We all learn from experience and it is evident that some students are feeling under pressure with the volumes of work, and short deadlines on top of the unstructured day. Our Easter Midterm begins next Friday April 3rd for two weeks and teachers will be asked to limit the work given to students in that period. This is to give everyone, including you, a chance to catch breath and catch up!
Last night parents received a text from me directing them to HSE & NEPS resources to help them support their son in light of two recent tragedies in the New Ross area. This morning every student received an email to their GCC email account to offer reassurance around exams, online engagement, subject choices, HSE advice around Covid 19 and the same NEPS/HSE advice that you were made aware of last night. It is a time for us all to mindful of each other. Please check in, following HSE guidelines, with each other in our own homes but also with vulnerable and lonely family members and neighbours.
We invited Colman Noctor, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, to speak to Parents here on two ocassions in the past and he was super. His book ‘Cop On‘ is a wonderfully simple common sense approach to dealing with the questions he most commonly gets asked. One of his key messages is that we need to give our children a real ‘sense of perspective‘ and the most important part of that is recognising ‘that it is not the event but the reaction to the event that matters’. In these unusual times it is our reaction, old and young alike, that matters, so let us all listen to the advice of the HSE, look after our loved ones, do our best with our studies/work and let others manage the things we can not control.
Stay safe and hopefully we will all be back in the College on April 20th.
