Assistant
Principal Report
Welcome Back
We welcome back our school community to Term 4 which is genuinely a very busy term. Our Year 12 students have already graduated and left the building. Some are off to work while others are working feverishly, studying and preparing for their impending exams. We wish all our students every success in their future endeavours. Term 4 is not just a culmination of the year, it is a time for preparation for the following year, organising classes, unit outlines, camps, professional learning opportunities, staffing, timetables, the list goes on. It is a great time to reflect on and look at future improvements across the school as we continue to strive to be the best educational facility we can be.
Cyberbullying
The internet is an important part of the digital lives of young people, with most going online regularly to connect, learn and have fun. Our young people have been using the internet for the majority of their lives and, for them, not being online is simply unthinkable and unavoidable.
We are all aware that engaging online can pose potential dangers and can be confronting when having to deal with the behaviours of others who may not value or relate or show respect for others when online.
Cyberbullying comes in many forms but has been defined in academic literature as:
‘intentional harmful behaviour carried out by a group or individuals, repeated over time, using modern digital technology to aggress against a victim who is unable to defend themselves (Campbell & Bauman, 2018).’
A much simpler definition of cyberbullying is:
‘…the use of technology to bully a person or group with the internet to hurt them socially, psychologically or even physically’ (Office of the eSafety Commissioner, 2018).’
The way in which cyberbullying is carried out also means that there are a number of distinguishing features that set it apart from traditional bullying. These include
the:
• huge size of the potential audience
• continuous access
• permanence of online content
• ease of copying material and distributing it widely
• lack of oversight of online behaviour
• inability to view the emotional reactions of the targets keeping perpetrators from having empathy for them.
Young people in Edenhope and our surrounds are no different. We have seen in the past and recently examples of cyberbullying amongst students from Edenhope College. Much of this is out of our control due to the behaviours occurring outside of school hours, but unfortunately, we are often left to investigate and address the incidents which is extremely time consuming and takes away from our core business. We do play a strong role in educating our young people about bullying, the impacts of, and importantly being e-safe but we cannot do this alone.
Parents and Edenhope College need to work together to help our young people understand the potential dangers to prevent cyberbullying but all to address cyberbullying.
Something that parents can do, include:
- Monitoring and limiting internet usage (across devices)
- Understanding and applying the significance of "13 years old" rule
- As part of their privacy policies, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube specify that users must be at least 13 years old, a requirement that parents may often be unaware of
- Encourage young people to disclose incidents of cyberbullying
- Report the online harm to the relevant online service provider
- If the service provider does not take action, you or your child can report to eSafety who have the authority to erase user accounts
- Prevent further contact
- Seek support from the College
- Encourage positive connections and coping strategies
- Stay aware
- If someone is threatening or harassing report to the Police
We actively encourage our students to be upstanders not bystanders who condone the behaviour. We encourage students who see bullying happening to someone else to:
- Show disapproval
- Interrupt the bullying by talking to the person being bullied
- Give the person being bullied an excuse to leave the situation
- Report it to trustworthy adults
Below is a link to the e-safety commission website which has an array of resources and support for parents, young people, schools and other to help make safe decisions while navigating a digital world.
Chad Frost
Assistant Principal