“Resilience is key to addressing mental health issues. We need to allow our kids to experience adversity. There is a tendency to shield our kids because parents have become a bit over-protective.”
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

At St Catherine’s we seek to instil bold, resilient, independent and creative dispositions through student academic care. Resilience underpins the other three dispositions, enabling independence, courage and creativity to flourish. Resilience is essential to mental health and wellbeing and a crucial part of a child’s journey to adulthood. It is a skill that can be learned from an early age through the support of an adult role model. Being resilient does not preclude experiencing difficulties; on the contrary, experiencing challenge and adversity can foster and reinforce resilience and better equip young people to manage those situations as they arise.

This year, St Catherine’s has partnered with The Resilience Project and will be implementing tailored lessons from Prep to Year 6 and a targeted Year 9 program as part of our weThrive:Wellbeing@St Catherine’s program. Additionally, Years 3 to 12 students will complete the Resilient Youth Australia student survey commencing on 21 March. Resilient Youth Australia has surveyed more than 350,000 Australian school students aged between eight and 18 over recent years. The survey is voluntary and anonymous and collects the self-reported resilience and wellbeing of students, providing valuable information to assist us to maintain a positive culture of wellbeing and resilience. Please notify the class teacher or Head of Year if you have queries about the survey, or would prefer that your daughter does not participate.

Featured on our weThrive Wellbeing Platform for Parents this week is the Resilience edition of SchoolTV. This edition contains a range of videos offering practical advice for parents to support their child to adapt and build resilience. Hugh van Cuylenburg, the founder of The Resilience Project appears in this edition, along with a range of other professionals. Archived parent resources for a range of topics can be found on the Parent Wellbeing Platform Portal page.