Welcome to the first installment of A Flourishing Life - Wellbeing at CGHS.

This column of the newsletter will feature regular articles, resources or readings that we think you might find interesting and that support the work we are doing with our students in ako time each Wednesday. The aim of this column is to give parents and caregivers an insight into what we are talking about in ako time and to provide you with material to explore in more detail. We would love for you to have conversations with your daughters about this and for you to engage with us in these topics too. Broadly speaking, ako time topics fit in to the following themes: strengths and emotions; skills and achievement; relationships and optimism; positive engagement; meaning and purpose; and exercise and vitality. This column will address these (and other) themes.

We welcome your feedback on our ako programme and if you have expertise you would like to share in this area, please contact Genevieve Leech, our Pastoral Programme Coordinator on leg@cghs.school.nz.

This weeks resource, an interview, comes from the Australian ABC radio. The recording features Lawyer and social researcher, David Gillespie, delving into the complex business of the teenage brain. He says the usual teenage compulsions like smoking, drinking and drug taking are in steep decline, as teenagers are now more likely to seek a pleasure hit from their screens. But the games and social media apps they use are deliberately engineered to be addictive. David poses some interesting points and ones that we can all consider with regards to the wellbeing of our girls. You can find the recording here: How the iPhone rewrote the teenage brain