Parents and Friends
The St Thomas School & Preschool Parents and Friends Association (P&F) actively promotes the interests of the school through various fund raising, social and other activities to enrich the school community.
We believe that involvement by parents and families within the school adds a wide range of benefits to the school students, teachers and families.
How you can be involved
The P&F plays a very important role in contributing to the smooth running of the school, development and review of school policy, help out at school events, provide direction for Parents with issues or concerns and highlight school and individual achievements that encourage confidence and recognition for individual and group activities.
All Parents are automatically members of the P&F.
We encourage anyone who has any ideas, suggestions, feedback, or know of someone who should be recognised for their achievements to come along to one of the meetings and help us build a stronger, closer community of parents, friend’s, teachers and students.
We know that all parents are busy with competing demands with time and availability to attend meetings, so twice a term the school has a coffee and chat time in the staff room with leadership -this is a great opportunity to ask questions or raise opinions about school activities, fundraising for St Thomas School and Preschool, social events and ideas to enhance the school community.
Parenting Workshop
The Cluster Schools (St. Thomas, St. Therese and St. Joseph’s) held a Parent Workshop presented by Bill Hansberry co-author of “Raising Beaut Kids” (Recipes for parents on when to say ‘yes’ and how to say ‘no’).
A little information about the workshop:
So what is this thing called resilience? It must be important because the experts seem to be talking a lot about it and how important it is to kids’ long term mental health and happiness.
- How do I make sure my kids develop emotional resilience?
- How can I teach them to see the bright side and bounce back when life throws a challenge at them?
- What is my child’s school doing to develop resilience and how can I partner with them to make my child more resilient?
- Is it normal for kids to be sad sometimes? Does this mean they will become depressed?
- Why is my 13 year old so negative about everything? Is she depressed already?
When we think about it, we remember that it’s the very nature of life to throw disappointments and setbacks at us from the moment we struggle down the birth canal to our very last breath. The painful truth for us all is that this of course also true for our children. It was once said that life is a contact sport. I think this is true! Trying to push every obstacle out of our kids’ way and eliminate every hardship kids’ live is exhausting and downright harmful to their emotional development. As tempting as it is!
Is there a sure fire list of things we can to do strengthen our kids’ resilience? Well, it depends who you talk to. What we can say confidently is that our kids watch us very carefully. Every day, every moment, we are modelling to our children how to react to, and how to think about life’s challenges and hiccups.