Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

 

One of the worlds great sports contests is taking part in Australia at the moment.  I am talking of course of the Ashes cricket series.  Cricket is an intensely tough game mentally, it’s hard to imagine this when your youngster starts off playing section four have a go cricket; no matter what they get with 12 hits and 12 bowls.  Often who won is lost in the joy of taking part and hitting a four or taking a wicket.

But as players progress through the grades the expected standard rises, now when you are out then you are out!  Players need to be selected for teams, some make it, most don’t, every duck or dropped catch weights heavily on the player involved.

But cricket is still a team game and the longer we can maintain this as a focus the better because  it at least partially defeats the pressure from the individual.  In few team sports is the individual player so exposed if not nurtured by the team.

Cricket like all sport was designed initially as a pastime something to be done for fun.  Over it’s long history the intensity with which it is played has changed, I remember the story of the great Victorian cricketer W.G. Grace being bowled without scoring, he calmly picked the bails up, put them back on the wickets and said “more people came here to watch me bat then you bowl” and prepared to start again.  Imagine Michael Clark doing that!

But even at high level sport we can go too far.  The sledging or name calling in the series has already resulted in fines being levied and I have heard this morning that the English batsman Johnathan Trott is returning home with a stress related illness.  A number of top level cricketers in recent times have either stopped playing or at least stopped playing at the top level due to the stress that they have felt.

I’m not sure if it’s a factor only in modern life or if stress has always been significant in people’s lives.  Maybe it’s the speed we now travel or the amount we try to cram in.  Recently in our year eight class we have talked about spirituality and nurturing the soul.  Communication and taking down time are vital, but also so is looking at the big picture.

Few people look back at getting a ‘golden duck’ or coming last in a race, or not making a team in year 5, when they are 50, as a disaster!

Have a great week, Mike Brosnahan

 

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Well here we are in Week Six of Term Four already. Today a number of our pupils are off representing
the school at the Otago Primary School Sports Association Championships. I’m sure that you join with
me in wishing those pupils good luck.
Success in sport is like success in any field—the harder that you work then the better results that you
achieve.
I recently attended a debrief of Otago representative hockey coaches and managers, At the end of this
meeting Dave Ross the coach of the Southern men’s team (beaten finalists the last two years), raised the
point for debate. “When is the time in sport to move from development to competition?”
His thoughts were high school as the changing point. As soon as you have tournaments, medals, cups
and representative teams, he reasoned the focus goes on winning solely and a huge amount of pressure
is then put on everybody involved but especially the child to win.
The bottom line is sport should be fun enjoyable, challenging and social. Except for a very few outstand-ing athletes, children can not look to a forward career as a professional athlete, quite simply only a tiny
percentage of people achieve this.
Those that do and sustain this success do so because of self motivation, self belief and great work ethic.
The values that we learn through sport are invaluable life skills.
As the great American football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Football is like life—it requires perseverance,
self denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority”.
Have a great week
Mike Brosnahan,
Principal

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Over the next five and a half weeks we begin an unbelievably busy time of the year for schools. Those of
you with children at senior secondary will most likely have already attended senior prize giving and they will now be in the middle of their NCEA externals.
Until my son started the process of gaining his NCEA qualifications I was very sceptical of their academic
rigour, however now that Sean has completed (well almost) two years of study at NCEA I can see the
benefits that they bring. The old system of one three hour exam as the sole way to assess academic
success at both Secondary and Tertiary level was a fine vehicle for some students in some subjects but I
find that NCEA is more equitable and caters for long term learning rather than simply cramming in information to answer the questions set in one three hour exam.
One of the key goals that Sean has learned is that the credits you gain in February, when you have no
pressure are worth just as much as the ones that you need to gain in November in the stress of an
external exam, so aim to run the full race, don’t walk until the finish is in sight and back yourself to have
the spirit to get across the line in time for as the immortal Robbie Burns wrote “The best laid schemes
o mice an men, Gang oft agley. An’ lea’s us nought but grief an’ pain, for promised joy”.
The same message that I support in all endeavours, I’m sure that Sir Edmund Hillary when on
approaching the peak of Everest didn’t say I wish I hadn’t prepared so much!
Have a great week
Mike Brosnahan,
Principal
Junior
Athletic

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
This week will be a very busy week as shorter weeks often are; we try to fit into four days what
we usually do in five.
Our senior class are off on their summer camp down at Camp Columba, just this side of Gore.
At camp the seniors will get to attempt a number of challenging activities in a controlled situation.
As I have stated before the only children who not to grow hugely during the course of this week
are those who fail to attempt the challenges before them, and over the years they
number very few. I will be attending camp with Room Seven, so Mrs Stevens will be the acting
Principal for the week.
As I sit writing this I see all of the children playing happily on the playground; and last week I
thanked all of the people who had helped at our working bee, but someone else who had a huge
hand in getting our playground installed was our former Board Chairperson Donald Mitchell.
Donald put in a huge effort behind the scenes to ensure consent was obtained to install the
playground, he also did a huge amount of work liaising with Alan Grant the installer and he even
drilled the holes for the playground foundations to be installed in, with a little help. So from
everyone at school thank you Donald for your work on this matter.
Hopefully we will all enjoy a week of sunny weather, especially for those on camp.
Have a great week
Mike Brosnahan,
Principal

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Last week I had the absolute privilege to spend most of my week with the senior class on their
camp down at Camp Columba.
The group as a whole, pupils and parents were excellent to work with and the achievements that
I witnessed were excellent. Witnessing a young person face a challenge they feel is beyond
them and then confront this challenge, and overcome it is a very gratifying experience.
I wish to thank Mrs Judy Baines for her excellent planning, eye for detail and administration of
this. Camps are only a success because of the months of work that go into the planning and
preparing beforehand.
Our final Parent Information evening for the year is being held on Wednesday night.
The focus of the evening is to watch the multi award winning DVD “The Big Picture: Rethinking
Dyslexia”. This 52 minute film is designed to educate us about dyslexia. Show what indeed the
“Big Picture” is. We invite all of our parents to come along and watch this powerful educational
DVD.
I look forward to seeing you there, have a great week.
Mike Brosnahan,
Principal
Room 7 Camp

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Last week I had the absolute privilege to spend most of my week with the senior class on their
camp down at Camp Columba.
The group as a whole, pupils and parents were excellent to work with and the achievements that
I witnessed were excellent. Witnessing a young person face a challenge they feel is beyond
them and then confront this challenge, and overcome it is a very gratifying experience.
I wish to thank Mrs Judy Baines for her excellent planning, eye for detail and administration of
this. Camps are only a success because of the months of work that go into the planning and
preparing beforehand.
Our final Parent Information evening for the year is being held on Wednesday night.
The focus of the evening is to watch the multi award winning DVD “The Big Picture: Rethinking
Dyslexia”. This 52 minute film is designed to educate us about dyslexia. Show what indeed the
“Big Picture” is. We invite all of our parents to come along and watch this powerful educational
DVD.
I look forward to seeing you there, have a great week.
Mike Brosnahan,
Principal
Room 7 Camp

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

Welcome back to you all for term four.  I hardly need express to you that this will be a very busy term:  we have our inter-schools athletic sports followed by the Otago athletics championships for those who qualify, our choir is taking part in the Catholic Schools Choir Festival, all classes going are on trips to the art gallery, the senior pupils have their annual camp in Pukerau, all the senior classes have swimming lessons and our highly popular school fair takes place this weekend and finally of course we have our end of the concert and celebrations to acknowledge our year eight leavers.  Whew!

 

Already many of you will have noticed the number of tasks that have been completed during the holidays; and playground is now operational.  Thank you to all of the people who gave up their

Saturday morning to spread woodchips, it was gratifying to see such a huge turn out of people willing to give up their time to help out our school.

Recent studies that I have read underline the fact that one of the most important factors in

children achieving at school both academically and socially is parental engagement.  This is a highly important factor right throughout your child’s education, even at Year 13 when you can’t help them with their applied maths homework or answer their questions on quantum physics the fact that you support, discuss and are part of their lives is affirming.

I remember being a speaker at a forum supporting transition from early childhood education to primary a number of years ago; at the end of the formal presentation we asked for questions from the floor –a relatively new dad, who was preparing to send his first child to school stood up and said how much time and effort he had put into visiting a huge number of schools, reading ERO reports and talking to parents at schools.  He had, he said decided on the right school for his child and now he would step back and let the school teach, Another speaker—one far wiser than me replied—that rather than see that he had completed a process he should think that he was now only at the beginning of a long but ultimately fulfilling journey, our children are only young once and the time we spend with them is time we cannot regain.  So talk to your child and ensure that you remain an important part of their lives.

 

Have a great term

Mike Brosnahan,

Principal