Dear Parents
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU COMMEMORATION TALK
I wish to thank the Parents’ Association for organising last week’s talk by Revd Edwin Arrison of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, on the life of Desmond Tutu. He had known the Arch, as he is affectionately known, for many years and had been ordained by him. His talk was inspiring and his insights and anecdotes further described a man of great humility, a deeply spiritual man and a passionate South African. We were each challenged to make a difference, however small, in our areas of influence.
PRESENTATIONS ON SEX EDUCATION
Our psychologist, Laura Cook, has organised separate presentations for Prep and Pre-Prep parents by psychologist Ilze Alberts, entitled “How and when to tell your kids about the birds and the bees”. Further details are included further on in the newsletter. Please do make an effort to attend.
While the school does include age appropriate sex education in the Life Orientation programme, it is important that you are involved in this process too. If adults are not speaking to young people about this aspect of life, they learn everything from their peers, information that is often based on ignorance and derived from inappropriate sources. Ilze will give pertinent advice on the “how, what and when”.
245 CHALLENGE
The Prep and Pre-Prep were each challenged to bring a sandwich on Tuesday the 24th, totalling at least 245 from each campus. We challenged our boys to not be limited by that total. In the end we provided close to 2 000 together – a wonderful tribute to Rohan Bloom’s life and reaching out to those who are deprived of so much of what are the basic necessities of life. Angels, the organisation doing the collating and distributing, had to send an extra car as they were unprepared for the volume of our donation.
A huge thank you to you all for your support and to the parents who did the collection at each of our entrances. Boys who had forgotten were so apologetic, some even giving a sandwich from their own lunchboxes. A special way to observe this week's Africa Day - showing care for others in our community - but also reminding us of the levels of poverty in our country and the responsibility that everyone has to to do something to improve our society.
Rod Bloom popped in later in the afternoon, thanking us profusely for our response and saying that it was a special way for Rohan to be remembered on his birthday for the family and the Bishops community. Rohan’s brother is in Grade 9 at the College, so the Bloom family remain closely connected to Bishops.
When we promoted this collection to the boys at Assembly, I used the quote from Mother Theresa:
“We cannot do great things on this earth.
We can only do small things with great love.”
Enjoy your weekend.
Kind regards
GREG BROWN
HEADMASTER |
