Thank you to parent Mrs Lucy Allison who sent this beautiful photo of a rainbow above the mansion which she took this week. It is a reminder that it is always worth stopping to look around us so that we can see the beauty in the world.

You may have seen the Japanese flag flying at the front of the School this week in honour of the 18 girls and 2 staff we have visiting from our sister school, Shin-Ai, in Osaka.

If you visit the School’s website this week you will see a welcome video which has been created to give visitors to our site an overview of some of the offerings at Lowther Hall.

Term 3 has started with a very positive energy across all areas of the School. In our whole school assembly yesterday, we noted that we were witnessing history as new images of Pluto were being sent to Earth via the NASA probe and I asked the girls to consider what we might learn from this ambitious space mission that could apply to their school context.

A strategy that we encourage the girls to use in order to promote feelings of positive well-being, is to focus on things they are grateful for. The simple practice of stopping each day to identify moments that have gone well or to celebrate interactions or activities that have made us feel good can contribute to an overall feeling of happiness and build our satisfaction with life.

This week I have been reflecting on the incredible capacity of our girls to become resilient beings. We are fortunate to live in a world where much of the time it is easy to be comfortable - we adjust temperature to 'just right' with the simple flick of an air conditioning switch, we can fly between continents in just a few hours, we can buy whatever we need on-line or in store, but the reality is that to be well equipped for life and its inevitable bumps, to be able to thrive in relationships and to flourish in the world of work, we need to build the capacity to navigate discomfort.

​Despite the cold weather, there has been plenty to celebrate this week at School – from the wonderful performances of the VCE Music students at their recital last night, to the impressive spelling efforts of the Junior School girls last week at the House Spelling Bee!

I’m sure that those of you who attended the Parent Forum on Tuesday evening would have appreciated the insights provided by Amanda Sironic into perfectionism.

I am sure that everyone who attended the Evening of Song on Monday night will agree that it was a great success! The girls and staff are to be commended for the outstanding level of performance and the professional presentation of the event.

​I’m sure that many of you have been interested to follow the recent (and continuing) media discussion regarding private and public schooling. I have been shocked by some of the broad (and often uninformed) generalisations that have been made about private school students and indeed about private schools.