It has been a week full of opportunities to catch up with parents – be it at Coffee, Cake and Conversation, the Book Week Parade, the Year 7 2016 Information Night or at the Wednesday Breakfast for current Year 7 parents. I am so grateful to families for the ways in which they work with us to support the girls and create the wonderful sense of community that we enjoy at Lowther Hall. We have also had a very positive response to our parent survey with a higher response rate from parents than Independent Schools Victoria usually see. Thank you for supporting us in this important feedback process.

​As usual there has been a great deal happening this week. On the property front, renovations are well underway at the back of the Mansion to create a new reflection space and an office for our Chaplain – a project supported by the fundraising which happened at our 2014 Twilight Festival.

Thank you to parent Mrs Lucy Allison who sent this beautiful photo of a rainbow above the mansion which she took this week. It is a reminder that it is always worth stopping to look around us so that we can see the beauty in the world.

Term 3 has started with a very positive energy across all areas of the School. In our whole school assembly yesterday, we noted that we were witnessing history as new images of Pluto were being sent to Earth via the NASA probe and I asked the girls to consider what we might learn from this ambitious space mission that could apply to their school context.

A strategy that we encourage the girls to use in order to promote feelings of positive well-being, is to focus on things they are grateful for. The simple practice of stopping each day to identify moments that have gone well or to celebrate interactions or activities that have made us feel good can contribute to an overall feeling of happiness and build our satisfaction with life.

This week I have been reflecting on the incredible capacity of our girls to become resilient beings. We are fortunate to live in a world where much of the time it is easy to be comfortable - we adjust temperature to 'just right' with the simple flick of an air conditioning switch, we can fly between continents in just a few hours, we can buy whatever we need on-line or in store, but the reality is that to be well equipped for life and its inevitable bumps, to be able to thrive in relationships and to flourish in the world of work, we need to build the capacity to navigate discomfort.

​Despite the cold weather, there has been plenty to celebrate this week at School – from the wonderful performances of the VCE Music students at their recital last night, to the impressive spelling efforts of the Junior School girls last week at the House Spelling Bee!