Liquid Poison: Exposing the harms of binge drinking
Girl Mag Watch Girlfriend July 2013 Melinda Tankard Reist In my talks in schools around the country, I am told distressing stories of alcohol-related harm. Violence, sexual assault, damage to physical and mental health. My friend and colleague Paul Dillon, a drug educator with 25 years experience and founder of Drug and Alcohol Research and [...]
Girls Get A’s Then Get Surgery
I have a saying that my teaching colleagues will be able to appreciate. Interesting kids have very interesting parents. I spent the past two years resisting invitations from schools to give parent talks. My reasoning was that whilst after 15+ years teaching, I can speak with some authority with regards to working with school students, [...]
What Mountain Biking Taught Me About Achieving Goals
Last year, I took twenty Year 11 students on a mountain biking camp. We rode through the Stromlo Forest in Canberra by day, and camped in sub zero temperatures by night. It’s only in the last couple of months that I’ve really appreciated some of the analogies I could draw between by experiences mountain biking [...]
The Student Success Model
Over the past 10 years, the research company Gallup have surveyed over a million US students with regard to their strengths, levels of hope and engagement and their wellbeing. Gallup recently published their Student Success Model in which they described some of the wellbeing factors that impact on success. 1. Strengths identification remains as simple as [...]
How Engaged, Could Your Kids Be?
I believe that being genuinely engaged does wonders for your wellbeing. One of the determinants of engagement is a level of independence, or autonomy. Schools go to great lengths to give students (and teachers) the impression that they encourage independence. However, in the scheme of things, most of what occurs at school is prescribed for [...]
Girl Mag Watch Dolly June 2013
Only half the mag is worth reading Melinda Tankard Reist Readers wanting something of substance from Dolly’s June issue would do best to skip the first half and go straight to the second. Articles on self-harm, hate pages and unhealthy attitudes toward food redeem the insubstantial nature of the pages that go before. ‘Would you [...]
All about Suicides
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Why is ADHD an Aussie Issue?
In the US, at least 9% of schoolchildren are on medication for ADHD. In Australia it is estimated that 11% of children and adolescents fulfill the criteria for ADHD. In France the figure is .5%. As in POINT five. Half a percent. Why is this? Well, first of all the way in which French psychiatrists [...]
Girl Mag Watch – Real life stories that bring you to tears
Girlfriend June 2013 “Why are you crying mum?” “Because I’m reading Girlfriend”. An unexpected response, perhaps, from an (allegedly) grown woman. But a story in the latest issue did me in. ‘Real Life Stories’ – which I have always appreciated for giving space to the raw realities of so many girls lives – opens with [...]