out our tears and cry about experiences like our own. We can create a ritual to remember the loss and think about that person such as lighting a candle

Changing the picture!

We can look at our ritual, picture, metaphor, or movie and think about what could make this picture different, have hope, purpose and meaning in our life?

The journal might explore what things would look like if things were different in life
The tree could be in the season of winter and although it looks life-less, spring is coming
The bush fire always brings about regeneration of foliage and green shoots of life
The person clinging to the life raft could be picked up by a boat
The sad movie could be replaced with a funny one that makes you laugh
The lighting of the candle can bright light to the darkness of grief
The ritual could be remembering the good things about the person you enjoyed sharing together and the qualities you most admired about them.

Catherine Redwood
Counsellor