Emotional Resilience

This famous quote by Shakespeare captures the essence of how events or happenings can at times, be overpowered by our view of events. Obviously, the actions of others cannot be controlled by us as individuals, but how we react to them is most certainly within our realm of control.

As part of the You Can Do It program, emotional resilience helps children to recognise that we have the opportunity to shape how we encounter events, words and actions.

Various brain researchers have shown us that by the age of 6-8 years old, children have developed the ability to think rationally about demanding and threatening events. By thinking logically and forming conclusions and predictions that are true, we begin to think about the ways in which we can promote helpful and healthy emotions and behaviours. With the force of such rational thought, comes emotional control and relief.

At the last two assemblies, we have examined two of these tools associated with emotional regulation, the Emotional Thermometer and the Catastrophe Scale. Both resources provide a visual cue to recognise the strength of our emotions and how events or actions can be identified in terms of significance. Changes in emotional state, be that anger, anxiety or happiness, are all offset by physical and mental changes. When recognising these signs that our bodies provide, we are more inclined to focus our emotions and channel the rational component of our thought process. These tools help our students by providing an alternative to pessimistic or irrational ways of thinking and enable us to focus on more positive and optimistic reasoning.

Thank You

When COVID-19 became our reality this year, along with it came the notion of the ‘pivot’. Everyone was required to pivot as our normal was changed dramatically. The way our students, staff and families have adapted to such a challenging time has been extraordinary. Our students have shown incredible resilience and persistence when engaging with online learning and keeping social connections open. Faced with putting our whole curriculum online, our teaching and support staff needed to be continually flexible in their methods and structure. As a result, we are well placed to continue to embed the positive lessons that arose from our continuous learning. Finally, a huge thank you to our P-5 community. Your ongoing support has been greatly appreciated. Changes to drop off, collection and communication haven’t been easy and we thank you for the way in which the choices made by the College have been supported by the wider community. We wish you a restful holiday and look forward to welcoming back everyone next term. 

Take care and God bless.

Mr Damian Davis, Head of Staff and Students P-5