Children under 15 in out-of-home care in regional and remote NSW will receive specialised support through a new outreach program to manage their trauma. The new program, OurSPACE will focus on improving family relationships and strengthening the foster and kinship placements of young people in care, regardless of where they live in NSW and without [...]
Our lives can easily fill up with, well … life. When everything on our to-do lists feels both urgent and important, pleasure reading can seem a luxury. For many children and teens, as their lives get busier with new obligations and increasing distractions, the idea of curling up with a book can appear to be [...]
The transition from Year 11 to Year 12 can be challenging. The workload increases, expectations change and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. While some students find they are well prepared for the transition, other students can find it much more difficult. No matter how one finds the transition, looking back in hindsight, all students realise [...]
I started teaching in 2009. At that time, public school was very much the way I remembered it. That’s not the case anymore. Smartphones and social media have transformed students into creatures craving one thing: content. It’s a sad state of affairs. But there’s hope. Over the last few years, my students have become increasingly [...]
Mental health in your teens You’ve probably already noticed that there’s a lot going on in your teens. Your body is growing and changing. You might find that there are more expectations of you as you finish high school or start work. You have to learn how to navigate changing relationships with your parents, friends, [...]
Navigating life as a teenager can be hard, and when you need support, asking for it can be the biggest challenge. One tool - an app called MeeTwo - offers a way to seek help from behind a screen. It allows users to post questions anonymously and get answers from their peers and from undergraduate [...]
Viewing the younger generation as either trouble or troubled is nothing new. In the 4th century BC even the usually open-minded Plato clutched his proverbial pearls in despair, “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild [...]
In societies the world over, teenagers are blamed for staying up late, then struggling to wake up in the morning. While it’s true that plenty of teenagers (like many adults) do have bad bedtime habits, researchers have long since proven that this global problem has a biological cause. In 2004, researchers at the University of [...]
Sleep supposedly refreshes and recharges our exhausted bodies. Holidays likewise have the same effect. Why then, after a long summer holiday, are teachers and parents seeing many teenagers returning to school in an exhausted and sleep deprived state? Why, also, do they seem, paradoxically, to be most sleepy first thing in the mornings, and over [...]
When it comes to teens getting enough sleep, numerous forces are working against them. Early school start times are wreaking havoc on their circadian rhythms. An overload of after-school activities is turning bedtime into gotta-start-on-homework time. The buzz of texts from friends, the screens shining in their faces and the constant lure of just one [...]
