Friday 22nd January 2021
Outside the Box A newsletter helping the Box Hill School community stay together, stay informed and stay happy.
“Great Minds Don’t Think Alike”
The start of the Spring Term Welcome back! Outside the Box was started during the first national lockdown last year as a way for the Box Hill School community to stay connected while we were apart. Now that we find ourselves in lockdown once more, we have returned to help keep our community strong.
Daily Wellbeing Tasks Take time today to be with family/friends – dinner or Zoom meeting. Do something active – it does not matter what. Get the heart pumping. Start learning a new skill! Give something to someone else. Be attentive to the present – breathe, eat, exercise mindfully
While the Christmas break may have looked a little different to what was originally planned, we hope that you did all have a good break. Despite the challenging circumstances, we hope that you had a rest, had some fun and caught up with friends and family on the array of technology we are all now so used to using. Despite expecting a physical return to school, staff and pupils alike, have readily adapted to remote learning once more. Alongside the virtual lessons this term, activities are continuing, as well as tutor periods, registrations, virtual break times and competitions. We are still very much the School community, just in the cloud! This means that all of the usual pastoral structures remain in place; your child is very much at the very centre of everything we do. The School, as a community, will do all that we can to ensure the wellbeing of those in our care. As the saying goes, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if support is needed.
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Wellbeing …is about maintaining a healthy mind. Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness though. We all have mental health just as we all have physical health and so wellbeing relates to a goal of achieving and maintaining a state where one can: ▪ make the most of one’s potential ▪ cope with life ▪ play a full part in life with family, workplace, community and among friends.
Useful Resources There is a huge amount out there to provide support for those who need it. Have a look at some of the websites listed below and throughout this newsletter. Further on there are recorded meditations as well as exercises to help with Wellbeing and Positive thoughts.
There are plenty of charities working to drive forward the focus on positive mental health and wellbeing. Action for Happiness promote monthly calendars to help people work towards positive goals. Students across all age groups have been focusing on these areas in PSHEE lessons so far this term https://www.actionforhappiness.org/ It has been lovely to see in PSHEE lessons over the last week the number of positives that our students could draw on in their lives during the current lockdown. These positive that they identified ranged from Man United being top of the Premier League table, to the dog walks in the sunshine as well as completing their favourite computer game. We have also asked students to concentrate on 7 things that they felt they could focus on over the next week, following the lines of the Action for Happiness calendar. Their ideas have included things like spending more time with family, starting a new book, having a cup of tea and no screen time outside of work. We have been very impressed with the resilience that our students are showing during these difficult times. At the beginning of term, Miss McCarthy launched ‘Time to Talk Day 2021’. It is important to remember that small acts can equate to big steps along the road to positive mental health. This message is going to be continually reiterated to students through PSHEE lessons and tutor times. We hope that on 4th February on ‘Time to Talk Day’ that students reach out to friends and family and start those small conversations. Pre-covid, every year saw a programme of parent lectures held for the School community. In the absence of this, we have been working with the McLellan Practice and Dr Charlie Easmon to bring you a pre-record about Mental Health and Lockdown. Dr Easmon covers many areas of Mental Health and you may feel that not all are applicable or appropriate for your child particularly if they are in the younger year groups at School. We would suggest that parents watch it first and then share with their children as they feel appropriate. Mental Health in Lockdown – Dr Charlie Easmon: https://youtu.be/3pTQmmGGNS8
During these uncertain and at times overwhelming periods, it is easy to think that we are alone and there is no one to turn to. This is not the case and there is a wealth of support out there for parents, carers and students alike. There is some fantastic information and links to wider support in the article ‘Where can your child get mental health support online during lockdown?’ from CEOP and Parent Zone: https://parentinfo.org/article/where-can-your-child-get-mental-health-supportonline-during-lockdown
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e-safety With the increasing importance of screen usage, the Pastoral Team have put together some useful information and links for online safety. Technology has very much become part of everyday life and while there are so many positives to take from it, our young people also need to be aware of the risks involved as well. CEOP directly works to help protect young people online and they have grouped the risks into 4 main categories: Conduct, Content, Contact and Commercialism. Our young people can be bombarded with information from the internet and both teachers and parents/carers alike need to ensure that our young people are able to distinguish the positives from the negatives. Childnet have produced the below resources to provide parents/carers with information and advice for their young people. https://www.childnet.com/ufiles/Supporting-YoungPeople-Online.pdf The resource is also translated into several other languages through the link below as well.
https://www.childnet.com/resources/supporting-youngpeople-online Better Internet for Kids has sites for all European countries:
https://www.betterinternetforkids.eu/sic There are a wealth of apps that have been created to help with communication and fitness as well as gaming and socialising. For our young people, there are new apps created weekly to help them socialise with friends and keep up with the latest trends. Quick test Can you name any of the 10 apps shown down the side of this page? There are some extras hidden in the image to the right as well. Answers in the next edition!
Useful Links www.internetmatters.org – A one-stop shop for all things “e-safety”, aimed at parents. Bookmark this website! www.childnet.com – Hugely useful and engaging website aimed more at young people themselves. www.ceop.police.uk – A Government-funded, Police website focused more on illegal online behaviours. such as cyber-bullying and grooming.
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Podcasts For the Mental Health Foundation ‘prevention is what at the heart’ of what they do. Their vision is good mental health for all and their mission to help people understand, protect and sustain their mental health. Their website provides a brilliant array of resources to help with this and they also produce some very good wellbeing podcasts as well. Dr David Peters presents a short podcast titled ‘Wellbeing and positive thinking’ which introduces positive thinking as a way of reducing anxiety and encouraging focus and goal setting. https://soundcloud.com/mentalhealthfoundation/wellbeing-and-positive Please find the link to the Mental Health Foundation web page below as well. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/
Contacts Sue Salmon, Deputy Head Pastoral
Susan.Salmon@boxhillschool.com
Claire McCarthy, Assistant Head Pastoral
Claire.McCarthy@boxhillschool.com
BOX HILL SCHOOL ‘HOLD STILL’ Photo Competition 2021
This term we have also launched the Box Hill ‘Hold Still’ Photo Competition that will run weekly throughout this current lockdown period and hopefully beyond. We have launched this to all year groups as well as the staff body to engage in some friendly competition as well as allow people to share photographs of ‘their new normal’. The entries this week have included:
5 Where in School would you find the places below? Answers in the next edition!
Credit: Mr Coates
And finally, we leave you with the following quote…
“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” – Amelia Earhart