Pastoral Care

Building a Partnership Between School and Family for Your Teen’s Success

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The impact of school absences, even seemingly small ones, can accumulate and affect a teen's learning significantly. If your child is expressing reluctance going to school regularly, it's essential to address the issue promptly.

Secondary school students who refuse to go to school may show some of the following behaviours:

• frequent unexplained/unjustified absences
• avoiding school events
• frequent lateness and/or partial attendance
• absences on significant days e.g. PDHPE, exams
• frequent requests to go to the sick bay

What is your teen’s pattern of absenteeism?

Vaping
Vaping is on the rise in Australia and has become popular amongst teenagers and young adults. Alarmingly, studies have also shown that there is an increase in the number of primary school-aged children who are experimenting with vapes. There are many misconceptions about vapes being fairly harmless and that vapes in Australia do not contain nicotine.

St Paul's College is committed to the health and wellbeing of our students and will be including a series of informative resources for our parent/carer community over the next four editions of our newsletter. We hope parents and carers use these helpful resources to:

  • learn the facts about e-cigarettes and vaping
  • recognise what a vape looks like
  • understand why vaping is attractive to young people and
  • engage in positive conversations at home.

By working in partnership we hope to support our young people to make healthy choices.

Please watch this informative 2 minute video which provides some key information about vaping and e-cigarettes.


Key Information
Vaping is the act of smoking e-cigarettes or ‘vapes’ that can look like metallic pens, USBs and other hand-held systems. Vapes use cartridges filled with liquids, which typically contain nicotine, artificial flavouring, and various chemicals. These can be harmful to the developing body. Research shows that 1 in 5 young people have vaped and nearly 80% of young people say it is easy to get a vape illegally at a shop or online.

Nicotine is especially addictive for young brains. It can cause long-lasting negative effects on brain development and can include impaired attention, learning, memory and changes in mood.

More can be found out about vaping from NSW Health.

Conversation Starters at Home
Start conversations about vaping with your child early. You could consider the following questions or conversation starters:

  • Are a lot of kids vaping at your school? Are your friends vaping? Be sure you don’t react, just listen.
  • What do you think about vaping? You may hear your child say that vaping is harmless. It’s important to share some good information with your child about the impacts of vaping.
  • Do you know what is in vapes? Share with them that they’ve tested vapes and they do not contain only water vapor and flavouring. Vapes can contain very high levels of nicotine and other toxic chemicals that damage lungs.



Mrs Krystal Brady - Leader of Pastoral Care

krystal.brady@lism.catholic.edu.au