The Grade 4s have put their first offsite school camp behind them while the Grade 6s prepare to write their first set of formal assessments; Little Saints is gearing up for their sports day while the Junior Primary is confirming final arrangements for our annual PA fun day; all the children and staff are looking forward to celebrating the school’s 135th birthday on Patronal Day.

The daily demands of being on campus, remembering which uniform to wear, what kit to pack, where you need to be and for how long are real, and we need to support our children and each other as we get back into familiar routines. Routines that, despite our best laid plans, are disrupted by unpredictable weather, loadshedding and ordinary misunderstandings.

Some reminders, then, from me and the teachers as we settle down to the winter term: first, all the girls from Grades 1 to 7 are required to wear their full school uniform on the days they attend chapel and assembly. While the girls in the Junior Primary, especially the Grade 1s, wrestle with the generous proportions of their garments and unruly ties and collars, the fit of skirts and blazers in the Senior Primary tends towards the opposite: short and snug. Please remember that there is a good selection of second-hand uniforms at the Clothes Cupboard should you need to replace items that your daughter has outgrown in the year.

The girls need to feel comfortable and secure on campus. Your help in getting them to school punctually and fetching them promptly when their day ends is invaluable; confirming the day’s schedule and discussing plans with them ahead of time gives them the reassurance they need to communicate confidently with their teachers. Unless the school contacts you, please resist the urge to bring items left at home by your daughter to campus: the staff will take care of the girls and guide them through oversights and mistakes they make as they learn to take responsibility for themselves. Our approach also ensures that girls with working parents or those families who live further away are not at a disadvantage; the girls’ different access to resources does not inform our perceptions of them, their organisation, sense of duty or commitment to their school.

Our children need to eat and sleep well. On the whole, our girls bring enough nutritious food to sustain them through the day – supplementing from the tuck shop where they can! – but the outlook is less encouraging when we turn our attention to sleep. I think many of our girls are suffering from sleep deprivation. A few years ago, I listed some of the benefits of sleep researched in Matthew Walker’s bestselling book on the topic (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams): sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions and choices and it recalibrates our emotional brain circuits, allowing us to navigate social and psychological challenges; dreaming mollifies painful memories and gives us a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. Not to mention what it does for our immune system. Then, as now, Walker’s research pointed to our shared responsibility, not only to look after our daughters, but ourselves as well by modelling more sensible behaviour and breaking bad, wakeful habits.

There is a lot going on in our lives and in our children’s lives; too much of it feels beyond our control. Communicating well with each other, helping where we can, and hearing each other out reminds us that we are in this together – and that this is our school.

SARAH WARNER
JUNIOR SCHOOL HEADMISTRESS