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Mrs Jody Forbes, School Psychologist, discusses the appeal of mindfulness in today's rushing society and how it can assist students to manage exam stress and improve performance.

Inspired by the ‘Life Series’, which explores the notion that creativity and imagination is ‘at the heart of childhood’, Ms Ruth Jans, Head of Mackay House, was prompted to consider how this translates to adolescence and the high school education system. So, what is nurturing creativity and what is hindering it?

Through the window of the late twentieth century, it was clear that educational imperatives for the twenty-first century would be about innovative ways of doing and thinking in our teaching and learning. We may have imagined but could not have articulated the impact of technology and globalisation as this new century began life with a will of its own taking us into vast expanses of uncharted territory, many of which we still struggle to define and negotiate. Education has always had a busy agenda of change and transformation in its short history of schooling but the dramatic speed with which changes are occurring in local and global society, in technology and economics, threatens to leave it languishing in an outdated past.

To write calligraphy with mastery, a state of flow and full awareness — mindfulness — must be achieved. Mindful activities like calligraphy, are an effective way to reduce stress, increase self-awareness, enhance emotional intelligence and help effectively deal with difficult thoughts and feeling.

Keeping calm in stressful situations and having an understanding your emotional response is an essential skill teenagers need to acquire. Head of House Ms Deborah Perz discusses ways to develop resilience in early adolescence.

Drawing inspiration from a trip to Kakadu and Arnhem Land, Dean of Curriculum and Scholarship Dr Bruce Addison explores the concept of stillness and silence as a way to enrich the busy lives of students.

Uralla, from the dialect of the Anaiwan people, means ‘ceremonial meeting place on a hill’. This word has been chosen as the title of a new service club at Brisbane Girls Grammar School. Under the leadership of Anna McArthur-Dowty and Josefine Ganko the group hopes to make a difference and to affect change in relation to the complex issues surrounding Australia’s Indigenous people.

For anyone who has ever ‘crammed’ for an exam or experienced an ‘all-nighter’ prior to a due date, Ms Maggi Gunn, Director of Mathematics explores the concept of academic procrastination.