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2020 Archive
‘Letting Go…’
25 November 2020
Jacaranda blossoms, a Junior School guard of honour, bagpipes, girls in tartan, a mass Jump’n’Jive, The Irish Blessing, tears and laughter may seem to construct the ultimate incongruous juxtaposition - but, that’s just the way a Senior farewell happens at Fairholme.
On Friday, we breathed in deeply and readied ourselves for another Valedictory Assembly. Without wanting to be morbid, there is something ‘funeral-esque’ in such an occasion: the wrench of a final goodbye and the realisation that we can hold on no more. Letting go is paradoxical: difficult but vital.
It is hard to capture this occasion in words because farewelling a cohort represents the culmination of quite an exceptional journey – one built on such diverse elements: learning, losing, achieving, missing out, frustrations and joys and every possible emotion that can be wedged in between. Some girls have spent most of their life at Fairholme, since they first donned their cute tartan shorts at age three until they walked for one last time down Palm Avenue on Friday. Others have navigated the sisterhood of the Boarding House – the sometimes-suffocating effects of mass living pitched chaotically against the precious, irreplaceable reward of lifelong friendships. The depth of connections was palpable and thus the letting go was difficult. There was a lot to grieve for and a lot to love about Friday.
That we were able to celebrate with families was special, particularly in a year when this has not been possible. And yet, having spoken to a principal colleague in London on Friday, I counted my blessings.
‘How are things?’ I enquired.
‘Only six away with COVID today, two staff, which has made it tricky,’ she replied, almost nonchalantly.
‘Masks?’ I asked.
‘Yes, all of us – it is so hard to teach whilst wearing a mask. We have to have all our windows and doors open, too, which has been interesting, particularly as it gets colder.’
At times, throughout the year, I’ve thought of Seniors in other countries whose school years simply ceased. There were no occasions to mark their departure – no special Assemblies, Dinners, Formals. They walked out of school one day, expecting to return but didn’t, couldn’t. Like the Valedictory Assembly, it is hard to put words around the pandemic landscape of 2020, and whilst we have missed out on things, moments and events, we have gained on perspective. We have been handed a lesson in what really matters, and we have all been forced to observe it – I believe our Seniors have learned it, with exceptional grace.
These Seniors of 2020 have unwittingly led their way through a pandemic and have rolled with disappointment with a resilience that we always hope to teach well, but don’t always manage. This year we have – this year they have – COVID has been an insistent teacher. Thus, as the school year closes, for me, it really is time to count my blessings rather than my frustrations, or disappointments. At this tenuous time in life across the globe, we have managed to see our Seniors out with the respect they have gained, and with the ceremony we value – jacaranda blossoms, a Junior School guard of honour, bagpipes, tartan, a mass Jump’n’Jive, The Irish Blessing, tears and laughter: a messy, spirited, delightful incongruous juxtaposition of symbolism and imagery. How lucky we are to find the letting go so difficult but the celebration so important.
We are grateful for each and all. They will always be, our girls.
Go well, Senior Leaders 2020.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
When Fairholme Old Girls Unite… Some Things Never Change
13 November 2020
Observe constantly that all things take place by change and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things [just] like them.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I always enjoy Bernard Salt’s article in ‘The Weekend Australian’- no different on the weekend as he wrote ‘some things never change’ – indeed that is so. I shared lunch on Saturday with a dozen of Fairholme’s finest: our Toowoomba Old Girl connection who have been craving their connection throughout this COVID year. It may be decades since they donned the tartan, but their conversation is, in an instant, garrulous. Topics range from politics to travel to grandchildren and invariably though, they circle back to Fairholme – to a moment or a person. The energy is palpable and laughter abundant.
The special guest Old Girls, were none other than Mrs Sutton and Mrs Mason who entertained with recollections of boarding, parenting Fairholme students and finally, their insights as members of staff. Their messages were witty, thoughtful and… collaborative: ever respectful of their Alma Mater. It was easy to envisage them back in their white church dresses, with carefully plaited hair and shiny brown shoes, navigating friendships and homesickness but triumphing with connections that are timeless – some things never change.
When Mrs Sutton unfurled the quilt that the Boarding House gifted her last week, she talked with delight to each square, about each boarder and each boarder’s story. It was a precious moment. Sister Harrison was quick to decipher and extrapolate upon the networks between these current students and those she cared for as Nurse Manager for so many years. Georgina Horn (2007) happened to be at the same venue and popped in to see old girls she too has links with, like Mrs Heilbronn who had taught her at Fairholme Junior. Connections abound.
I have attended a plethora of FOGA luncheons, church services and get-togethers over time and am always struck by the breadth and depth of the Fairholme networks and the inclusiveness of all. As a mirror of our current vertical pastoral care system, these gatherings hold strong – evidence that tartan links supersede age difference. It would seem that the more lives follow different paths, the more reason there is to reconnect with the known, to venture back to the beginning of things, in a sense, to a place where our values are most keenly shared.
The lunch on Saturday takes me to Tokyo in 2018 when we held a reunion for the Japanese students who had spent a term or more with us over the past years. Even in the enormity of the Tokyo skyline, there is a portion of Fairholme in existence. At the time, typhoon #24 was brewing but these 20 Fairholme sisters of different ages, from different schools, were reluctant to leave the gathering.
A chorus of comments such as: ‘Fairholme has been the most important part of my schooling.’ Or … ‘I miss Fairholme so much.’ Or … ‘I want to go back [to Fairholme], and visit my friends,’ and the pinnacle comment – ‘I’m homesick for Fairholme.’ Therein, was an insight into the profound effect of the cliché: ‘once a Fairholme girl, always a Fairholme girl.’
We exist in Tokyo. At that reunion, the talk was animated and excited, each girl clung to the tartan kangaroo, Tim Tams and Fairholme cap we had brought as gifts. The topics ranged from university plans, careers and travel but, just like on Saturday, circled quickly back to Fairholme to that shared experience - they simply did not want to let go of that time in their life. Yes, the links are powerful. We are drawn back so easily into the vortex of adolescence: that messy, paradoxically complex and simple time of ‘becoming’ and we find synergy with all those whose experiences intersect within that time or place. That’s what I see whenever Fairholme Old Girls unite – some things [simply] never change.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
Goodbyes
29 October 2020
‘Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.’ (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)
It’s a new rhythm of farewelling our Seniors this year. Add the complexities of COVID and it is not surprising that this new space feels so unfamiliar. At ‘Presenting Fairholme’ on Thursday evening we had our largest crowd seated together since early in March – albeit with the still bizarre-feeling ‘new normal’ of physical distancing. How fortunate we are, to be living in a country where such occasions are able to occur. Yet again, I remind myself of the need for that perspective, whenever that sense of disappointment for what we can’t have creeps into my consciousness. It was special and appropriate to honour our Year 12 cohort collectively, as they step out of formal schooling into the unchartered space of external exams. Their leadership this year has inspired me, because it has been infused with optimism, at a time when it would have been so easy to tilt into a permanent half-empty glass of pessimism. Further, their academic resolve has been steady – not without its perfectly human lapses – but for so many, their focus has been breathtaking.
On Thursday, we also had the opportunity to honour Mrs Cathy Mason and Mrs Jenny Sutton: collectively their service to the College doesn’t fall much short of a full century (that does include their years as boarding students).
Always, bittersweet moments such as these are clustered together in these final weeks of Term 4, and, to paraphrase one of my favourite Macbethian quotations (apologies to Shakespeare) – ‘nothing became [her] in her career, like the leaving of it.’ It is only at these times that we seem to gain the requisite clarity to note distance travelled, growth gained and the impact of legacy. I have been fortunate enough to share three Year 12 English classes with Mrs Mason in the past decade; thus, there have been grammar conversations (she is, after all, the Queen of the semi-colon), planned unit outcomes and cross marking: but it’s been her generous sharing of collegiality that has been my great privilege. Of course, there have been countless conversations with Mrs Sutton, meetings, planning, and the processing of tragic events. It would come as no surprise that she was the first staff member to write me a card of encouragement when I began as Deputy Principal in 2003.
Sitting in Mrs Sutton’s room on Friday afternoon reminded me of the power of her work. I was, as would be described in research terms, an ‘insider/outsider’: participant and observer simultaneously. In a couple of hours, I had seen photos of a donkey called Jenny (yes, named with reverence for Mrs Sutton), discussed rainfall and harvests, looked at photographs of several pet dogs, helped with cutting fabric for a Year 9 girl’s project and shared the banter and laughter that typify that space. Girls dropped in and out, hands grabbed for the comfort of the ubiquitous Anzac biscuit, and a girl’s birthday riding boots were proudly displayed and admired. There were several conversations occurring simultaneously, some considered, some not – all this whilst our youngest Boarder sat curled contentedly on a couch, playing with a doll’s house. Again, this was a privilege. Surely, the gift of a life well-lived is to appreciate these moments, in the moment, and not to have to be prompted when departures are imminent. Developing an attitude of gratitude is a challenge for us all, might I add, particularly in the season of Corona (and I was trying hard to leave her out of this piece).
I taught a girl on the Sunshine Coast by the name of Kate. Her final assessment piece for Year 12 English was a personal reflection. It was titled …’The Things I Left Behind’. It was the story of her angst and deep fear of moving to a new house from Ipswich to Buderim. She painted this fabulous word-picture of the mango tree in her back yard where she spent so much of her early childhood. On the morning the removalists came to pack up her family to move to the Sunshine Coast, Kate ran back to the mango tree and scaled the branches up to a high platform. She wanted to reminisce for one last time, to savour the things she was leaving behind, to feel absolutely safe and certain. When it was time to leave, she stubbornly refused to get down. Kate had to be dragged out of the tree – she simply didn’t want to leave the protection of what she knew. I remember it as a beautiful piece of writing, her best piece – kept ‘til last, like a promise for the future. She wove such a strong reflection that, at such a time in the school year, I am often drawn to the metaphoric image of Kate perched in her mango tree, holding fast to the known, reluctant to move onwards.
Yet, we do move on, we eventually yield to the inevitability of change, and we eke out our goodbyes. There are those who never climb the mango tree for one last time, those who are drawn to the heady uncertainty of change like a magnet. Whichever, as a College we do feel the wrench of letting you go.
Yes, ‘on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. [Our] wish for those departing is that you do so, in peace. [We] will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil’ (Tolkien).
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
Sport: More Than Just Playing a Game
16 October 2020
In either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small.
I had the privilege of watching our Vicki Wilson Netballers in action in Brisbane on the last weekend of the holidays. For me, it is a pleasure to watch sport at any time, and particularly when our Fairholme girls are in action. Whilst the COVID-19-safe plan gave school principals ‘a pass’ in to spectate, I suspect that I may have been the only spectator in the venue; thus, I was conscious at every moment about how fortunate I was to have that opportunity. Herein was a COVID-19 silver lining – an opportunity for me to be more reflective about the role of sport in character formation.
Our Senior team did not advance from their pool games to the final sixteen, but our junior girls did. Whilst no one ever enters a tournament without hope of a grand final finish, the skill learning and character development that occur, irrespective of final ladder placement remain fundamental to the experience. I once made a faux pas at a College Assembly and said, ‘Winning is a terrible thing’. Before I could give context, the hall had erupted into laughter and I had lost the opportunity to explain my thinking. When we win, the pressure mounts exponentially because expectation rises from both within the player and beyond. When you are winning, you are managing expectation whilst simultaneously concentrating on playing the game. When you are losing, your concentration is often singularly focused – on improvement.I saw some great Netball on that weekend – girls whose elevation in the air is breathtaking, defense players whose resolve is inspiring and shooters whose steady eye and determination are a delight to watch. But I observed much better than that. I observed girls who didn’t give up for a moment, despite the score line, I saw players take the court with injuries who didn’t hesitate to give more than 100% and I saw teams work together to achieve the best outcome that they could. It was hard work – you don’t reach the state finals in a sport like Netball that has the highest participation rate of any girls’ sport, and not have to contend with hard work.
I saw some great Netball on that weekend – girls whose elevation in the air is breathtaking, defense players whose resolve is inspiring and shooters whose steady eye and determination are a delight to watch. But I observed much better than that. I observed girls who didn’t give up for a moment, despite the score line, I saw players take the court with injuries who didn’t hesitate to give more than 100% and I saw teams work together to achieve the best outcome that they could. It was hard work – you don’t reach the state finals in a sport like Netball that has the highest participation rate of any girls’ sport, and not have to contend with hard work.
I like to think that this translates beautifully into other sectors of life. Personally, I would argue that playing sport has taught me some pivotal life lessons – about losing, even when you believe you should be winning; about winning graciously, about how to work within a team and most important of all – about preparation and perseverance. I honestly believe that finishing a doctoral thesis was made possible by the lessons I learned on Netball courts, Touch fields, ovals and swimming pools. They are lessons that aren’t always easy to learn either. Decisions sometimes go against us, one more minute would sometimes change an outcome and injuries can be the greatest teachers of all – the perspective givers. Sometimes we don’t get selected in the team we believe we should be in, the one we have set our heart upon; the one we have worked towards for what seems to be a lifetime.
This weekend just gone I spent time at the All Schools’ Touch Tournament. Three Fairholme teams were involved, with the Open girls finishing in the final sixteen; the 15 years girls finishing third in their pool and the 13 years girls advancing to the final eight: great outcomes. These girls played a lot of games of Touch – hard work, hot work, – and sometimes, seemingly unrewarded effort. Open Coach, Brenda Rackemann, in speaking to our girls at the close of the tournament, reflected on the growth in skill and character of our Year 12 Touch players – many of these girls she has coached since they began playing as twelve-year-olds. She said something to the effect that these girls have learned lessons that will hold them in good stead for whatever they choose to do in the future. They have learned, and they have demonstrated, the value of practice, perseverance and teamwork.
Yes, sport is a great teacher if we are prepared to listen to its nuances and grow through its guidance. Resilience is sports’ core subject matter – it fosters, when we allow it, the ability to rebound from adversity, or difficult situations. Vanessa LoBue, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, Newark describes resilience as a ‘superpower’ that allows some kids to ‘persevere where others flounder’ (2020). That is, if we don’t swoop in to over-soothe disappointment, apportion blame and denigrate the opposition. When we do so, we rob them of the opportunities to problem-solve, to build resilience and to develop independence in their lives – vital skills for adulthood which nudges close by. ‘They’ll learn that they’ll get knocked down [metaphorically or literally] – but, the important lesson, is that they’ll get back up. On their own, without us’ (Howard, 2020). Failure is nuanced, there is no doubt. Yet, as sports journalist Robert Glazer (2017) reminds, ‘ask any successful person and they’ll tell you how failure and learning from it contributed to their success.’ So let us let them learn.
For all the parents who have spent and continue to spend parenthood ferrying their children to and from venues, washing countless uniforms, paying ridiculous sums of money for equipment … there is a silver lining. Of course, that silver lining is only woven when we stand back, support without interference and allow them to enjoy the myriad important effects of playing sport: losing or winning with grace, persevering when it’s hard and … preparing through training. Far beyond the game itself, it teaches us to persevere in the face of adversity and that by changing our actions we can achieve better outcomes. Legendary baseball player, Babe Ruth, once said, 'It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up' – and it is; that’s why sport continues to be a ‘subject’ of importance at Fairholme, because of the implicit as well as the explicit lessons that are learned through participation. There is a lot to love about sport.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Gair, I. (2018). Important Life Lessons Children Learn Through Sport
Glazer, R. (2017). Free to Fail and Freedom to Fail Friday Forward (#95)
Lobue, V. (2020). Stressful times are an opportunity to teach children resilience. ‘The Educator’, theeducatoronline.com
There’s No Place Like Home
17 September
‘I ran back to the boarding house and phoned home. Mum and Dad were jumping up and down and Dad said, “We get to be a family again.” I stopped for a minute and accepted that I was really going home.’ (Fairholme Boarder, 8 September 2020)
Home matters a great deal, doesn’t it? The border/boarder dilemma that has absorbed a lot of thinking, writing and speaking time in the past month has reinforced the importance of place as well as the fundamental importance of family. These two elements give us strength, they reinforce our identity and they protect our wellbeing: not surprising findings. I’m deeply aware that in this season of corona, many of us are struggling with alienation from the people and the places that define us and make us feel whole. For some, this situation has stretched personal reserves to exhaustion – the notion of resilience has been rebranded. I have been inspired by many of our own families who have shared glimpses of their own unique situations, often quietly, often understated, but enough to remind me that 2020 has affected us all, and for some in the most unimaginably difficult ways. We cannot presume to know what the effect of being separated by distance has had for some within our community – and beyond.
My parents ‘ran away’ to Sydney from Brisbane in the mid-1980s – Dad took up a promotional position. Our family home was sold, a new one purchased, and my youngest sister, Jill, started Year 5 at Murray Farm State School with trepidation born of uncertainty: she had been deeply displaced from her previous world of certainty. The move was huge for us all: a brave relocation to another city; one much larger, much faster-paced and one without family. I drove one of the cars down in the Christmas holidays of that momentous move and helped unpack a lifetime, my lifetime, and that of my older sisters. I remember placing furniture and pictures in recently carpeted and freshly painted rooms; how different those items appeared in their new shiny spaces. My youngest sister sat on the stairs and cried. She too felt like a stranger in a new home that didn’t feel like home at all. Of course, we all adapted, we absorbed the nuances of a recalibrated life and I returned to Queensland; from there I began to view home a little differently.
Home was very different at that time. So, too, was my first home away from home in Mt Isa where I began as a teacher with a new career and a new husband. Our house was a mirror image of every other Department of Education house: three-bedrooms, chamferboard, low-set with chain-wire fencing. As an added aesthetic, ours was devoid of any foliage at all. Importantly, we installed air-conditioners to ward off the rising heat, hung curtains, lay rugs and proudly placed our six directors chairs around the pine dining table my husband had built in the preceding year. Over time, we nurtured seedlings in freshly dug garden beds, grew vines hardy enough to survive drought and scorching summers and established ‘home’. If I close my eyes, I can see each room of that house, I can recall its front door – a vibrant midnight blue in hue, the bathroom laminex, and the complete absence of a phone; I can also conjure the swelling sense of identity I grew in my first season of real independence.
For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, by absence or presence, home ‘is a crucial point of reference – in memory, feeling and imagination’ (Fox, 2016). Spencer and Wooley, (2000, cited in Jack, 2008) would argue that it is also through this attachment to place that children gain their sense of personal identity. In its own way, place touches us, leaves its footprint and forms who we become. Such are our homes – gathering places for family, friends and the development of our view of the world. They encompass landscape, too, and an architecture of life that becomes unique to those who dwell within. It is no surprise that the new health direction published on Tuesday, the one that allows all NSW boarders to travel home for the holidays, brought such relief and such joy. Suddenly, uncertainty became certainty, time with family became a thought to be entertained and not one that needed to be repressed, and the lure of a familiar landscape, real.
What does it mean to travel home – the place where our heart lies? One of our NSW Boarder girls captured that feeling beautifully:
When I heard I could go home, I thought it was the most amazing news in the world. I could have cried I was so happy. All my anxiety and stress fell off my shoulders, in seconds. All my worries left my body and I was happy, excited and I couldn’t think of anything bad surrounding me. These little things mean the most to me because I get to go home and see my family, my animals and my grandfather who is very old.
Yes, we do all have a deep sense of where we come from, and, at a time when so much in the world is unfamiliar, or unsettling, or absent, the pull of home is stronger than ever before. In the journal article, ‘Place Matters: The Significance of Place Attachments for Children’s Well-Being’ researcher, Gordon Jack, includes a beautiful reflection on the reason why we crave place. It seems a fitting description through which to conclude this piece, given its reference to sheep, the land and the tug of home – those potent elements that are so important to so many in our community. Further, Jack’s hefting metaphor provides a common thread for us all.
For the last week, through the horizontal rain, I have been observing my little flock of sheep with profound admiration. At first sight they are not much to celebrate. They are muddy, bedraggled, cantankerous and malodorous. Yet my sheep have this going for them: they are hefted. After countless generations on the same land, they have an inbred knowledge of where they come from. In the fell country, hefted sheep are left to roam without fences in the certainty that they will not wander beyond the frontiers of their hereditary mental map. The vestigial urge to be hefted may be one of the most intense but least noticed features of modern life. We travel faster, more widely, move more often and settle for shorter periods than ever before, yet at the same time we seem to crave a place to stay and return to ever more intensely. Place marks us all and leaves its traces. (Macintyre, 2007 cited in Jack, 2008)
May we all manage to enjoy some elements of home in the coming holidays – remembering that this will be more complex and difficult for some. Home resides in place, it also resides within us and through our connections with family, no matter the distance. It is no surprise that Dorothy’s lines from The Wizard of Oz: ‘There’s no place like home’ have become a much-quoted truism.
There really is no other place like home.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Beck, J. (2011). The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Love Means So Much. The Atlantic. December 30, 2011.
Bleam, R. (2016). A ‘Sense of Place’: Why are certain places meaningful to people?
Fox, M. (2016) Why is home so important to us? Oxford University Press Academic Insights for the Thinking World. December 30th, 2016.
Jack, G. (2008). Place Matters: The Significance of Place Attachments for Children’s Well-Being The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 40, Issue 3, April 2010, Pages 755–771
Glass Half Full. Glass Half Empty.
3 September 2020
The rise of mindfulness addresses many aspects of our daily thinking practices, including our choice of outlook. Is that glass half-full, Linda, or is it half-empty? Is that a green thought, or a red thought? In our current co-existence with COVID-19 and its looming shadow it is easy to fall into a half-full thinking pattern… aka ‘stinking thinking’. That’s why it is so refreshing to rub shoulders with those half-full thinkers, those who seem to find the good in almost any situation: the eternal optimists of the world.
Conversely, Martin Seligman, author of ‘The Optimistic Child’ talks of the ‘pessimism spiral’ which can weave its insidious way into a pattern of thinking. ‘I’ll never make that team.’ ‘I’ll never be selected for that job.’ ‘I’ll never be friends with them.’ Seligman (in Shain, 2020) writes that we need to learn to argue with ourselves, to challenge those downwardly directed thoughts, and that this type of self-argument can become a habit, with practice, even in a matter of days. He also talks of the importance of perspective and the need to find a sweet spot in our thinking when we find ourselves running hastily to a position of catastrophic interpretation. After an awful argument where the first thought is, ‘She hates me’ we can learn to rephrase. ‘She’s pretty unhappy with me at the moment but I know we can resolve it. It’s going to be awkward to see each other again but it will be OK.’
A wise friend coached me many years ago around the word, ‘should’. He would instruct me to rid myself of the imperative ‘should’ from any sentence or thought that passed through my brain. He encouraged me to rephrase sentences each time I was tempted to insert the word, should. I became expert in shifting ‘I should have’, to ‘It would have been good if I had but, on this occasion, I couldn’t, or I didn’t.’ Secretly, I thought he was crazy. That was, until I started to pay attention to its everyday use, not just from my own thinking but by the words spoken by family and friends. In a piece of totally unsubstantiated qualitative research, I began to notice the strong correlation between the use of the word ‘should’ and feelings of guilt, shame or frustration. I actually noticed the difference it made to me when I rephrased my thoughts. It really was a Martin Seligman moment where the practice of self-argument became useful, or perhaps it was a prelude to cognitive behaviour therapy before I even knew the term existed: change your thought, change your feeling.
I’m inspired by so many people at this time, more than ever before. Perhaps I’m thirsting for a fuller glass, or perhaps I’m just appreciating the metaphoric glasses about me. I’m inspired by students who are getting on with things, even though things are remarkably different. I admit to being inspired by my daughter, locked down and locked in, in Melbourne – her buoyancy despite almost two full terms of teaching from home gives great perspective. I’m inspired by the tenacity of my 88-year-old mother in hospital in Sydney who walked the length of the corridor just over twenty-four hours after a hip replacement. And when I catch myself feeling sorry for what I don’t have or can’t have at the moment… as I sneak into that pessimism spiral, I catch myself quickly, or attempt to – there is a lot to be grateful for.
Last week, both the Junior and Middle School Assemblies were cause for optimism: from the Junior school girls who beat me back to my office with answers to my trivia, to the fabulous Black House Assembly replete with Penne Skene on the bagpipes, Ally Graham on guitar with her photographs as a backdrop and some heart-warming Black House footage. On Saturday, I watched three of our Netball teams in action. Into the future there’s a revamped Curtain Call which gives performance opportunity for our musicians, dancers, dramatists and artists.These are all things to fill my cup – and the cups of others. Here’s to our weeks ahead giving us perspective, gratitude and a glass that is more than full enough.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Shain, S. The New York Times, March 23, 2020 How to be More Optimistic: life is better with a half-full glass
‘August 20’
20 August 2020
August! Winter. Winds. Athletics Carnivals and… the Brisbane Exhibition (Ekka). I admit to feeling nostalgic. It’s decades since I clutched a strawberry ice-cream cone at the Ekka; or lined up impatiently for Tasmanian chips; or watched the woodchopping or sheepdog trials in fascination but I’m missing those experiences – yet another example of craving that which I cannot have or hold. It’s a COVID moment really, wanting the things I should have loved a little (or a lot) more, when they were in reach.
I remember sitting on the train bound for the Ekka with my mother and sisters so many years ago. I was in tears. The four dollars that I had saved painstakingly for what had seemed to be an eternity; those two crisp green two-dollar notes with their pictures of famous Australians, (males of course) – William Farrer and John Macarthur – along with images of wheat and wool, were sitting in a wallet on the back seat of my mother’s car, adjacent to the Indooroopilly train station. No reassurance from my mother or my sisters that they would loan me $4 could allay my sobbing – it simply wasn’t the same. Those two notes that had slowly materialised from coins in a jar were more special than that. For months, I had dreamt of the exchange of that specific money, those two crisp bills, for a Cadbury’s Sample bag, a Bertie Beatle bag, or perhaps a ride on the chair-o-plane – possibly, even, all three. My response was totally irrational I’m sure, and I imagine there was some furtive eye rolling happening between my older sisters, but I remember that moment more than the trip to the Ekka that year. In many ways it is my most powerful memory of the Brisbane Exhibition.
Why? Because I had earned that money, every cent of it, myself. It was an early foray into the world of independence. I was not a conscientious saver and so this was an achievement for me. Pocket money had to be earned and birthday money was rare; saving was an agony for me, but I had a goal and I had achieved it with the determination that I usually saved for other important enterprises – like shooting more goals than my sisters, or clearing a higher height than them at ‘elastics’. There is something precious in doing something on your own, especially when it’s hard, and saving was hard for me. Melbourne Age journalist, Richard Glover reminds us as parents not to rob our children of such understanding. In our quest for them to experience success, to achieve at a higher standard than we did, and to do so without delay, without hard work, is to rob them of the necessary skills for life itself; skills required of us all at any time and magnified in the midst of a pandemic. He puts it this way; ‘Parents want to help and, if they can, they should. Just as long as the way they do it doesn’t steal so much more from their children than has been given’ (Glover, 2013). Don’t do too much. Don’t intervene when it’s not appropriate. Don’t rob them of the skills to negotiate the world, their world. Let them achieve independence: let them.
On Tuesday, at Assembly, a large group of Senior School girls crossed the stage to receive their Semester 1 Academic Certificate. There were familiar faces and there were new faces too – girls who I know have worked with determination to achieve that goal; girls for whom an academic award reflects more than reaches the eye. In each award there is an individual story and I imagine that not one girl who walks the stage for that purpose has done so without hard work. What I love, nonetheless, is seeing a girl who I know has set this as her goal and worked at it, independently, perhaps even fiercely, and sometimes over a long period of time. Self-mastery at its best. The learning inherent in that moment is rich – as rich as I felt all those years ago when I clutched my cherished crisp, green $2 notes and dreamt of their exchange.
If I recounted this story to my mother, she would probably be stunned to think that I can recall it at all, let alone in such detail. She would be stunned that I can elicit a tale of significant learning out of something so ordinary. But as in so many ordinary childhood moments, I admit to being grateful to both my parents, forever the greatest teachers in my life. Good or bad, we are teachers by example, as all parents are. My parents have never been rescuers, although I’ve thirsted for that on occasion; they’ve modelled hard work, although I’ve sought the easy path at times, but their greatest gift was allowing me to develop independence: that’s why that four dollars mattered so much to 10-year-old Linda.
To let go as a parent doesn’t just mean letting our children go off independently. It also means letting go of our own, sometimes unfair, expectations of them, or our need to entwine our own wants too closely into our hopes for them. Educator and psychologist, Haim Ginott, writes of the slow but requisite relinquishment of control that is a fundamental part of effective parenting. If you’ve taught your daughter or son to ride a bike; walk to school without you; or to drive a car and then waved them off as they have jumped into a car to travel kilometres solo – or left them at boarding school, then you’ve begun the journey. Ginott speaks of this letting go process as parents’ finest hour; to let go when we desperately want to hold on tight is, in his words, an act of ‘painful greatness’ (Ginott, in Bennett and Rowe, 2003, p.246).
Adolescents’ quest for independence is often dichotomous – there is an intrinsic drive to be separate from parents whilst at other times a need to be strongly knitted to them – and it’s confusing for them as well as for us. Adolescents need to define themselves separately from their parents, lest they never become independent adults. Some do this more cautiously than others. Some more respectfully. Some more healthily – and some not so healthily – but it’s important that they do and that we somehow endure the experience. In a cleverly constructed blog entry entitled, ‘Parent Corner: The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You’, author and parent Gretchen Schmeltzer writes as if in the voice of an adolescent girl – she captures the paradox of a teenage girl’s simultaneous and often contradictory quest for independence and dependence with incisiveness:
I need this fight even though I hate it too. It doesn’t matter what this fight is even about: curfew, homework, laundry, my messy room, going out, staying in, leaving, not leaving, boyfriend, girlfriend, no friends, bad friends. It doesn’t matter. I need to fight you on it, and I need you to fight me back. I desperately need you to hold the other end of the rope. To hang on tightly while I thrash on the other end—while I find the handholds and footholds in this new world, I feel like I am in. I used to know who I was, who you were, who we were. But right now, I don’t. Right now, I am looking for my edges and I can sometimes only find them when I am pulling on you. (Schmeltzer, 2015)
My magnificent meltdown on the train to the Brisbane Exhibition was not so much about the possibility of missing out on an Ekka strawberry ice-cream cone, or a coveted showbag or even ham sandwiches from the Queensland Butter Board stand – it was about having lost my newly found independence. It was about having to be dependent again when I had, ever so briefly, savoured the sweetest taste of liberation … I had metaphorically stood on my own two feet. I couldn’t articulate that thought, of course, in any other way than a tearful tantrum. This is my most powerful memory of a childhood August ... a foray into independence - one of my parents’ most precious gifts to me: ever. AUGUST!
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Bennett, D., and Rowe, L. (2003). ‘What to do when your children turn into TEENAGERS’ Random House, Australia.
Glover, R. (2013). ‘The best reason for not buying your child a property.’ DOMAIN. October 29, 2013
Schmeltzer, G. (2015). ‘Parent Corner: The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You’
Seeking the Simple in the Complex
6 August 2020
Complexity raises anxiety. That anxiety is hovering close to the surface at this time cannot be deemed surprising. We have never done this complex form of living before and thus drawing from past experiences, or trying to control the shape of things, is simply beyond our fingertips. Brene Brown writes of ‘the courage to not know’. Similarly, Organisational Psychologist, Dr Michelle Mulvihill, in addressing a large group of Independent School Principals in a webinar on Friday said, ‘Somehow, we need to pay more attention to adaptive spaces, or at least to make ourselves more comfortable in places of ‘unknowing’ rather than futilely clinging to the known’. Easier said than done, Michelle.
Nonetheless, her words of wisdom did bring some reassurance, a reminder that we are all grappling with seeing the world one way but experiencing it in another way. We are all so used to school operating in a particular paradigm that when it can’t, or doesn’t, it is unsettling, or frustrating or for some – the source of anger. I have never seen this space before, nor has any of us. Even small things, like a squeeze of hand sanitiser on entering a classroom, have become commonplace; standing at a distance in a queue or zooming in to a conversation have become standard practice and they need to – inconvenience cannot override safety at this time. I was asked quite a genuine question this week, ‘When’s all this COVID stuff going to finish? When can things get back to normal?’ At first, I was mildly flattered; imagine – someone really believed that I had the capacity to predict accurately the future of our newly formed world, one shaped by a pandemic. Confidently, and without apology, I was able to say, ‘I don’t know.’
We don’t know how to do this.
We don’t know how to social distance and stay sane.
We don’t know how to stay socially connected but stay far apart.
We don’t know what to tell our kids.
We are anxious, we are uncertain, a lot of us are afraid.
(Brene Brown, 2020)
At school we do continue to plan into this uncertain future, well aware that much of this planning could become redundant in a moment and that a pivot in a new direction may come unannounced but be required in an instant. Simultaneously, we are savouring the special moments that occur ever day. Classrooms are a sanctuary. Learning is more precious than ever before. An Assembly performance, albeit to a smaller gathering and live streamed, seems so much more special than in the past, or spending lesson 5 on a Friday with a Year 12 English class wrestling with ‘Macbeth’, or a session in a Year 11 Thrive class focused on perspective - it is as if I have been given the opportunity to see the world differently, if I so choose. And I am choosing, with a great deal of deliberateness, to absorb and enjoy those moments, to draw strength from the familiar in an unfamiliar time.
Dr Mulvihill urged the principals to whom she addressed not to metabolise uncertainty as a threat; rather, to acknowledge the new space which schools inhabit, and to suspend judgement where we can – in a sense, to step into the unknown without the emotional baggage of, ‘but we’ve always done it this way, why can’t we do it that way still?’ Quite frankly, because we can’t. We can’t do school the same way and that has to be OK – for now and maybe for longer. There is disruption for everyone, and the vast majority of people don’t understand their resilience until faced with extraordinary circumstances (Southwick, 2020). But Southwick also cautions that a pandemic is ‘less visible, less predictable, a creeping threat rather than flying debris — a marathon, psychologically, rather than a sprint to safety.’
So, where that anxiety simmers or bubbles fiercely beneath surface we do need to acknowledge its existence, it is a very human response to experience fear. Each week I find myself online buying a box of fruit and vegetables to have delivered to my daughter in Melbourne – it’s my way of extending care at a time when care must look different. I’m not sure if it helps her as much as it helps me – just to do something practical when there is so little I can do. And whilst I challenge myself to embrace Mulhivill’s ‘not knowing’, I am also deeply cognisant of the need for self-care in this time of complexity. Pray. Exercise. Diet. Sleep. Read (anything non-COVID 19 related). Tune out of the statistics from time to time and, importantly, be grateful for that which is in front of me; these things matter more than ever before. I am reminded that our students, our teachers and our parents inhabit the same uncertain space as me, that they, too, are part of this marathon that does not have a clear finish line. It’s essential to look beyond my perspective. Yes, complexity does raise anxiety.
So, it is healthy to seek out some exciting, rather than stress-filled, anxiety in this season of COVID: the exciting anxiety of seeing the Brisbane Lions triumph over Essendon, for example. A game of Netball. Performing on Assembly. Preparation for a piece of assessment – yes, if we stretch our thinking hard enough, we can deem it exciting. It’s important also, to show compassion to others and to ourselves. We’ve never done this before and we can’t endure the marathon, especially the one that has no clear finish line, without acknowledging our own anxiety, working with it and through it, and perhaps being just a little more patient with our world which may look the same on the surface but isn’t so. Let’s step a little more gently, perhaps with a little more kindness, and remember to enjoy the things, no matter how small, or simple, that do bring us joy.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Batucan, J. (2020). Accessed March 30, 2020 10.17am ‘Famed Author Brené Brown on Courage During COVID-19’
Brown, B. (2020). ‘The Courage to Not Know’
Carey, B. (2020). ‘The Pandemic’s Mental Toll: More Ripple Than Tsunami’ The New York Times.
Mulvihill, M. (2020). ‘Surviving to thriving in an age of uncertainty and anxiety’.
Australian Heads of Independent Schools – Queensland webinar 31 July. 2020.
Sethi, S. (2020). ‘10 Ways to Ease Your Coronavirus Anxiety’ The New York Times.
Not Just Another Founders’ Day…
24 July 2020
Another Founders’ Day has passed at Fairholme – one that marks our 103rd year on site. It wasn’t a typical Founders’ Day but that in no way diminishes the importance of acknowledging our history and remembering from whence we began on this site, and for what purpose. It would seem that COVID-19 has its own liberating features – everything is, by necessity, different, and thus another change seems inevitable, rather than dramatic, or out of place. Therefore, we took the opportunity to celebrate on our actual birthdate – 17 July – and to incorporate the strong connected voices of two of our old girls, Sara Al-Bostanji (2010) and Cathy Heilbronn (1965) via video.
Our Year 12s joined us in the Assembly Hall, along with the Holmegroup of Year 11 student, Sophie McInerney, who was the recipient of the FOGA Bursary which honours the direct descendent of an Old Girl whose academic record is noteworthy, as is their exemplary approach to learning. ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ was a beautiful pre-recording featuring Breanna Collins on violin, Mrs Lebsanft on piano; Emma Johnston and Lilly Marsden sharing the vocals – it moved some of us to tears, as if we are all thirsting for that which is familiar in the midst of the unfamiliar; thirsting for a Fairholme connection.
Everyone who is or has been part of Fairholme holds a metaphoric square of tartan – a link to the vision of Margaret Cameron. It seems fitting that on the first Founders' Day held in 1918 … that W R Black (for whom Black House is named) handed each girl a memento, a card, and on it was printed the following verse: 'I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.' (Etienne de Grellet). That’s our foundation, our connection to the past … a compass point of kindness, service and action to direct us in our actions. And in 2020 – a year that will take precedence in history books for decades to come because of the unavoidable impact of COVID-19 and the continued need to reduce physical distance – we are all craving connection: perhaps more sharply than ever before.
Connection is an interesting concept when the regular ways in which we achieve connection have been disrupted or removed from our daily practices. Thus, the compass point of kindness provides sharp focus for that fundamentally important direction. It’s not hard to be kind, is it? It’s not hard to undertake one action each day that makes someone else’s life better, or richer. When I think of kindness, I am often directed back in time to the Christmas holidays of 2005. My husband, children and I were in Krakow, Poland and we had exited a Shopping Centre at four o’clock in the afternoon – unwittingly through different doors than we had entered. It was coal black outside, and heavy snow was falling with determination, stinging our Australian-summer faces. Donning beanies, our thick down jackets and quickly thrusting our hands into gortex gloves, we walked off with purpose towards the nearest main road; the Shopping Centre disappeared quickly from our vision. It was then we realised that we were lost: very much so. Our Polish was limited to a few words, and there seemed to be no taxis in sight. We stood huddled together in piercingly uncomfortable silence.
And then Biata arrived, a young Polish woman with an understanding of connection and kindness.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, in heavily accented English.‘Yes,’ we replied in anxious unison, ‘we are lost’: a statement of the transparently obvious!
My best efforts cannot conjure the precise details of what followed, nor does that matter, because I do remember with clarity, Biata clutching her mobile phone and calling a taxi for us, giving definite instructions to the driver and walking away, only to return shortly after.
‘I just want to make sure that the driver gives you a fair price,’ she said, emphatically.
It’s hard to put words around the impact of that simple act of kindness; it is one that draws our family to account whenever we see someone lost or struggling with directions. It pushes us all at the Brisbane International Airport to adopt stray first-time travelers to Australia, those clearly confronted by cultural cues that are well-intentioned but often meaningless. One act of kindness can have enormous weight. One connection can be pivotal in the difference it makes.
Founders’ Day Assembly 2020 was not a regular one. It might not have been as smooth, or as ceremonial; it was not punctuated by a whole-school singing of ‘Shine Jesus Shine.’ It was important, nonetheless. It was important to pause and remember and to celebrate our connections: to honour the forethought and kindness of Mrs Margaret Cameron. Connection at Fairholme matters; it exists as we walk in the footsteps of others, when we climb stairs after another, or walk across the homestead verandas like thousands before us – we see it and feel it through the jump’n’jive – but there are other more important things that bind us – our shared Christian foundation, our formidable spirit, our resilience and our tenacity … these qualities are hallmark Fairholme and they furl us back in connection to 1917 when … Margaret Cameron made such an important decision. It was in the midst of World War I that Mrs Cameron, aged 97, offered this property for purchase by the Presbyterian Church for 5000 pounds. She accompanied her offer with a gift of 2500 pounds on the strict condition that her home and grounds would be used as a girls’ school. She valued education, but particularly, she valued the education of girls and women – that they be given every opportunity to follow their passion – without hindrance.
Through Founders’ Day we honour Mrs Cameron’s memory. We have all become part of her legacy and thus we all carry a debt of gratitude … an indebtedness to do our best irrespective of how hard it is to do so – and an indebtedness to show kindness in our connections with one another – whenever we can, wherever we can: 'I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.' (Etienne de Grellet, Quaker Missionary). No, Founders’ Day 2020 was not just another Founders’ Day, it was so much more than that.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
The Things We Miss…
12 June 2020
I miss touching. I keep thinking of shared things we touch. Handrails.
Board game pieces. Door handles. I miss not being suspicious of
surfaces and how unconscious I was of the ease and innocence of
touching. I miss hugging my mom. - Susan Burns 2020
If I allow myself to wallow, I can identify a number of things I am missing during this time of Corona. I’m missing the freedom to drive to Wellcamp Airport, board a plane without thoughts of hand sanitiser, face mask or physical distancing and find myself at my parents’ house in Sydney in under five hours. I’m missing my daughter in Melbourne who I would have seen twice in the past three months if not for Corona. I’m missing my planned leave this term to travel to Glasgow to see my son – who is back in Australia, not surprisingly. Yes, if I allow myself, I could easily delve into a state of feeling sorry for myself – especially if I add the exhaustive list of things I’m missing at Fairholme.
I’m missing Friday afternoon conversations with Boarder parents as they pick up their daughters; I’m missing a full class in 10.4 English; and despite Zoom and Microsoft Teams technology, I’m simply not enjoying that challenge anymore. Like a teenage girl I could say, ‘I’m over it’. I’m over the holding pattern, I’m over contradictory information about how to ‘do COVID-19 safely’; I’m over restrictions! I’d like to be standing on the sideline of a Netball Court at Nellie Robinson even in a howling wind, or on the edge of a Touch field at Kearney’s Spring where the brisk chill of winter perpetuates for most of the year. I’d like to share my trivia with the Junior School in L Block Assembly, rather than in a pre-recorded message, and see the faces of those girls who love the challenge of a question. I’d like to sit with my colleagues in a meeting and take a tour of the school with a prospective family – always a great excuse to see classrooms in action. I’m grieving the Junior School Musical and the absence of our Art Exhibition – Facets. And, when I hear the faint sounds of violins or brass sounding from the Patrea O’Shea Building, I’m craving orchestras and bands and choirs. Yes, there is a lot to miss…
But, on Friday just passed, I was invited to watch the Year 12 Drama class perform a scene from the Greek tragedy, Antigone, written by Sophocles in the year 441 BCE. An eclectic group of students and staff sat together in the Amphitheatre and watched our Year 12s in action. It was a joy to be in an audience again. I realised how much I’m missing the creative boost of the Arts. I’d forgotten how much drama, dance, acting and music feed the soul, or certainly mine. Be-masked and full of focus, this class of seniors placed their viewers in another time, another place, and transported us into the world of Greek tragedy. It was a formative task, but it was executed with conviction and character and what a rich diversion it was from the mundanity of too much technology.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed on Friday evening at Vienna’s Musikverein to a masked audience of 100 – with no interval and for just 70 minutes. I’m sure that Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 have rarely been played with such passion and to a crowd so thirsty for the balm of music. Conductor, Daniel Barenboim, spoke about the delight of beginning again after a period that has seemed so long. ‘We only have 100 people in the audience. It’s not very much but it is a beginning, and this is how music can and should be experienced...live,’ said Barenboim.
Yes, there is a lot to miss and probably a lot to mourn. I am reminded (when I have a swift meeting with myself) that there is a lot to enjoy in this time that is slow and different and perplexing. We are living in modern history, we are forced to be creative in our thinking, and we are led, each day, to appreciate the things we so often take for granted. Leunig (2020) wrote of the complex tragedy of the bushfires that horrified our nation in January. He recounts a conversation with an older woman in a small country tow who remarked at the time, ‘Don’t pay too much attention to all those loudmouths. Just remember the ordinary people – the quieter ones – they’re like tea bags…’ When Leunig looked at her blankly, she continued, ‘They’re like teabags because you discover their goodness when they’re in hot water – and we’re all in hot water, you know.’
And we are all in hot water at the moment; for some, it’s been scorching. But here, at Fairholme, I have been struck by the goodness in many people; those who, despite being steeped in discomfort, have risen to the occasion. When I think of that goodness, I think of our teachers who have done just that, our students who have just got on with things and our parents who have persisted with learning from home, when learning from Fairholme is much more palatable – and I am grateful for our community, despite the things I’ve missed, or am missing. For now, I’m relishing the ‘Antigone’ moments and patiently anticipating the return of things I love, the things I might not have loved enough – before Corona struck.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Agence France-Presse (2020). ‘Vienna State Opera reopens with just 100 guests per show’
Burns, S. (2020). ‘All the Things We’ve Missed During Quarantine’ Sarastosa.
Leunig, M. (2020). ‘Humility and Common Decency is what our Nation needs most’
Resilience
28 May 2020
‘Humans are a resilient species.’ (Albright, 2020)
Resilience. I have long feared that the prevalence of the term resilience in education and parenting articles and publications is more about its societal decline as a phenomenon, than its increase. Yet COVID-19 is drawing it out of all of us; in fact, it’s necessary, not optional. When I stumbled across Anne Deveson’s book, appropriately titled ‘Resilience’, in 2003, the word began to appear everywhere, and I began to ponder its absence or presence in a range of situations from home life to school life. She describes it as ‘facing adversity with hope’. The word itself derives from the Latin resilio (to spring back), and, according to Deveson, research indicates that its source is a ‘complex interplay between biology, psychology and environment.’ COVID-19 could well read as a tale of resilience: the resilience of nations, individuals and indeed the world. How well can we bounce back from this adversity, and what will that look like in reality? Our daily news fodder is a COVID-19 landscape; it seems an eternity ago that I wrote of the words of Ash Barty who said, ‘I didn’t win a tennis match. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a game. I love playing the game. I do everything in my power to try and win every single tennis match. But that’s not the case. It’s disappointing right now. Give me an hour or so, we’ll be all good. The sun’s still going to come up tomorrow’ (Ash Barty, 2019).
The sun will still come up tomorrow. The resilience of our sporting heroes seems far removed from this time and yet there are fundamental threads that weave the two together. Our sporting heroes are invariably those who are experts in turning defeat into victory, albeit through a formidable mire of difficulties and setbacks. What drives any of us to bounce back? What is our response to adversity? How do we address change and the 180-degree turn? As former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright writes, ‘According to ancient myth, the one divine gift vouchsafed to humans – after all its evil companions escaped from Pandora’s box was – hope.’ In your own families you would be observing the differences in outlook; the varied degrees of optimism and hope articulated. I muse at the words of my mother, 87 and incredibly restricted in her activities. ‘I’m so lucky,’ she confides in me. I am humbled by her words. They make me pause and readjust my thinking. She has no idea how often I draw strength from her own resilience.
There are countries across the world that are bouncing back with noteworthy strength from the effects of COVID-19. They are teaching us that resilience is not a function of income; rather it comes from an attitude or mindset that simply cannot be purchased. This pandemic that is infecting our thinking has exposed those countries that are able to draw civil obedience and those that can’t; importantly, it has also shown the galvanizing effect of drawing hope out of adversity as Deveson once wrote. Stevis-Grindeff (2020) writes of nations faring well in this crisis: like Croatia, where many residents can all too easily recall being blockaded indoors with the whirring sound of sirens blaring for weeks on end during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, along with Greece, where the censures of the country’s debt crisis are still tangible. These people have developed the ability to endure hopefully when faced with adversity. After all, ‘resilience is not about avoiding crises, it's about what you do when you meet a challenge’ (Darryl Lovegrove).
Malcolm Fraser’s ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’ has floated into my consciousness from time to time in the past months. This oft quoted and misquoted phrase of Fraser’s was purportedly drawn from George Bernard Shaw’s play ‘Back to Methuselah’ where it is said, ‘Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.’ Our Year 11 and 12 students who returned three weeks ago have mused on both the difficult and the delightful moments of learning from home. How good it has been to hear them talk about their families with such reverence – so many have enjoyed time with you and the simple things of shared meals, games of cards, and time … time to appreciate the things we too often take for granted.
This week I am drawn to the farewell, for now, of Miss Katrina Gierke, Head of Cameron House, Mathematics and Physical Education teacher, and long-time Fairholme employee. Many would know that Katrina is undergoing treatment for a blood disease, treatment that will take her to Brisbane in the next few months and will lead her to practise some hefty self-isolation throughout that time. Her determined acceptance of her situation is a study in resilience. We pray for her throughout the time ahead and for her return to health and Fairholme in 2021. I am aware of others in our community who too are confronting situations far greater than the COVID-19 impact – we are praying for you, too.
The sun will still rise tomorrow, and it will do so in a landscape that is both familiar and unfamiliar. There is adversity to face but there is also hope to nurture, particularly where we have faith. Resilience matters more than ever before: Fairholme has it in abundance.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Albright, M. (2020), April 12, 2020. ‘The Best Response to Disaster is Resilience’
Deveson, A. (2003). Resilience. Allen & Unwin: Australia.
Stevis-Gridneff, M. (2020), 10 May 2020. ‘Europe’s Battle-Hardened Nations Show Resilience in Virus Fight’
Turning 180 Degrees
14 May 2020
On Wednesday 18 March I sent a text to my 26-year-old son which jolted his life into the ultimate ‘180-degree turn’. In a gentle way, I was nudging him home from his life’s dream: two years in Glasgow, two years of European travel,two years of hard work and saving furiously that had preceded it. Six weeks into residence in Scotland, he had left the security of his cousin’s home in Edinburgh, found a flat and a job: life looked promising even through the bitter winds and rain of the emerging Glasgow Spring. And then there came, Coronavirus.
In the greater world perspective, returning home to the safety of Australia was neither a crippling imposition, nor a life-shattering event but it was an about face-moment that rendered its own grief and deep disappointment. So suddenly, life had changed course with an unforeseen and piercingly sharp abruptness - and all of this was beyond his control, my control, or the control of any human being. On Friday 20 March, he and his girlfriend flew from the eerie emptiness of Glasgow airport into Dubai: to the world of home-made face masks and makeshift protective gear and a reckoning that the pandemic was real; that the DFAT call home to Aussies abroad was appropriate; and his mother’s nudge was perhaps a thinly veiled paranoia about his safety. At that time, Scotland was not in social-distance mode, nor shutting down in the way Australia had moved, but he was to discover in the ensuing two weeks of self-isolation that it was not far behind.
We have all experienced about-face moments, clustered together in the concertina of just two months. It’s been a daily email experience of U-turn government and health advice for me – just as things have been heading in one direction, there’s been new advice, contradictory information and the need to readjust, recommunicate and yes, flood the inbox of Fairholme parents with yet another email. Teachers who have been adapting their methodology on a minute-by-minute basis are now adjusting to imminent changes in their delivery – they continue to seek whole-classroom engagement … wherever their students might be seated. I have been so impressed by their adaptability and flexibility: all underpinned by a want to stay connected and to simply do a good job.
And at home, you too have battled a U-turn of changes, the frustrations of at-home learning, working from home, unreliable internet connections and juggling a very different family dynamic. None of us can presume to know how life is, and has played out, behind the closed doors of our neighbours, colleagues and community members. Casting a glance beyond the currently safe shores of Australia, we have reeled with the death toll in countries we have visited ourselves: Italy, Spain, America. Nothing in our lives has prepared us for the enormity of this time (Nixon, 2020), nor the helplessness that has caught us in waves as we have lamented our inability to change course. We can assume that this lack of control has taken its toll in different ways, in different measures, and that collectively we have been left to ‘the mercy of inertia, gravity and friction – left in the vacuum of space, where the things that come to pass, are beyond us’ (Saldana, 2020).
But in this about-face territory, I have seen some special things too – staff who have been stood down from their roles for a time who have graciously redeployed in other areas, reincarnating from swim coaches to cleaners, or Boarding supervisors and Holmestore assistants to kindy helpers, or teacher aides to phone surveyors and, invariably, with a ‘what can I do to help?’ approach: how refreshing it is to work alongside those who can turn 180 degrees with apparent ease and an infectious positivity.
My son, Mitchell, has recalibrated his path without a whinge and, at times, with some healthy gratitude to be here in Australia where, at this time, the curve is without an upward arch. I can’t imagine what we will make of this time in the years to come, of living in the midst of unprecedented historical change. I hope we can look back at the time we took a 180-degree turn in life and emerged with greater strength, and new perspective on what matters most. ‘We are growing right before our very eyes.’ Author, Arundhati Roy reminds us that ‘historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next’ (Roy, 2020). May life’s current about-face not be in vain; may we utilise the 180-degree U-turn to steer us in a kinder, more compassionate and optimistic direction.
It’s an icky feeling, being stuck in neutral.
We wander, sometimes aimlessly, but still filled with hope.
That as we continue our journey,
Things will be as they once were.
And yet, when we return to that normalcy, we are not the same.
We cannot shun nor negate the experiences that came before.
We will have grown because of the experience.
So, my friends, as much as you hate it, embrace being stuck in neutral.
The epoch is only temporary in the epic of our lives.
We are growing right before our very eyes.
(Dr Cristobal T. Saldana ‘Stuck in Neutral’)
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Nixon, K. (2020). ‘Grieving our Collective Loss – One Stitch at a Time’. Yesmagazine.org May 1, 2020.
Roy, A. (2020). ‘The Pandemic is a Portal’. ft.com April 3, 2020 12.30pm
Saldana, C. (2020). ‘Stuck in Neutral’
Lest We Forget
1 May 2020
This Anzac Day, I find myself at the Talara Entrance driveway to Fairholme listening to the Dawn Service live from Canberra: new times call for new ways.
My husband has thoughtfully linked his phone to a Bluetooth speaker, brought out our camping chairs, and we are joined by our good friend, Maryanne. As dignitaries and a servicewoman share the gravity of their recollections of war, I’m also thinking of Toowoomba Dawn Services for the past 17 years where I have stood at the Mothers’ Memorial at Queen’s Park; last year with my father; most of those years alongside Year 12 Boarders who have typically donned their winter uniform and panamas, especially for the occasion; I think too of a year when we hoisted our then beanie-clad nine-year-old son onto a power box so that he could see the proceedings. Usually it’s unseasonably cold and the temperature dips, almost as an act of reverence, just as the sun struggles its way into view. I have been privileged to travel to Gallipoli, and, as these poignant and appropriately famous words of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk reverberate in the morning air, I am transported back to Anzac Cove:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
So clearly, I can see the confronting vision of the Netball Court-sized area that is the Nek: scene of a famous First World War battle. I can picture the singular Lone Pine, and I can feel the surface of the bleached white graves that are clustered together on a grassy headland. It is impossible not to be moved by those powerful recollections.
Nor is it possible, on such a day, to ignore a cast back to childhood when my father sat, all day it seemed, watching services and parades broadcast from across Australia, as they droned on from black and white television. I was always frustrated by his inactivity on those days; the military sounds unsettled me, as did his dogged determination to watch every minute of footage. Today he hasn’t disappointed, he set a light on his driveway in Sydney and he reports listening to or watching services in every state of Australia – or close to it. The South Australian service was purportedly the best. He was too young to fight in the Second World War, but my Uncle Doug wasn’t, nor Dad’s friends and workmates, nor my father-in-law. The shadow of war looms for us all, differently.
In Webb Park, there are individuals and couples sitting scattered across benches, taking time to remember and to reflect. Oddly, there is a real sense of connectedness with these strangers who, too, are marking this time. The sun slowly rises in the east and a palette of colours paint the Great Dividing Range. Over the Anzac service audio, the birds of Canberra herald the new light, almost in synchronicity with the kookaburras and currawongs of East Toowoomba. Following the reveille, we place our handmade wreaths of remembrance on the bluestone wall that bears the name - Fairholme College. There is a feeling of pensiveness; we are all struck by the juxtaposed peacefulness and gravity of the moment. This year, the words Lest We Forget seem to have more meaning than ever before.
Even though Anzac Day has always mattered, I think for many of us, it is the first time that we have been so sensitively attuned to the significance of war, albeit it in the form of an invisible virus that has threatened safety on a global scale. American psychologists, Tedeschi and Calhoun (cited in Gregoire, 2016) say, ‘a psychologically seismic event can severely shake, threaten, or reduce to rubble many of the schematic structures that have guided understanding, decision making, and meaningfulness.’ We have all been confronted by rapid and unforeseen change - where all that we have taken for granted has been redefined or pushed to be re-examined. ‘Adverse events can be so powerful that they force us to think about questions we never would have thought of otherwise,’ asserts Foregard (cited in Gregoire, 2016). Perhaps that’s another reason why Anzac Day matters so much this year – because its rituals and rites bring a degree of comfort. We have seized Mrs Hayward’s challenge to create our own wreaths as a mark of respect to those who have fallen before us, and for us. There is a deep need at this time ‘to do’ and a deep need to connect. The photographs from Fairholme students across Australia have brought connection at a time that can feel steeped in disconnection. Seeing our tartan uniforms across social media and at our online school Anzac Day Service reminds us all of the power and importance of connection through commonality.
There is no doubt that 2020 will be marked by its historical and social significance – and it will reverberate throughout our lifetimes in unimagined ways. There can be no avoidance of the impact of a pandemic. We are learning lessons we never imagined that we would have to learn, and I am not speaking of our ‘Learning from Holme’ curriculum. In the midst of such a time, we are always drawn home, because, as writer, Jo Penn shared recently ‘this is what it comes down to when crisis hits. We want to know that we and our loved ones are safe at home.’ Similarly, from a Fairholme perspective, we also have a deep need to know that our community is safe. We want to be connected at and through our other ‘holme’. It does feel very good to be part of a community that values connection, a value that will serve us well as we step bravely, into a less certain future.
Spirituality is recognising and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives. Brene Brown
Lest we forget.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Gregoire, C. (2016). ‘The Surprising Benefit Of Going Through Hard Times.’ Huffington Post.
Penn, J. (2020). ‘Sanctuary, Retreat, Belonging. The Importance Of Home In Difficult Times’
This Is The Time To Be Slow...
2 April 2020
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
John O'Donohue from: To Bless the Space between Us: a book of blessings.
Our College feels strangely empty; there is a sense of disquiet with the absence of students. The quietness when one walks from place to place is disconcerting. We miss clusters of tartan, groups of girls, panamas, and …. I even admit that I wish there were yet another Tupperware container for me to collect and drop into lost property. We’re grieving the G Block crush, watching trios of Boarders amble to and from the day school or hearing the symphony of Junior School voices echo through the College’s spine each lunch time. Berinato (2020) tells us that we are experiencing anticipatory grief: ‘the feeling we get about what the future holds when we are uncertain – that loss of safety’. Girls and kindy boys, collectively we are missing you! You see, Fairholme is not immune from the effects of the Coronavirus either, nor has she been immune to school closures in the past for shorter and longer periods of time.
It’s eerie to note that it is almost exactly 101 years ago that Fairholme battened down in response to the outbreak of the Spanish Flu; yes, history does repeat itself. In Term 2 of 1919 Fairholme closed from 30 May to 5 July – an early holiday break. Colleges were closed by government proclamation, the winter holidays were cancelled, usurped by the period of school closure and the school term was completed upon the girls’ return. The Darling Downs Gazette of Saturday 5 July 1919 contained advertisements from Toowoomba schools, including one from Fairholme stating that school would reopen on 5 July 1919 with classes 'under Open Air conditions'. Perhaps the bracing winter winds were deemed a good tonic to whisk away any traces of the flu?
I admit to some nervousness when I read the history of this time at Fairholme. Domestic arrangements became unavoidably dislocated and the principal, Miss Carson (of Amy Carson Room fame), took on the added positions of cook and housekeeper to the Boarders in her care. Clearly, she was made of resilient stuff – in her principalship she administered Fairholme through two droughts and a war. So many generations of students have followed that time, beneficiaries of this strong and spirited demeanour, of the roots of palpable character steeped in the College’s fabric.
It is, however, encouraging to read that despite uncertainty and anxiety wrought by the influenza and that it ‘affected work to a certain extent’ – ‘all Fairholme residents managed to escape the scourge.’ A further note described the cancellation of all inter-school Tennis matches at that time. Tennis was Fairholme’s main sport, and no doubt those girls were as lost as our current girls have been as they have shouldered the disappointment of one cancellation after another. But life did resume after the closure, as did inter-school matches. It is recorded that, ‘owing to influenza the inter-school tennis matches were much delayed but the Glennie A Team visited us and after an exciting game, defeated us.’
Right now it feels very much like we are living in the immediate. We are bound by what we can’t do, rather than what we can do. Our connections have been rewired and we find ourselves in an endless holding pattern tinged by anticipatory grief. Importantly, ahead lies hope, a resumption of life’s patterns – the ones we have taken for granted for a lifetime it would seem, but the ones we will cherish a little more- a lot more - into the future. One hundred and one years ago, Fairholme closed for similar reasons, in a cloud of anxiety and uncertainty but she reopened, regrouped and regained her strength. So too will we – for a diversity of reasons. Our College foundation is its Christ-centred faith and our long mooted motto, ‘faith in her future’, seem to matter more right now than ever before.
And, in this whirl of anxiety, ambiguity and complexity that overlays each day, now is ‘the time to be slow’ because ‘time will come good’. Let us remain generous and hopeful as we await ‘the blush of beginning’ again, a little like our Fairholme sisters did, just over 101 years ago. This is the time to be slow.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Berinato, S. (2020). That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.
Darling Downs Gazette Wednesday 28 May 1919 p.5 ‘Closure of Schools’
O’Donohue, J. (2008). To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings. Random House: New York
The Things We Take For Granted
19 March 2020
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. Bertrand Russell
Yesterday, my 88 year old father went shopping in Sydney. He lost his list, and was overwhelmed by the crowds of people panic buying. He came home without milk, bread, A4 batteries and salad vegetables. When he called to share the experience, I sensed his tiredness and bewilderment. Yet again in my life, I felt such a long way away; impotent and ineffective. I couldn’t fix his situation from a distance and I so deeply wished that I could – a simple wish for the certainties at an uncertain time to be accessible to him.
Having been a young adolescent at the end of the Second World War he compared responses of the crowds then and now: ruing the difference between ordered rationing where everything was shared carefully and the frenzied hoarding mentality of our population. No, he can’t decipher the toilet paper fixation either. This morning he braved the crowds at his local Coles supermarket – the 7am rush, the one to support the elderly to access much needed food. I couldn’t explain to him why there wasn’t one can of baked beans on the shelf, nor why there wasn’t one onion to purchase. He did wryly note that he could have bought A4 batteries twice over. These matters defy logic. The things we’ve taken for granted aren’t in our reach – anymore.
In downtown Toowoomba, my local coffee haunt has made changes to its practice. It’s turned cashless overnight. After years of helping ourselves to bottled sparkling water from a tap on the counter, we’ve been told it’s a no-go zone. The pottery containers of cutlery and napkins are no longer housed on the wooden tables, and the cute bottles of demerara sugar have been replaced by individual CSR sugar sachets. They’ve moved to disposables and recyclables and are enforcing social distance expectations. For years, in true Japanese style, we’ve been clearing our table each morning after breakfast and taking glasses, cups and saucers into the kitchen – just as a gesture of thanks. That’s been stopped, too, and it feels different, oddly unsettling.
My sister, also in Sydney, has been working from home all week, skyping, zooming and teleconferencing; the trend is likely to continue for her and others, for the foreseeable future and beyond. My daughter, a teacher in Melbourne, has been through a whole-school closure and now is facing a week without students – she too is vacillating between working from school to home, as her school tries to find the right balance between care for staff (a number are sporting ‘end of term’ colds) and their students. It’s not an easy balance. For good measure, my son, who has just taken up a two-year visa in Glasgow has landed a job in hospitality. ‘At least I got to work one shift,’ he noted, drolly.
Yes, the things we have always taken for granted are elusive at the moment. Familiar things are strangely unfamiliar. I hope it is, as Bertrand Russell suggests, healthy to hang a question mark on all of the things we have taken for granted and somewhere, in that chaotic mix, find gratitude. I’m seeking it out, finding it in the resilience of our students who’ve had long-treasured events cancelled in a concertina of days. I’m finding it in teachers who are adapting practice, considering ways and means of maintaining engagement with their students on-line in differently defined classroom spaces and under very different circumstances. Yes, the things we’ve always taken for granted are elusive at this time; it is important to remember and celebrate the things that matter most – including my father, who bravely addresses such uncertainty with his shoulders squared, in strong Scottish resolve and who urges me on to do the same. I am grateful.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
Patience
5 March 2020
Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.
David G. Allen
I learned in my first few days as a parent that I needed to develop patience and quickly. Further, I also needed to accept, just as swiftly, that parental expectations are rarely achieved in a predictable order – if at all. No doubt my mother and my older sisters watched my struggle to recalibrate with interest. ‘Dummies are disgusting,’ I had professed with certainty long before children appeared on the scene.
Natalie, of course, came home from hospital chomping contentedly on a big pink dummy – I learned quickly to love the pacifying effect of a dummy, along with multiple lessons in humility. Of course, I simultaneously developed a rapid appreciation of my own parents and every other parent who had walked before me. I continue to find a plethora of opportunities to implement the wise adage of David G. Allen – after all, ‘it’s easy to judge until it’s our kid’ who is not meeting expectation (Bock, 2020), be that our expectation , or the aspersion casting of others.
Yes, we live in the voyeuristic world of social media where an opinion or judgement can be catapulted in cyberspace with the tap of a finger. A belief. An opinion. An observation. One tap and its gone, as if the words or thoughts we send at whim, no longer have value. But they do, of course. In a short but compelling article by Marybeth Bock, entitled ‘It’s Easy to Judge Until It’s Your Kid, Let’s Try Compassion’ (Bock, 2020) she reminds us that:
‘Every single high school and college student struggles with something.
No matter what their parent says, what they tell their friend, or what their
social media presence conveys. We all too often think we know the whole
story when we only know a small part of someone else’s entire truth.’
If you have never had the opportunity to read the short but beautifully phrased article, ‘Welcome to Holland’, penned in 1987 by American author and social activist, Emily Perl Kingsley – then take the time to do so. Kingsley wrote the piece in an effort to share her story about raising a child with a disability.
Using the analogy of boarding a plane on a much longed for and intricately planned for trip to Italy and finding oneself in Holland instead, Kingsley talks to us all about the need to accept deviations in the script, calmly. The article, though brief, is a poignant reminder about the dangers of predictive living; of our own self-concocted bars that we raise too high for any child to reach, and the importance of appreciating what we have, where we have it, and with whom we share that space. What’s more, it reinforces that we would all do well to accept the fact that things can and do happen in a different order from our personal forecasts; we do need to be patient.
A contrasting article by tennis great, Maria Sharapova, ‘Tennis—I’m Saying Goodbye’, sheds light on another version of patience. Maria traces her 28-year journey from four-year-old, to tennis retiree. She shares the metaphoric valleys and mountain tops that formed that journey. Specifically, she talks about her early years watching the tennis greats on court and on television and thinking that she would never be that good, that capable, of that standard.
‘My edge, though, was never about feeling superior to other players.
It was about feeling like I was on the verge of falling off a cliff—which is
why I constantly returned to the court to figure out how to keep climbing.’
Hers was a much focused patience; a constant building and rebuilding of skills in order to achieve a desired outcome: a waiting game where determination and patience were needed in bucket loads. No doubt she received some scathing feedback along the way from armchair critics and tennis experts.
We are quick to judge, quick to label, quick to make assumptions: far too quick. After all, things can and do occur in a different order than we plan, and our acceptance of that helps us to become patient: a virtue worth seeking out, often. It really is OK to bring your daughter home from hospital chomping contentedly on a pink dummy – even if you have to readjust your assumptions on the run, in order to do so…
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Bock, M. (2020). ‘It’s Easy to Judge Until It’s Your Kid, Let’s Try Compassion’
Kingsley, E. (1987). ‘Welcome to Holland’
Sharapova, M. (2020) ‘Tennis, I’m Saying Goodbye.’ Vanity Fair, 26 February 2020.
The Great Technology Dichotomy 20 February 2020
The Great Technology Dichotomy
20 February 2020
I’m committed to less screen time in 2020 – particularly before I close my eyes at night, as I search for quality sleep. My mobile phone is well out of reach and with it, emails, text messages and the temptation to google something of ‘vital’ importance. I’ve got a cluster of novels on the bedside table and I’m reading from a book each night with pages that I can turn; my kindle is reserved for plane flights and travel. I am self-regulating; a skill we seek to support our girls to learn in all facets of school life and in life itself. Yes, the landline still operates too, if someone needs to contact me and, from a purely qualitative research perspective, it’s making a difference. Yet, on waking, I can utter the words, ‘OK Google Good Morning’ and an automated voice gives me a rundown on the news headlines and the day’s weather forecast: the great technology dichotomy. We curse it, we need it, we want it and we are all addicted - some more than others.
A colleague passed on a recent article in The Weekend Australian entitled ‘Heads Up’ – which draws from the insights of a Silicon Valley insider, Tristan Harris. Harris is in a position to give us a heads up. As a former Google insider, Harris has knowledge and context – his opinion has weight, so much so that ‘he has briefed world leaders; is a confidant of some of the most powerful figures in the technology industry and has testified to the US Congress. His two TED Talks have more than 4 million views’ (Hoyle, 2020). From Tristan Harris’s vantage point, the 2.7 billion of us who rely daily upon our smartphone for a plethora of functions, are at the marketing mercy of technology companies. In his words, these companies follow our every click and ‘know us better than we know ourselves.’ He predicts a point when technology will subsume the strengths of humans and where artificial intelligence will be greater than the real [human] deal.
I suspect that my father read the same article. He is convinced that technology is evil and the product of the devil. He often brings up in conversation, ‘if it weren’t for the internet, or Facebook or …’ his sentence is never finished. Since he lives in Sydney and I am often away from my desk when he calls, we find ourselves having this conversation whilst one of us is using a mobile phone. Often, he has just checked his tee-off time at the golf club, or his emails, or the news … before phoning me. He fails to see the irony of his words, nor his own level of dependence. Is technology evil? The way we use it can be. It can be damaging, cruel, illegal or obsessive. The way we use it can lead to the loss of jobs, the loss of friends or the loss of self. Tristan Harris predicts much worse.
In 2018, children were deemed to be living in a world with more mobile devices than people, and where 20% of Australian eight year olds owned a smart phone (Michael Carr-Gregg, 2018). Connection beckons, just like it does for your daughter. Our girls are part of a generation of the most vulnerable women in history according to Carr-Gregg (2018). They crave to be close to their parents but are inextricably bound by their friends. In an era where wellbeing is understandably a sharpened focus, social connection, or the lack of it, is considered a social determinant of health. Yet a nationwide survey conducted by American Health insurer Cigna, across all age groups found, unsurprisingly, that respondents who have experienced more in-person social interactions on a daily basis reported being less lonely (Chatterjee, 2018). Being connected in real time and with real people is good for our health.
Whilst technological devices also have the ability to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost, according to researchers Ward, Duke, Gneezy and Bos (2017). In a research project focused on smartphone users, they tested ‘the “brain drain” hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may undercut cognitive performance.’ Their results, from two separate experiments, indicate that even when people intentionally gave attention to tasks not involving their mobile phones, that ‘the mere presence of these devices reduced available cognitive capacity - significantly.’ Similarly, Murphy and Beland (2015) conducted a study into the impact that banning mobile phones had on student test scores. They found both an improvement in student achievement, and that low-achieving and at-risk students gained the most.
Hanging at the back of doors in every Senior School classroom are holders for phones – they are to isolate distraction by phone from cognitive function; they are addressing addiction. They are to aid student self-regulation. Self-regulation and self-respect are topics that require our attention. Over-engagement with technology reduces cognitive function; when utilised to malign self or others it can cause irreparable damage, and when over-utilised it is at the detriment of normal social activity. So what can we collectively do, as the lead adults in the world of these young women, to give them less stress and more time for the interactions that allow for social connection - face to face? Punish them for phone use? Model good habits ourselves? Promote self-regulation? The latter two suggestions would traditionally show a lasting positive effect in any behavioural change. Certainly, your support in not expecting text correspondence during school hours is another way to assist. Any emergency call can always be fielded through the main administration office.
In the same way that we wear seat belts even though most won’t be in a car accident, intentional restrictions in technological use are a preventative measure. In a small way, my own deliberate placement of iPhone at night is my choice to reduce addiction; it is my choice to improve the quality of my sleep and, according to Tristan Harris; it is also one action to reduce the dehumanising effects of the rise of artificial intelligence. Perhaps I need to stop saying ‘Good morning’ to Google, too: such is the great dichotomy of the technological age which we inhabit.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Carr-Gregg, M. 2018. ‘The Impact of Technology on Young People.’ Presentation at The Alliance of Girls Schools Conference. Adelaide. May 7. 2018.
Chatterjee, R. 2018. ‘Americans Are A Lonely Lot, And Young People Bear The Heaviest Burden’
Chein, J, Wilmer, H and Sherman, L. (2017). ‘Smartphones and Cognition: A Review of Research Exploring the Links between Mobile Technology Habits and Cognitive Functioning’. Frontiers in Psychology. 8. 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00605.
Hoyle, B. ‘Heads Up’ The Weekend Australian. January 18 - 19 2020.
Murphy, R., and Beland, L.P. (2015). How smart is it to allow students to use mobile phones at school? ‘The Conversation’. May 12, 2015 7.58pm
Ward, A., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., and Bos, M. (2017). ‘Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.’ Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. 2. 000-000. 10.1086/691462.
I Choose To Do This Because It Is Hard
6 February 2020
I think it was in 2006 that I heard Olympic Hockey player Nikki Hudson speak. In describing her journey to become an Olympian it was evident that her own narrative of achievement was, like so many others, built upon challenge, setback and perseverance. This was exemplified in her recount of training on wintry mornings in Toowoomba when westerly winds can slice through the greatest resolve with ease. Her mantra, as she laced up her sandshoes in the darkness of early morning was, ‘I choose to do this because it is hard, not because it is easy.’ Somehow that image has stayed with me. I can somehow still picture Nikki as a young athlete, donning her sandshoes on a frigid Toowoomba morning – before sunlight, in readiness for her own training regime – her extra. Her steadfastness is palpable. Her choice to do the hard thing over the easy no doubt provided the platform for her success: perhaps it was enough of a point of difference from other elite athletes vying for Olympic selection.
But, her words aren’t unique. They can be linked to President John F. Kennedy who said, in relation to the decision to place a man on the moon, ‘We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.’ Irrespective of the source, I love those words, and I love that they have found resonance with many Fairholme girls; resonance because the sentiment has alignment with their values and those of their families.
When Tessa Pruim (Senior 2017) addressed the Commencement Assembly on Wednesday she shared her parents’ reasons for sending her to Fairholme as a Year 9 Boarder from West End in Brisbane: not our usual catchment. Both Tessa’s parents had studied at university with Fairholme girls. They saw them as ‘sensible no nonsense girls’ and wanted the same grounded worldview for Tessa. Tessa is about to enter her third year at the University of Melbourne where she is completing a major in Medieval History. In her words, ‘after four years at Fairholme and two years out of it, those qualities have enabled me to get where I am today.’ She too alluded to the importance of Nikki Hudson’s mantra in negotiating the challenges of leaving home, moving interstate, renegotiating her degree and, just recently, moving off-residence into a flat. What a privilege it is whenever one of our recent graduates comes ‘holme’ and we can share their distance travelled and marvel at their personal growth.
For many of our new faces at Fairholme, this week has had hard moments, and no doubt the challenges that have emerged have been a heady mixture of the expected and the unexpected. Big change brings with it a mixture of exhilaration and fear, and most of us move along the continuum between those two points, eventually settling at a place of comfort. At times, this requires a focused intention to persevere, rather than an innate ability to do so – although we can learn to push through that which is difficult and, when we do, it holds us in good stead for life. We need courage to do the hard thing – whatever that hard thing is. Bob Cunningham (Former Head of School at the Robert Louis Stevenson School in New York) reminds us that where our children sit on that continuum will be influenced by our responses as parents. He says, ‘I’ve always observed that kids can feed off of parents’ anxiety. Do your best to be calm and routine when preparing for back to school. Don’t make a big deal out of it.’ And although we are already back at school, the advice is relevant to a whole diversity of contexts – as parents, we need to be aware of our own responses to new or difficult situations and how they impact on our children who watch us, observe our actions, and often feed them back to us with mirror accuracy.
The year ahead holds great promise. There will be challenges to negotiate, and successes that have any meaning will be gained through meeting those challenges with courage. Before we fixate too much on mitigating against or totally eliminating anxiety or stress from our lives, or those of our children, it’s also appropriate to remember that ‘anxiety is functional – we need an amount of stress to motivate us to act, or to enhance our performance. It is [also] a normal response to something complicated or scary (Carr-Gregg, 2014, p.150).’ Thus, let us embrace that which is difficult, rather than always seeking out that which is easy – we all know that the greatest growth occurs following the greatest challenge. Let us also allow our children to manage that difficult space because, as Carr-Gregg reminds us, if we ‘really want them to succeed, [we have to] learn when to leave them alone.’
Here’s to the moon, and the achievement of that which may seem an impossible dream! We look forward to walking with your daughters, and sons, as they do so throughout the year ahead.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
References
Carr-Gregg, M. (2004) ‘Strictly Parenting. Everything you need to know about raising school-aged kids’. Penguin Random House. Australia.
The Understood team. ‘How Can I Get My Young Child Less Anxious About Starting School?’
Fairholme In January 2020
21 January 2020
We are meant to keep focused for new life, for new beginnings, for new experiences, and to use our abilities to move beyond all those things that may serve as excuses toconfine us to the now. - Byron Pulsifer
Dear Members of the Fairholme Family
Welcome to 2020 at Fairholme. We look forward optimistically towards a challenging, exciting and enjoyable year of learning and welcome our whole community to engage with us in the year that lies ahead. I acknowledge the difficult circumstances that confront so many affected by on-going drought, and the added complexities of the fires that have ravaged our southern states during the past months. We continue to pray for effective rainfall and relief from that relentless blue, or orange sky, and trust that we can continue to support our families in dire need. I hesitate to celebrate the recent rains too enthusiastically, knowing that the distribution is invariably fickle - but what a joy it has been to see and hear rain in recent days in Toowoomba.
I especially welcome all new students and families who are beginning their Fairholme journey. I know that many girls have been preparing for this new chapter in their education with great anticipation, and we too are excited to welcome an influx of students, including our largest Year 7 cohort - ever. May the year ahead be rich in its challenges and also in its rewards. Our teaching and boarding staff look forward to working with you and your child/ren throughout the year, they too share the excitement and anticipation that are hallmarks of new beginnings. I encourage you to engage in social opportunities as they arise. Community connection was an area identified strongly through our strategic planning consultation in 2018 and we continue to make this a focus at Fairholme.
As the beginning of the school year beckons, I ask that you keep a close look at the College web site or phone app for start-up information, or to contact the administration office (07) 4688 4688 should you have any further queries.
BUILDING
As is typical of the holiday period, significant refurbishment and upgrades to buildings and grounds have occurred. Whilst the quality of teaching, learning and pastoral care will always be sited first in our school context, we are also grateful for spaces and areas that enhance learning and living for our students and our staff. The following spaces may directly affect your daughter or you: the internal walls of the Fairholme gymnasium have been painted; a new Sports and Physical Education staff room has been created opposite the Swim coaches’ office and a Physical Education classroom has been built where the Sports’ Office was previously housed. The Homestead exterior has been painted and now mirrors the heritage colours of the Performing Arts Building, as well, the bathrooms in the Health Centre have been refurbished.
Grateful thanks are extended to our maintenance staff who have been pivotal in many of these projects, along with attending to their regular maintenance and tending the gardens throughout the drought conditions. We are always appreciative to all involved in the processes of rebuilding, refurbishment and construction. In schools so much work is completed over such a short time frame and at Fairholme this simply could not occur without the commitment and skill of our maintenance staff whose painting, construction and (de)construction skills are exceptional.
CONGRATULATIONS
If you have accessed our website you may have already noted the strong academic achievements of the senior cohort of 2019. Whilst we will acknowledge these girls more formally at the Commencement Assembly and Induction of Leaders on Wednesday 29 January, we express our pride in their accomplishments, as well as appreciation of the work of our teachers and families who have journeyed with these young women. Our 2019 seniors have diverse and significant opportunities that lie ahead and we are excited by their promising futures. We have watched the release of university offers with great interest.
We also extend congratulations to Layn Arnold (Year 10 2020) for gaining a bronze medal in Triple Jump at the All Australian Athletics Championships in December with an outstanding series of jumps. To compete at this national arena is an exceptional achievement; it is also testimony to the fine work of our Athletics coaches and we also acknowledge their commitment to the program throughout 2019. We look forward to a strong 2020 program, particularly with Athletics Coach, Ms Kirsten Murry taken up the full time role of Co-ordinator of Sport Performance.
Dr Linda Evans | Principal
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CRICOS Provider Code: 03726D
Fairholme College is proudly a college of the
Presbyterian Church of Queensland