Cranbourne Campus News

Promoting Student Well-being at St Peter's College 

Enhancing Learning Through Incursions 

Pastoral Program 

We have a wonderful pastoral program at St Peter's College that delivers lessons around relationships, resilience, and pathways that are the foundation of our guest presenter sessions. 

Students can sometimes resist these pastoral lessons, even with the reimagining of it this year by the house leaders and pastoral care leaders. This is somewhat understandable as the topics in pastoral lessons and incursions are sometimes reflective and quite confronting, especially when discussed alongside the peers they may want to impress. This quiet reticence does not dampen the resolve of our wonderful Pastoral Care Leaders, House Leaders and Learning Advisors. Adults at our school who are committed to challenging our young people to be their best and providing them a platform to learn more about the opportunities and obstacles to them being their best. 

At St Peter's College, we endeavour to complement the classroom learning, pastoral program and the work you do at home with expert incursions that deliver pointed but important lessons to our young people. 

This month, we have had several incursions targeting our Years 9-12. 

Year 9 Workshop: Respectful Relationships and Consent 

On Tuesday, Elephant Education came in and worked in small group workshops around the concept of respectful relationships with our Year 9’s, and particularly the concept of consent. 

While the notion of consent is implied to be around how people manage relationships, the broader sense of the word is to prepare our young people to resist manipulation, whether in the workplace, in their relationships, or with their friends. 

By getting younger experts in the field to come in and have these complex conversations while still being supported by our St Peter's College teachers, we're able to wrestle with some of those complex issues that young people are facing at the moment. 

Year 10 Blurred Minds Presentations 

At Year 10, we had a second presentation of the year from the University of Queensland ‘Blurred Minds team. 

Earlier in the year, the presentation revolved around vaping and how the marketing of vaping has been designed to manipulate us as we transition from primary school to secondary school, and that that manipulation can sometimes trick us into thinking that things like vaping are cool or desirable. 

It was interesting for this presentation to be talking around the bright colours and the clever skills that these companies use to try to trick us as consumers.

Last week's Blurred Minds session focused on the dangers around illicit drug use and while not a big problem at St Peter's College, it is something that our young people may encounter as they start to attend parties and mix with the broader community. 

Understanding the complexity and the dangers of illicit drugs is an important lesson for them to learn rather than hearing it from their peers or social media. 

Year 11 Tackling Procrastination 

Next week our Year 11s will be having a presentation on Procrastination from, the ‘Toolbox’ company. 

The idea here is to build up in our year 11s the type of attrition that will enable them to really ‘lock in’ to their VCE and VM studies over the next 18 months to help them reach their potential as learners. 

Procrastination is a disease that can affect us all and is one of those things that stops us from managing our workloads. 

Addressing Self-Doubt in Year 12 

And at Year 12, our students are having a slightly different presentation from ‘Toolbox’ focused on ‘battling our inner critic’  - rumination that can stop us from finding the right ‘flow’ to be our best. 

As much as we, as parents and teachers, encourage our young people to do their best, often, Year 12 students are succumbed by self-doubt and waste energy thinking about what they can't do rather than embracing what they can do. This presentation promises to provide some strategies on helping our young people to have an optimistic and realistic mindset as they begin to work up to VCE VCAA Exams and our VM Project Presentations. 

Reinforcing these messages of social emotional learning provides a strong foundation for you as parents to continue your work with your children, preparing them for the world beyond. 

The lessons in English, literature, math, history, and geography are all essential, but it's those added lessons around the classroom that really help frame who our young people will be moving into the future. 

As a pastoral team, we will continue to use data from our students, from our counselling team, and from our House Leaders, to frame what lessons we hope to complement the curriculum within a pastoral sense.

Mr Jeremy Wright

Deputy Principal - Head of Cranbourne Campus