A Sprinkle of Gratitude

Hi – my name is Jenny Tucker. I have been a parent at Payne Rd State School for eleven years and am Vice President of the P and C. Leigh Passfield is president of the P and C and her son Zac is starting prep today too.

Firstly I would like to welcome you all into the Payne Road Community.

Welcome to our new principal and welcome back our head of curriculum.

In the 11 years I have been involved with the teachers, staff, students and parents at Payne Rd it has been a pleasure. We are a small school with a very strong focus on fostering a high standard of education for our children and an environment that is nurturing and committed to a strong sense of community.

Our teachers and principal have always worked hard to improve the standard of our children’s education. Our P and C committee here is very strong and we work hard to support the school community. The P and C do this in a number of ways. The P and C meetings are utilised to disseminate information about our children’s schooling and to plan useful ways to support the school community.

As a parent I would encourage you to become part of The Payne Road Community. I invite you to attend our P&C meetings. Our committee meetings are held on the third Thursday of the month and are a wonderful way of staying informed about the school. If you cannot get to the meetings the minutes are posted on our website.

This year our major fundraiser will be the Ashton circus. Ashton Circus comes to Payne Rd and we run a fete on the same day. Once information starts appearing about this, I again encourage you to become involved. There are also lots of other ways to help out – join the team of volunteers in our tuckshop. Shae is our tuckshop Convenor. Help in the classroom, help in our uniform shop, join the music committee, help on the Mothers Day or Fathers Day stall, raffles, sausage sizzles and working bees.

One of the best ways to become part of a community is to volunteer in it.

We all have a lot more choices than we used to – we used to read a newspaper, now we surf the net and read many newspapers; as children we used to play with our neighbors, now our kids can play games with kids on the other side of the world; social media such as Facebook replaces the next door neighbors fence as the place for conversation. With all the choices abounding for our children, I think that the level of SHARED experiences is less – we don’t share the same fence to talk over our problems or even the same newspaper. We share our experiences but I don’t think we share experiences. A feeling of belonging ness goes with shared experiences .

As I have said earlier we have lots of ways you can share experiences – join the P and C, tuckshop, the circus, Mothers Day and Fathers Day stalls and working bees.

During the Gap Storms a few years ago, when destruction was randomly wreaked upon our suburb, our community came together and helped each other recover and rebuild. We all worked together towards a common goal of restoring The Gap to the beautiful suburb it is. We were much more of a community after the Gap Storms than we were before.

Volunteering brings people together. By sharing an experience you build relationships and form a network of support and contact. We don’t need terrible events such as the Gap Storms to get to know each other.

I encourage you to volunteer and all get involved in the things that happen at Payne Road State School and help build our community into an even stronger one. You will get to know the parents of your kids friends, you will make friends, you will be helping to provide a better resourced education for your kids and I guarantee you will enjoy it.

I welcome you once again into our community and hope over the coming year I get to know you, and share experiences with you.

Today I am musing on illness and death.
Our culture does not talk about death. Aussies live in a wonderful country and we are generally a fun and loving group of people. We have an fantastic climate and we live in a free country and we choose our leaders and we can say what we like when we like. Why would we choose to talk about death? Except death is the only thing in the whole of our life that is definitely going to happen.
Illness doesn’t always lead to death but life always leads to death.
It troubles me that illness happens and if that illness is or becomes terminal that it is necessary to always have hope that death is not going to happen. Death is always going to happen.
I am not suggesting that hope should become obsolete. I am suggesting that at some point we should become comfortable with death. I do not know if this is possible.
Hope gives drive and purpose. Without drive and purpose are we nothing?
I do believe at some point it is dignified and an individual will have more peace if each day is taken as a gift and death is recognized as inevitable.
I think when someone has an illness that is terminal at some point it must use up a lot of energy being hopeful for what tomorrow is going to bring. What if each moment is taken as a gift – wouldn’t that make life more peaceful and joyful?
I believe in heaven and I also believe in life after death. I cannot see these things so I do not know if they are real. I do not know if I will get a second chance after I have died. I think I will but who knows…it is important for me to get this life sorted.
It is important for me to work enjoying each moment. I don’t know if I will be hit by a bus today or whether I will live to 102. I want to live with hope but I also want to live with the possibility that it could all change in a moment.
I believe the more comfortable we all become about the possibility that in a moment we could be dead that we would all become more compassionate towards each other and that we would all take more time to squeeze the most out of every single moment that has been gifted to us.

My thoughts about schoolies
I don’t want my kids to go.
I want my kids to be social enough to want to go.
I don’t want my kids to drink alcohol or take drugs.
I won’t offer alcohol to my children before they go.
I think maybe I am silly not to offer them some alcohol before they go because at least then they will have an idea how having some alcohol feels.
I think it is much better controlled than when I went.
I love the fact that there are red frogs .
I don’t like the fact that there are many school leavers down there.
I don’t like the fact that it costs so much.
I don’t like the fact that parents pay for it – that to me shows that our children expect to be given to much.
Even if they did pay for it themselves I would not want them to go.
I suppose I will let my children go and hope that the things we have taught them will mean they behave in a responsible manner and ask for help if they need it.

I finished the Secret Race yesterday by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle. I enjoyed it so much. Tyler Hamilton seems like a genuinely nice guy. He was a young rider caught up in a world that even though he was riding the best he had ever ridden he was being dropped. He was the best of the best and still he couldn’t keep up. He was an American rider trying to break into the European circuit and not making it. I do not condone these of drugs but I can understand the decisions he made. It seems to me that he was doing what he loved and to compete on a level playing field he saw no choice but to use EPO and infuse his own blood. Both made him faster and healthier. He did not break down as quickly. I found the book very courageous. It explains why the peloton was riding so much faster. It was not because the riders had become faster or stronger, or the training methods had improved or the equipment had become better. It was because doping was endemic. I believe that the organizers of the big tours need to have courses that are humanly possible, I believe that the testing needs to be done in a manner that is not easily manipulated – for example test between 10pm and 7am and randomly, I believe there should be greater punishment for the medical profession manipulating these riders so they can ride faster and harder. I also believe there should be more discussion about what is right and what is wrong. If taking EPO and reinfusing your own blood is going to make you healthier and prevent a riders body from breaking down perhaps it should be allowed. I think riders like Lance Armstrong should be honest about how they behave and how they ride so fast. It is not until the discussion becomes an open and honest one that sports like cycling will become open to all not just the ones able to manipulate a system .

Tyler Hamilton – Honest

Lance Armstrong – Not Honest