Head of Campus
Consent Education
With so much in the media about consent education, and many of our fellow independent schools issuing statements regarding what they are doing to provide consent education, it seemed timely to talk about the way in which our children are supported when issues arise between friends which may also be about consent.
This year, we began with three strategic imperatives. We wanted to draw attention in our community to three Cs; Custodianship, Courage and Consent. At the beginning of the year we talked about how these elements might form a part of the essential agreements that the children in each class build to guide how they wish to live and learn together.
I have written about how custodianship informs how we use and regenerate our spaces, how we learn from and interpret the work of Greta and Mug Lyttle, and how we are just a fleeting moment on the lands for which custodianship truly belongs; to the people of the Kulin Nation. It is a complex and ever changing concept which asks us to consider perspectives, history and our long term future.
Courage is always a focus of our Essential Agreements as we prefer this term to Risk-Takers, one of the attributes offered by the International Baccalaureate. That our children are free to make mistakes, and free from comparison with their peers is, we believe, a sure fire way to develop courage in learning.
Consent is something which our teachers are very comfortable dealing with, particularly when we actively support our children to find resolution and restitution to the difficulties and bumps in their day. Consent in play means actively consenting to the rules of games, consenting to being involved, or retracting consent and being free to walk away, and we work too on helping children navigate coercion to consent. If children don’t want to play, then they should be free from pressures to enlist them.
You will often hear staff ask when they see physical gambolling play “Did you ask if you could touch them?”, or “Are you happy to be wrestling?” You will hear staff ask “Did you ask if they wanted to play this game?”, and “Did you agree to this in the game?” and you will hear staff say “You can say, Stop it, I don’t like it” or “If you stop wanting to play, then you can say I don’t want to play anymore”. And you will hear our staff say “When you hear ‘Stop!’ it means right now”. We are actively working to support our children to seek consent, provide consent, and explicitly communicate their desires so that they create shared understanding about personal boundaries. This is central in our work, and establishes practices which we hope our children will carry with them into their relationships as they mature.
These phrases that we offer and use support children to manage their play without the need for restoration. But in the event that children need further support, our Arlington Handbook describes restorative practices which are central, key, to how we listen, encourage perspective taking, and find and agree to restitution if things go wrong.
We firmly believe that practise in managing consent in games and play is the way to develop this understanding, exercise this muscle, and be comfortable in managing decision making, managing personal boundaries, and putting one’s comfort first.
We are active in this area of learning, however, there is always more that we can do, and our staff will be undertaking professional development in consent education as part of this strategic imperative. This will lead to explicit teaching opportunities in each of our classrooms.
We want our children to be the embodiment, the custodians of a Preshil Education.
We want our children to be courageous in their learning and their lives.
We want our children to be empowered in their understanding of consent sought, consent offered, consent withdrawn, and consent free from coercion.
A Fond Farewell
It is with much gratitude and a touch of sadness that we farewell the wonderful Amanda Barnetby who has been an inspirational P.E teacher for us at Arlington. She is returning to a much loved position in secondary careers at Genazzano FCJ College. She goes with our very best wishes.
Cressida Batterham-Wilson
Acting Head of Arlington Campus