School News & Total Education Blog

May 9, 2015

The Year 12 presentation to the combined parent meeting last Friday night was on the topic Risk Taking. The students worked in pairs and provided humorous but thoughtful insights into why they might take risks and the upsides and downsides to the behaviour. I often feel that the talks themselves...

April 28, 2015

Michael Leunig recently spoke at an education conference in Brisbane on spirituality in education. A very humble man, he made some beautiful but very real statements that are worthy of sharing. One was a reference to Arthur Boyd's description of spirituality as 'the felt life', which had a ring of...

April 23, 2015

"Why is the idea that the pursuit of self-centred happiness will lead to contentment so adhesive? I wake up every day newly baptised into the cult of individualism. I wish I was more like my mum or my nan, who find joy in nourishing others". So writes Russell Brand...

November 10, 2014

My son recently sent me a link showing celebrity endorsement of the Quiet Time concept in schools in the USA. I want to share with others because it is exciting to see mainstream schools taking up the idea that there is deep value in quietness. I...

August 26, 2014

Today I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Jan Gudkovs, a psychologist from Warwick, to Independent Schools Queensland’s School Wellbeing Workshop in Brisbane. Jan had been invited to talk to this group by Jenene Rosser, ISQ’s person responsible for helping Independent Schools in Queensland...

July 29, 2014

Recently I have been reading Carl Jung’s “Psychology and Education”. The first part of the book is a detailed case study of a particularly intelligent young child and her intense curiosity as to where babies come from. Jung describes the trauma the subject suffers and how...

March 28, 2014

In the previous post I talked about the recent presentation at the University of Southern Queensland by Robert Randall, the CEO of ACARA — the body charged with delivering the Australian Curriculum and NAPLAN. The second notable point from Robert’s talk was his statement that ACARA...

November 26, 2013

Graduation at any school is a special time and The School of Total Education is no exception. The family-friendly culture and the small class sizes at the school mean that the graduation ceremonies have an intimate atmosphere. Practically all the parents and children in the...

September 21, 2013

Recently we had a visit to the school from Lizzie Wagner, a consultant and presenter in the field of personal development and presentation. One of our parents had worked with Lizzie and created the opportunity for her to do a presentation to our secondary students while...