School Council Annual General Election

On Monday March 16 we will be having our Annual General Election for School Council.

Although we have already had 2 parents express an interest in joining the team, we are asking for a few more people.

School Council meets between 8 and 10 times a year. Each meeting runs for an hour to an hour and a half and is facilitated by our School Council President.

This year we are saying goodbye to a number of our parent representatives as their children have finished their time at our school and therefore we need new voices.

What do you have to do or know?

To be on School Council you do not need to do anything or know about the running of the school. Your job is to be another voice who represents and communicates the opinions/concerns/ideas of our school community so that we can continue to make our school the best school possible.

Our meetings are on Monday nights and our proposed meeting dates for this year are:

March 16, April 20, May 11, June 15, July 20, August 10, September 14, October 12, November 9, Dec 14

If you are interested come and see me for more information or grab a nomination form from the front office. Nominations close at 4.00 pm Tuesday March 10.

What is the function of School Council?

The school council has particular functions in setting and monitoring the school’s direction.

School councils have three main responsibilities:

finance: overseeing the development of the school’s annual budget and ensuring proper records are kept of the school’s financial operations.
strategic planning: participating in the development and monitoring of the school strategic plan against the Framework for improving student outcomes.
policy development and review: developing, reviewing and updating policies that reflect a school’s values and support the school’s broad direction outlined in its strategic plan.

Other key functions of school councils include:

maintaining school grounds and facilities
entering into contracts
reporting annually to the school community and the Department
creating interest in the school in the wider community
representing and taking the views of the community into account
regulating and facilitating after-hours use of school premises and grounds

Respectful Relationships Program

In 2016 the respectful relationships program was introduced to schools with the goal of all schools delivering the program as a core component of the Victorian Curriculum. The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships teaching and learning resources were developed to support schools to deliver the curriculum.

The Victorian Curriculum F–10 includes learning about respectful relationships in both Health and Physical Education and Personal and Social Capability. In the Health and Physical Education curriculum, students develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to strengthen their sense of self, and build and manage safe and respectful relationships. In the Personal and Social Capability curriculum, students learn to recognise and regulate emotions, develop empathy for others and establish and build a framework for positive relationships.

Topic 1: Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy can be defined as the ability to understand ourselves and other people. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, build empathy, and to respond appropriately to the emotions of others. Building a large vocabulary for emotions helps to increase emotional literacy and build self-awareness and empathy for others.

Topic 2: Personal Strengths

Children and young people need a vocabulary to help them recognise and understand strengths and positive qualities in themselves and others. This topic provides learning activities to build this vocabulary and to use it when discussing personal, social and ethical challenges.

Research in the field of positive psychology emphasises the importance of identifying and using individual strengths. Social and emotional learning programs which use strength-based approaches promote student wellbeing, positive behaviour and academic achievement.

Topic 3: Positive Coping

Learning activities in this topic provide opportunities for students to identify and discuss different types of coping strategies. When children and young people develop a language around coping, they are more likely to be able to understand and deliberately utilise a range of productive coping strategies and diminish their use of unproductive coping strategies. Students learn to extend their repertoire of coping strategies and benefit from critically reflecting on their own choices and being exposed to alternative options.

Activities introduce students to the concept of self-talk and practice using positive self-talk to approach and manage challenging situations. Positive self-talk is a key strategy for coping with negative thoughts, emotions and events. It is associated with greater persistence in the face of challenge, and can be learnt or strengthened through practice.

Topic 4: Problem Solving

Problem-solving skills are an important part of the coping repertoire. The classroom program provides a number of learning activities to develop students’ problem-solving skills. The activities in the program assist students to develop their critical and creative thinking skills, and to apply them to scenarios exploring personal, social and ethical dilemmas.

Topic 5: Stress Management

Children and young people experience a range of personal, social and work-related stressors in their everyday lives. Activities within this topic have an explicit focus on teaching positive approaches to stress management. Assisting students to recognise their personal signs and symptoms of stress, and to develop strategies that will help them to deal with stress effectively, will help students cope with future challenges. The activities focus on the ways in which self-calming strategies can be used to manage stressful situations.

Topic 6: Help-Seeking

Learning activities in this topic area are designed to help students discuss the importance of seeking help and providing peer support when dealing with problems that are too big to solve alone. This helps to normalise and destigmatise help-seeking behaviour. Scenario-based activities help students identify situations in which help should be sought, identify trusted sources of help, and practice seeking help from peers and adults.

Topic 7: Gender and Identity

Learning activities within this topic assist students to challenge stereotypes and critique the influence of gender stereotypes on attitudes and behaviour. They learn about key issues relating to human rights, gender, identity and focus on the importance of respect within relationships. The activities promote respect for diversity and difference.

Topic 8: Positive Gender Relations

Learning activities within this topic focus on building an understanding of the effects of family violence and focus on the standards associated with respectful relationships. Students develop the skills needed to solve problems, set boundaries within relationships, and play an active role within the prevention of family violence. They develop peer support and help-seeking skills that can be applied in response to situations involving gender-based violence in family, peer, community or on-line relationships.

It is our intention to run a Parent Information Session next Friday between 9.00 and 10.00 in the Performing Arts room. Myself and Mrs. Minchew our Wellbeing Learning Specialist will deliver the session. If you are going to attend please let us know via an email to woodend.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au by Wednesday February 26th.

If you would like to access the DET Curriculum materials you can find them at: education.vic.gov.au/respectfulrelationships

Social Media

It has come to light in the last week, that a large proportion of our students have Tik Tok accounts and many have told us that their parents are not aware. We are continually reminded by cyber safety experts that children under the age of 13 should not be using social media as there are many real risks to their safety.

Whilst the app seems like a harmless platform to post and watch videos that are created, children as young as 7 and 8 are posting videos of themselves and their profiles often includes an email, address, the child’s name and age and a picture.

Last night on the ABC 7.30 report there was a segment that highlighted the risks. The company that owns Tik Tok had to pay a fine of 8 million dollars for illegally collecting personal information from children after violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act which requires children oriented apps to get parents’ consent. The biggest problem is that the app has been exposed to pornography and malicious content and the app collects a huge amount of personal information about its users by demanding access to their phone’s camera, microphone, contact list and location, using GPS tracking.

I am certainly not acting as the social media police but as a duty of care I just wanted you, as parents to be aware of the social media sites that your children are accessing and the potential risks including being followed by paedophiles and potentially groomed.

Mobile Phone Policy

Last week I made mention of the new mobile phone policy that has been put out by the Department of Education. The Education Minister, James Merlino has mandated that all schools implement the policy. In light of the new policy and a number of recent breaches by some of our students we, will be requiring all students to hand in any device that has phone properties, to their teacher each morning.

This has come about because some students are constantly being distracted by sending and receiving calls and messages during class time and also using the video function to video other students in the yard, which of courses breaches the right to privacy.

If parents need to contact their children or there is an issue with your child, we will ensure contact is made via the old fashioned version of calls through the office. We are sure you will understand the complexity of this situation and support us in implementing the necessary steps to limit distractions to learning and ensure that the privacy rights of each and every individual is not being comprised

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