From the Assistant Principal

Dear SMPPS community

How fast time has flown this term – we have had a cracking start, and now we are already half way through! It has been absolutely wonderful to see our students continuing to be fully engaged in learning, really showing the impact of a year with their wonderful teachers and understanding the consistent routines of their classrooms. 

ANTI-RACISM

Staff have continued this term to complete professional learning around wellbeing and engagement and also had a follow up Anti-Racism session to reflect on the varying ways in which ideas around race, ethnicity and identity can present both positively and also in ways which may (often unintentionally) cause distress to other students. We are investing in resources and strategies to approach this mindfully and always through supporting students through learning and shared understandings, whether it be in less explicit ways such as being mindful of the language we ourselves use as adults and including mentor texts that feature students of all cultural backgrounds.

Take a look at this interesting social experiment in 2019 around concepts of ‘skin colour’. It really highlights all the messages our children pick up without us even realising. Art suppliers now actively rebrand materials to increase inclusivity. For ideas on how you can approach this sensitive topic with your child/ren at home, try this webpage with some excellent ideas and take a look at some of the ABC programs that really help to put these ideas at the forefront – The School That Tried to End Racism is a great watch alongside your child/ren, and You Can’t Ask That has some excellent though provoking questions for adults only to explore and learn from (Series 1 – Muslims, Indigenous, Series 2 – Refugees,  Series 4 – African Australians, Series 6 – Chinese Australians)

Primarily, we encourage the term anti-racist to be used to show our young people that the way to challenge xenophobic behaviour is to educate, challenge and call out – we stand up by being Upstanders.

CYBER SAFETY

This is an ongoing challenge for our young people (and ourselves as adults!) and there is often an overflow from experiences children are having at home whilst online, to their experiences and friendships at school. As a result, our lovely school council president Kat Walker has helped to source sponsorship from Bendigo Bank for the school to receive free sessions with Inform and Empower in 2025. These are a “Trusted eSafety Provider” endorsed by the eSafety Commissioner and will be running live streamed incursions termly for all our students next year. Furthermore, there will be staff professional learning and a parent information session alongside this. The parent information session will be an evening webinar: Raising Kids in a Digital World on Thursday 24th April, 2025 - Time: 7pm  (90 mins). More information nearer the time but please block this out! 

Whilst we await these informative sessions, I can not stress highly enough how important it is that you equip yourself and your child/ren by following these eSafety 101 tips both for yourselves and your children:

• Ensure you are within earshot or eye shot of your children when they are online
• Have access to their device passwords as a prerequisite for being allowed to use it
• Set app store settings so that you must approve any downloads even if free
• Vet devices regularly for apps you don’t recognise (many unsafe apps hide behind innocuous images)
• Ask your children consent before posting photos of them online to model safe, consensual online behaviour
• Avoid posting images in the public domain where key locations in their lives – especially school - can be identified e.g. uniform logos, location sharing or tagging
• Have all social media accounts set to private 
• Children to never use their real names or full names online
• Children should never be online friends with someone they have not met in real life – talk to them about how to work out if someone is who they say they are
• Talk about how to respond to inappropriate behaviour via the platforms they use – screen shot, block, report

Top of my list however is: Talk calmy, openly and with unconditional positive regard and support if your child has been using technology inappropriately or made other mistakes – children are going to be curious, they are going to do ‘the wrong thing’, and we can protect them best when they are not afraid to share with us when something has gone wrong.

Lastly, whilst it is a confronting topic, it is critical we as adults are as fully informed as possible regarding Online Grooming. Please read this advice from the Victorian government (for adults) and this article from the eSafety commissioner regarding online grooming. As these chilling statistics from the eSafety Commmisioner prove, we should never consider that any child is immune to the risk.

Thank you so much and please as always, sing out if you need to discuss anything with Sam or I concerning wellbeing, welfare and inclusion.

patricia.wan@education.vic.gov.au and samantha.smrekarthompson@education.vic.gov.au