Last week, Year 6 had the privilege of hosting Marty Ogle for the Making Jesus Real (MJR) program. Marty spoke to the Year 6 students about the powers, implications, effects and appropriate use of social media platforms. The Year 6 students learnt about using social media platforms in an appropriate manner to ensure they and those around them are kept safe. Later in the session the students spoke about respect, and how to show respect to those around us, including... parents! Below is some information from the day from Marty.

Here is what some of the Year 6 students had to say after the day....

Yazmin Andrews: I love the way Marty taught us. It was fun but he made the message clear. His magic brightens up the serious conversations. I hope we get to see him again.

Paige Bresnehan: Marty was so fun as well as teaching us how to respect teachers, peers and our parents. He is great at magic. Both classes loved his lesson.

Sophie Halliday: When Marty came, I learnt that in life you have choices and sometimes there are hard choices. I also learnt that it is very important to respect each other no matter what.

Ruby Jager & Florence Cousens: Marty was fun, funny and magic. We learnt that it is so important to show respect to everyone, including yourself.

Carla Mione: I thought that Marty was very inspiring and engaging. I liked it the most when Marty talked about his daughter and her job. I even got to go up for a magic trick which was incredible! I loved seeing Marty because he makes learning fun!

Gretel Sangwell: Whenever Marty comes into Year 6, he lightens up everyone's day with his kind but cheerful attitude, he doesn't judge anyone and only looks for the good in people. When he came into Year 6, he talked a lot about respect, all different types of respect, being respectful on devices, to our parents, to our friends, to objects and everything that is around us. This was not just a normal lesson; he made it fun with his magic tricks and his entertaining way of speaking. Overall, we look forward to when he comes back to Mount Carmel.

Hannah Tomlin: I learned about being safe online and about showing respect to others and myself. He also taught me lots of magic and fun tricks.

Social Media and Respect with Marty Ogle & MJR

Recently, I took a session with Year 6 students looking at all aspects of social media and the word respect. We discussed the positives and the negatives involving the use of all devices including phones, computers, iPads, gaming devices and even smart TV’s. We looked at how it is possible to do history checks with these devices and how we need to

Respect them by taking care of these devices because they are very expensive but, more importantly, respect others and ourselves when we use them.
Make good choices when using them. For example, when we are asked to stop using them by an adult at school or home, we should do so straight away rather than talk back or complain.
Be aware of the dangers and the good things that social media and these devices can bring into our lives.

We looked at various issues concerning social media including bullying, scams, fake news, laws, addiction and security. The students and staff were very forthcoming with ideas and suggestions and they even participated in a survey that found over 75% have a phone, 81% had received an upsetting email/post and around 80% of them have trouble sleeping – this is not surprising as many of them have TV’s in their rooms and are allowed to take devices into their room unsupervised. Sadly over 60% of the girls felt they were addicted to a device eg phone, gaming device, etc. and 62 % of the are either sad, or worried about how much time the adults in their lives spend on their devices at night – please I am not being judgmental as I know many of you need to do this for your workplaces.

Here are a couple of sites to view with up-to-date Australian data and helpful sites from the fantastic eSafety Commissioner site.

Respect with Year 5 and 6 students

We also discussed the word respect and how bad habits can creep in especially in the area of back chatting or talking back at home and/or school. A large percentage of students say they do this even though they declared they:

love their people at home, and,
want to make them happy.

I was asked by a number of students how they can improve on this bad habit of back chatting and I suggested going home and asking the adults in the home if they could sit down and find a way to improve in this area. Please take the time to ask them about this plus check in with them about using ‘Ok with a smile’ when you ask them to put devices away, finishing chores etc. We also talked about creating ‘Spirit of Jesus’ moments both at home and at school.

The View

Courage | Compassion | Justice

Issue 9 · 15 Jun 2023

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