Community Sharepoint
Our Catholic Faith handbook for families
Anita Heiss Reads Bidhi Galing
An online literacy event for all families to celebrate Indigenous Literacy Day Wednesday 4 September 7pm – 7.30pm
Indigenous Literacy Day is held on the first Wednesday of September and is an annual celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ Stories, Cultures and Languages (find out more here: (https://www.indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au/ild). To celebrate this year, the Council of Catholic School Parents NSW/ACT’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee has organised a wonderful online evening event open to all families in our schools.
We are delighted that Aboriginal Australian author Anita Heiss will read her book Bidhi Galing. Dr Anita Heiss AM is a proud member of the Wiradyuri nation of central New South Wales and one of Australia's most prolific and well-known authors, publishing across genres, including nonfiction, historical fiction, commercial fiction, and children's fiction.
Her book Bidhi Galing (Big Rain) tells the story of the Great Flood of Gundagai in 1852 and the Wiradyuri heroes Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who paddled bark canoes through raging floodwaters, risking their lives to save countless others. Primary school students aged 7–12 – and their families! – will love this story and the beautiful book illustrations. It’s a chance to sit down together and enjoy a nice, quiet time listening and reading, which is a wonderful way to support children’s literacy skills at home.
Go to the Council of Catholic School Parents NSW/ACT website to REGISTER or complete the form here: https://ccsp.schoolzineplus.com/form/63.
Or use the QR code:
Invitation to ‘A Bluey Perspective’
Parents and carers are invited to attend a free event with ‘Bluey’ creator Joe Brumm at Merici College on Wednesday, 11 September.
The event aims to bring families together to listen to Joe talk about why he thinks Bluey has been such a success and the important role parents play in their child’s learning and development.
Partners in Parenting: Education (PiP-Ed)
Pip-Ed is a new, updated version of the award-winning, evidence-based parenting program, ‘Partners in Parenting’, offered to parents and carers of teenagers aged 12-18 who are refusing school due to anxiety or depression, reside in Australia, are fluent in English and have regular internet access.
The program is not recommended as a sole source of support for young people experiencing school refusal.
Although all parents can take part, the program content is not tailored for parents of teenagers living with Autism Spectrum Disorder or intellectual disability.
Link: https://pip-ed.web.app/
Book Recommendation - The Anxious Generation
The following book by Jonathan Haidt has been recently recommended.
The Anxious Generation is an urgent and insightful investigation into the collapse in youth mental health from the influential social psychologist and international bestselling author.
Jonathan Haidt has spent his career speaking truth and wisdom in some of the most difficult spaces – communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the mental health emergency hitting teenagers today in many countries around the world.
In The Anxious Generation, Haidt shows how, between 2010 and 2015, childhood and adolescence got rewired. As teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared, including time spent comparing oneself to a vast pool of others. Time engaging face-to-face with friends and family plummeted, and so did mental health.
But this is not just a story about technology; this profound shift took place against a backdrop of declining childhood freedom and free-play, as parents over-supervised every aspect of their children’s lives offline, depriving them of the experiences they most need to become strong and self-governing adults.
In this book, Haidt makes a compelling argument that the loss of play-based childhood and its replacement with a phone-based childhood that is not suitable for human development is the source of increased mental distress among teenagers. The Anxious Generation delves into the latest psychological and biological research to show the four fundamental ways in which a phone-based childhood disrupts development – sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation and addiction. Haidt offers separate in-depth analyses of what has happened to girls, and what has happened to boys, offering practical advice for parents, schools, governments, and teens themselves. Drawing on ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research, this eye-opening book is a life raft and a powerful call-to-arms.