Conversations about Consent
Mrs Claudia McCalman, Senior Years Coordinator
Kinross Wolaroi School is in the process of delivering a proactive and measured message on consent, thanks to an extraordinary performance written and delivered by our Year 12 Drama students. As part of their HSC Drama requirements, the students wrote a Verbatim piece, meaning they used existing text to mould a performance. Our students based their script on the Chanel Contos petition, a harrowing but timely insight into the widespread toxicity and misunderstanding surrounding the concept of consent in Sydney schools. They then created a powerful performance piece around their research. All credit to the Drama students and their teacher, Ms Dunkley, for providing the platform from which our pastoral consent education could spring.
Senior students were prepared for the confronting content of the performance with trigger warnings (please see below) and discussions in their Wellbeing groups, before viewing the 15-minute piece during a Wellbeing Year Meeting. Afterwards, Year 12 students unpacked the performance with the actors, and then the next day within their Mentor groups. Year 11 students followed the same route, except they unpacked the content in single gender groups immediately after their viewing, facilitated by staff, and then in their mixed gender Wellbeing groups the following day. This conversation will be ongoing throughout the year and relates closely to our current focus on leadership and how to be a good leader. We are looking to our senior students to be the agents of cultural change in the school, and we are forging a long-term plan to maintain conversations about consent in our Wellbeing sessions and general school life.
As such, and subsequent to the Year 12 performance, we have formed a student advocacy group - the Year 12 Consent Action Group - and they are being supported by mentors and the school counsellors to speak directly with students from Years 7 to 10 during Wellbeing time about the nature of consent. There will also be ongoing presentations during Senior School assemblies and follow up on these presentations for Years 7-12. These conversations about consent will support the Stage 5 curriculum content on consent delivered through PDHPE: Year 9 - Respectful Relationships, and Year 10 - Talking Sexual health.
For the conversation to be truly effective, we need to make sure we are all singing from the same song sheet: staff, students and parents. The most effective way of enabling this shared responsibility is to mirror the learning experience of our students and staff: to ask parents to attend a performance of the Year 12 Drama Verbatim piece, where will unpack the technical side of the performance with the actors after the performance, and then unpack how you have responded to the piece. Following is the warning posted on Teams for all Year 11 and Year 12 students. It is just as important for your consideration prior to seeing the performance.
I wanted to give you all a heads up about the content of our year meeting. We are fortunate enough to be seeing a performance by the Year 12 Drama class. It is the culmination of their Verbatim unit, where they perform using existing text. The text chosen is extracts from the responses to the Chanel Contos sexual abuse petition. As such, there will be some confronting and possibly triggering content. If you feel this may be too much for you, please email me or drop in beforehand, and I will organise a safe space for you to be while the year meeting is taking place. For those of you who are not aware of this text, please read the link, which is a broader statement made by Ms Contos in response to her petition. I would like to thank in advance the Year 12 Drama students for addressing this relevant and serious issue.
We are in the process of locking in a date for this performance. We must consider the time devoted to this exercise by the HSC Drama students so please expect an invitation to the event sooner rather than later. Watch this space! The date will be published in the Bulletin.
Thank you for reading and please keep an eye out for the performance date.
Warm regards
Claudia