Preparation

I’m not sure about you, but life for me lately has been increasingly busy. As I tick off one thing on my ‘to-do’ list, two more things get added and the endless cycle continues. The constant push and stress to keep up with everything can be draining both physically and mentally.

Over the years, I’ve learnt, and now truly appreciate, the value of preparation for tasks ahead. I wish had taken more seriously when I was younger that being prepared is not just an ‘adult thing’, in fact it’s very much a skill that can be caught and taught at a young age. At school, students have many opportunities to take advantage of being prepared in order to help overcome the challenges they face. Whether it be tests, assignments, sporting events, and even getting ready for school; these are all opportunities where preparation is key to perform at our best.

I have discovered that through all of my sporting, academic and life challenges, the more I’m prepared, the less stressed and anxious I feel. Life is stressful enough. We don’t need more stress due to lack of preparation.

“How can we use preparation skills to help us through our lives, not only when we become adults, but as young people at school?”

In the Primary School we have a perfect opportunity to put into action some of these skills as we are gearing up for our drama production in week ten. Students will be going to great lengths to practice and remember their lines, and cues to ensure everything is as good as can be. We practice as though it’s the main performance, so when that does eventually come, we will be ready. It’s something we’ve prepared and rehearsed so much that it’s second nature.

How can we use preparation skills to help us through our lives, not only when we become adults, but as young people at school?

I believe there are three ways we can prepare in life; physically, mentally and spiritually.

• Physical preparation is like getting your lunch boxes out ready for the day ahead, revising for your next test, or having all your books ready for the classes ahead. These are great tangible things we can teach our students.

• Mentally we can prepare ourselves by the way we talk to ourselves. Positive talk goes a really long way; tell yourself what you’re going to achieve today. We can also mentally prepare by working on our growth mindset. When we strengthen this, we achieve more and keep going even when life gets tough.

• Spiritually, we can prepare our heart. Coming to God at the start of every day will set up us for whatever is ahead. We know from the Bible that God goes before us and knows what’s ahead. When we ask God to guide us in our day ahead we are preparing our hearts in the best way possible.

Navigating school and life can be tricky at times, but when we prepare ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually, we give ourselves the best possible opportunity to succeed.

How are you going to prepare yourself for the week ahead?

Francis Pascal - Acting Primary Coordinator

I Wonder Why?

“Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.” ”

— Luke 5:26

One of my favourite books, when I was younger, was an encyclopedic style book called ‘Tell Me Why’.

Just the cover of the first book was enough to capture my interest as it was full of captivating objects. The other two books in the set were called ‘More Tell Me Why’ and ‘Still More Tell Me Why’.

I was always grateful that my Mum and Dad had interesting objects like this book around the house. This was only one of a few books we had that allowed me to learn at my pace and engage with content because I wanted to.

I used to remember my favourite pages and content. The drawings were not fantastic, multi-coloured creations. From memory, they were simple single colour images. They still were fascinating.

Something that troubles me in our information-saturated age with so much online is that we risk minimising or eradicating the desire to discover exciting things for ourselves. This type of discovery stimulates the desire to learn more and more because you want to, not because you have to.

If I were to set a research project for students and I asked them simply for twenty facts they found interesting and would like to learn more about, I suspect they would google twenty interesting facts and copy some information from some of the pages.

I googled “20 interesting facts”, and along with ‘About 1,050,000,000 results’ which took 0.41 seconds, the webpage titled, ‘The 60 Most Interesting World Facts You'll Ever Hear’ came out on top. The few facts I read from that site were definitely interesting and included these three:

• Glaciers and ice sheets hold about 69% of the world's freshwater.

• The fastest gust of wind ever recorded on Earth was 253 miles per hour.

• Recent droughts in Europe were the worst in 2,100 years.

These are interesting facts. Another interesting fact is that if you were to check every page provided of one billion, fifty million pages of the 0.41-second search, and spent one second per site to see if something was interesting to you, it would take thirty-three years, three months, seven days, eighteen hours and forty minutes to go through all the pages.

We had far fewer good books in our library at home than that. Even America’s Library of Congress, as the largest library in the world, has only a few more than 170 million items.

Google has a ranking and algorithm system that determines what page will be shown in which order. Google kindly, and for a good reason in the context of the internet, tell us what is best for us to read when we do a search.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the internet and the advantages of the research and knowledge base we have today. It just needs to be seen in the light of other possibilities and the possible downside to the overwhelming and electronically curated information out there. Choosing to read something because you want to should still be important.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Scott Winkler — Principal

Emmanuel Breakfast Program

It is something we have all heard a thousand times over, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.

But why? Breakfast means to, “break the fast”. Typically, when we get up in the morning, most of us would not have eaten since our last meal, at least 8 – 10 hours prior. Breakfast is considered to be the most important meal, as it is when we are re-fueling our bodies. Re-fueling with much needed energy and nutrients, particularly in our younger children. If breakfast is missed, we run the risk of being tired, suffering from poor concentration, and this can lead to behaviour problems in the classroom too.

Having three of my own children, who are all different when it comes to eating habits, I understand the difficulties that arise when you are encouraging breakfast. It can be a difficult encounter to say the least.

Missing breakfast can limit children’s energy levels, it can deny their bodies of essential nutrients such as iron, calcium and vitamins B and C. All of which are vital for growth, development and good health. Children who eat breakfast are more likely to achieve the daily nutritional requirements. The Australian dietary guidelines recommend that students should eat foods daily from five different food groups:

1. Fruit

2. Vegetables

3. Cereals

4. Meat

5. Dairy

Earlier this year, I surveyed students in Year 3 through to Year 10. Results showed the following:

• 60% of students regularly ate breakfast

• 75% of students would eat breakfast at school if it was provided

• 45% of students believe breakfast being supplied three days a week was appropriate

• 36% of students wanting it provided daily

• 20% of students spend between 1 and 1 ½ hours travelling to school.

Looking at the above data, it makes sense to create an opportunity for our students to have breakfast at school, for some, it may be their second helping, but that is ok!

“The Emmanuel Breakfast club kicked off today!”

The Emmanuel Breakfast club kicked off today! It will run 8.30am - 9.00am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

This initiative will be led by our Student Leader group, taking turns to assist Mrs Sue Newitt and myself to serve our students breakfast and provide a time for them to fellowship together.

I would personally like to thank Mrs Newitt and the student leaders for their hard work getting this organised, writing a letter to the Manager of Woolworths - Sorell, seeking donations for the breakfast club. It is our hope that providing breakfast will assist our students to be focused and engaged in their learning, right from the start of the day.

You can see more photos from our first Breakfast club via our Facebook page.

Drew Roberts — Deputy Principal

Let’s start a life-long conversation…

Recently we teachers attended a Professional Development conference, with teachers from Christian schools around the state, called ‘Bible in the Belly.’

It was very inspiring and reminded me of many bible stories and teachings I have heard or taught over the years. Not just looking at them as stand-alone stories but also in relation to the Gospel and then their relevance in our modern world.

It got me thinking about our core values at Emmanuel; Faith, Hope, Love, Courage, Integrity and Respect. And from this I decided to look at one of these in more depth, namely Faith.

We assume that coming to a Christian school and going through an interview process with our wonderful Principal, Mr Winkler, that you understand what we stand for and who we are, but maybe you don’t. And maybe I can have a go at explaining who I think we are through the lens of Faith.

Faith has a few dictionary definitions; Complete trust or confidence, Firm belief which is not based on proof, A system of religious belief.

These are all great definitions and can be applied to us, as a Christian and therefore ‘religious’ school. But I believe we need to look deeper to understand Faith from a Christian perspective. So I would like to explore Faith, and the word used for it, from a biblical perspective.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for faith in the Old Testament is Emunah (אמונה)… The word Emunah is based on the word Em (אם – mother). Like a mother who is feeding, teaching and loving her child, Emunah is an almost subconscious influence in our life that nurtures us and gently guides us in our journey through this world. Most of us turn towards this sense of faith only during hard moments, hanging our hopes on a higher power that will help us overcome a certain difficulty or crisis and then we immediately tend to forget it when everything is fine again. Whether we are aware of it or not is irrelevant, however, since this sense of faith is always already there, like a foetus inside the womb is also not aware of the mother’s existence, and yet she constantly provides for all its needs.

The New Testament is written in Ancient Greek. From Strongs Concordance we find that the Ancient Greek word for Faith is pistis. Pistis is God’s divine persuasion. God births faith within us. Through faith we discern his will for our lives. In sum, faith (pistis) is a persuasion from God that we receive as He grants impulse. Faith is always the work of God and involves hearing His voice – whereby the believer lays hold of His preferred-will (cf. J. Calvin).

I’m very interested in the Strong’s quote and this idea of ‘hearing God’s voice.’ I love the Old Testament story of Moses and his journey to the mountain and God’s presence. Which then was transferred to the Holy of Holies in the tent and later the tabernacle. This idea of a Holy God who so desired communication with mankind.

We at Emmanuel, are a community of faith. Our faith is a redemptive one, where we see Jesus and his death on the cross as told in the New Testament as the bridge that ended the separation between mankind and God. This one redemptive event opened the way for our own individual conversations with God. We are a community of people in conversation with God.

This God we chat to is loving and creative, holy and powerful, kind and infinite, wise and trustworthy. He created each and every one of us and planted his image within us. I see my job as a teacher at Emmanuel to love the students placed in my care, help them search for their own individual expression of God and encourage them to start a life-long conversation with a God who adores them.

Annie Joy — Acting Head of Teaching and Learning

Potential

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”

— Ephesians 3:20

The word ‘potential’ can be used in connection to different parts of society. In regard to science, it connects to the amount of energy or work possible but not done yet.

A spring, when compressed, has more optimal energy than one in its relax state.

Another area we often refer to potential is with our young people. In fact, someone may have said it to you when you were young - ‘you have so much potential’ or ‘you are wasting your time, there is so much you could be doing’. The latter is referring to potential without naming it up.

One more thing about potential when it comes to young people is that we usually refer to it in the negative, like I just did in the previous paragraph - ‘Oh, if only you could see the potential we see in you’. This type of talk may be true one way or another but it seldom leads to anything positive. Especially from the young person’s point of view, as it often just reinforces the negative thoughts they are already plagued with.

It is interesting to look online at the number of young people who turned COVID-19 lockdowns into productive businesses; 17-year-old Olivia made and sold fleece toys for dogs, brothers Sidney and Ozzy designed t-shirts, 16-year-old Lawrence made hundreds of dollars as an Instagram curator - I don’t even know what an Instagram curator is.

Needless to say, the potential is in our young people to do different things and accomplish a great deal.

Motivational speaker Nick Vujicic has made a significant contribution to the international community, not just because of his amazing public speaking but also because of all he has accomplished. He says,

‘We may have absolutely no control over what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. If we choose the right attitude, we can rise above whatever challenges we face.’

Scott Winkler — Principal