Wellbeing News

PEACE Pack – Fourth Edition

A program for reducing bullying in schools

Throughout Term 2 an exciting new program will be taught to the boys in Year 7. The program is called PEACE Pack and it has been pioneered by Professor Phillip Slee and Dr Grace Skrzypiec from Flinders University. It provides an eight-week anti-bullying intervention program delivered by classroom teachers. PEACE Pack aims to help students cope better with bullying and enhance their wellbeing.

PEACE Pack has a focus on relationship building and friendships, resilience, decision making among bullying perpetrators as well as bystanders. It is also designed to address all forms of bullying, including physical bullying, verbal bullying, exclusion bullying and cyber-bullying. PEACE Pack builds on an in-school wellbeing program we presented very successfully to our Year 7 students in 2018. The program is in addition to other Pastoral Care sessions planned on Wednesday mornings and throughout the term.

The first session for our students began in Week 2 and they completed a survey looking at experiences of bullying they have had at school. Students also explored the definition of bullying to help them understand the difference between bullying and other more isolated incidents where there has been conflict or they have not been treated fairly. The odd fight or quarrel is not regarded as bullying. A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons and he, she has difficulty defending themselves.

Bullying can be verbal, physical, social and cyber. Students sometimes bully other students at school by deliberately and repeatedly hurting or upsetting them in some way; for example, by hitting or pushing them around, teasing them or leaving them out of things on purpose. The student does not feel they can easily defend themselves.

I look forward to the continued engagement of our Year 7 students in this program.

Mr Brett Knowles

ASSISTANT DEPUTY PRINCIPAL – WELLBEING (7-12)