As we are in the last week of Term 2 and Semester 1 with the coldness, rain and the winter solstice, we need to remind each other of the strategies that help and enhance our own wellbeing and that of our students.

In the last two editions of the Marian News, we visited the High Impact Strategies that contribute to Wellbeing. Just a reminder of the information included in the last edition.

High Impact Wellbeing Strategies

We would like to give you an insight into the Wellbeing work going on in this space to enhance the wellbeing of our young people and community.

From the recent research carried out by Monash University and Victorian government Wellbeing is defined as:

The capabilities necessary to thrive, contribute and respond positively to the challenges and opportunities of life. It describes a person’s optimal experiences, physical health and psychological functioning, and involves factors like positive emotions, life satisfaction and mental flexibility. (FISO 2.0 – 2022)

The Seven Key elements of building wellbeing are identified in this paper as:

Building Positive relationships with students
Facilitating Peer Relationships
Establishing and maintaining clear classroom expectations
Supporting inclusion and belonging
Foster student self-efficacy
Engage students
Promote coping strategies and facilitate referrals.

In the last two editions of the Marian, we have covered the first four of these strategies. For this edition of the Marian, we will focus on the last three strategies.

Foster student self-efficacy

This has a focus on the fact that our students have a positive belief about their own capabilities. Teachers foster student self-efficacy by encouraging students to persist and provide feedback and for all students to celebrate all of their achievements.

This also involves our staff holding high expectations for all of our students and what they are capable of achieving.

With reports being released at the end of this week it is important that we celebrate all of those students who have successfully completed a semester of work to the best of their ability. For those students who perhaps have not worked as consistently over the semester then it is a time to reflect and look at the ways they can improve for the second part of the year.

Engage Students

One of our clear endeavours is to engage our students in their cognitive, social and emotional development by giving them the opportunity to tailor tasks to student interests and capabilities.

This means that tasks often have a variety of ways to complete as assessment task in order to allow students to focus on their strengths. It also involves students being given opportunities to work in pairs or groups so as to contribute to each other’s learning.

We are always exploring ways to enhance the learning opportunities of our students.

Promote coping strategies and facilitate referrals

Staff are here to support students if they are struggling to cope and work with our young people to use positive coping strategies including help seeking.

We are very fortunate to have a very active counselling department who offer individual support as well as group opportunities such as a social skills program.

Our homeroom/mentor teachers should be the first point of contact if you have concerns about how your child is coping and our Wellbeing programs at each level have key features such as relationships, resilience, responsible behaviour to help develop in each member of our community the coping strategies that they will need beyond their time at Marian.

Community Police Visit

On Friday 14th June, the Community Police came to speak to our Year 7 & 8 students and focussed on a number of key pieces of information that they wanted to highlight to the students. This included:

Concerns in relation to social media
Issues related to online such as Bullying and Sexting
Weapons
Vaping

They will return in Term 3 to speak to the other levels of the school.

Child Protection Update

Our Student Representative Council have been working a review of the following policies linked to our Child Safety Program.

These include:

Our Student Friendly version of our Child Safety Policy
Child Safety and Protection Policy
Staff Code of Conduct

The leaders have focussed on how these policies can be improved and are now working towards having the Student Friendly version being played over the school televisions to remind our entire community of how they are being kept safe by all adults in the community.

Child Safety Parent Sub-Committee

On Wednesday 19th June, our first meeting of our parent members of our Child Safety Sub-committee was held. The members identified the key pieces of information they know about Child Safety and Protection, identified areas that they would like answers to such as what happens on excursions, and how is staffing worked out for excursions and camps?

Families left with copies of a number of key policies to review and the plan is to meet again in the early part of term 3.

From this group the whole school Child Safety Sub-Committee will be created with representatives from the parent group, student leadership and staff. This group will be the key body to our Stewardship Council.

We look forward in future editions of the Marian to share their work and recommendations as they continue to look at ways that we can keep all members of our community safe.

eSafety News and Website

A reminder to all of our families of the information that this website has for all areas of social media and technology and how they have practical and useful resources for families, including seminars that were mentioned in the last edition of the Marian.

We encourage all of our families to become familiar with this great resource.

Below is a useful Advice sheet relating to what we should do as parents if our children are being bullied online.

Now some key pieces of information related to our day to day work:

Attendance Reminders

A reminder to all of our families of the expectation of explaining student absences each day.

Letters related to significant student absences are being processed this week for families that have not explained the absences of their children.

We thank all of those families who support this process daily by contacting us to inform us of the absence of their child.

Uniform

As we enter the colder months, we often have additional clothing items that seem to become additional items of uniform.

These include:

Kathmandu jackets and other variations of this type of jacket, rather than our school blazer.
Hoodies added to their PE uniform that are not part of our uniform.

Other uniform concerns are:

Students not wearing their school tie – which is a compulsory item.
Wearing their PE tracksuit pants pretending that they are school pants.

A reminder to all families that uniform expectations can be found on the front page of the SEQTA page for parents and students.

Wellbeing thought…

It is hard to believe that we have reached the middle and half way mark of the year and while it is cold and dark at the moment, having passed the winter solstice that each day from now on offers a little more light and hope as we head towards the sun.

Enjoy the break and stay safe and warm….

Kerrie Williams

Assistant to the Principal – Student Wellbeing

Prayer