Well Being News
Respectful Relationship Parent Information Session Prep to Year 6 Thursday 30th of October 7pm in the St Kevin’s Library.
Wellbeing Update: Term 4 Week 2
Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships: Teaching for social and emotional learning and respectful relationships
What is Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships?
Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships or Respectful Relationships is a Victorian school-based program that teaches students social and emotional skills to build healthy relationships, confidence, and resilience. It provides learning materials and lesson plans for primary and secondary schools covering topics like emotional literacy, personal strengths, problem-solving, stress management, and respectful relationships, including gender equality and consent. This whole-school approach aims to embed a culture of respect and equality and prevent violence against by addressing its root causes.
Background Information
Respectful Relationships supports schools and early childhood settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. It teaches our children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence. The Royal Commission into Family Violence identified the critical role that schools and early childhood education have in creating a culture of respect to change the story of family violence for future generations. In 2016, respectful relationships education became a core component of the Victorian Curriculum from foundation to year 12, and is being taught in all government and Catholic schools and many independent schools. Everyone in our community deserves to be respected, valued and treated equally. We know that changes in attitudes and behaviours can be achieved when positive attitudes, behaviours and equality are embedded in our education settings. Respectful Relationships is about embedding a culture of respect and equality across our entire community, from our classrooms to staffrooms, sporting fields, fetes and social events. This approach leads to positive impacts on student’s academic outcomes, their mental health, classroom behaviour, and relationships between teachers and students.
Components of the Program
The classroom program focuses on 8 key areas:
- Emotional Literacy: This helps students develop the ability to be aware of, understand and use vocabulary about the emotional states of themselves and others with competence.
- Personal Strengths: Students develop a vocabulary to help them recognise and understand various strengths and positive qualities in themselves and others. They identify the strengths they admire in others and those they need to draw on to engage with the challenges and opportunities that life presents.
- Positive Coping: Students develop language around coping, critically reflect on their coping strategies and extend their repertoire of positive coping strategies.
- Problem-solving: Students learn a range of problem-solving techniques that can be applied when confronting personal, social and ethical dilemmas. They engage in applied learning tasks in which they apply their problem-solving skills to be realistic.
- Stress management: This teaches students to learn a range of problem-solving skills through applied learning tasks, so that they are able to cope with challenges as they arise.
- Help-seeking: Help seeking is a coping strategy that involves seeking technical, instrumental, social or emotional support from other people.
- Gender and identity: These are age-appropriate learning activities that assist students to understand and critique the influence of gender norms on attitudes and behaviours (see clip linked below for an example of a discussion prompt).
- Positive gender relationships: This teaches students to build positive relationships between and within genders, and the importance of accepting difference and diversity.
Respectful Relationships at St Kevin’s Primary School
At St Kevins’ the Respectful Relationships program forms part of the Social and Emotional Program that is delivered to students each week. The 8 topics are taught over a two year cycle, with a focus on Emotional Literacy every year. This term our students from Prep to Year 6 will be taking part in age appropriate lessons from Topic 7: Gender and Identity and Topic 8: Positive Gender Relationships.
This week we have a representative from the Department of Education, Aimy Skym, coming to our staff meeting to support staff in teaching this program to our students. Aimy is part of a team who work to support teachers and schools in delivering the Respectful Relationships program to schools.
On Thursday 30th of October at 7pm in the St Kevin’s Library we will be facilitating a Respectful Relationships Parent Information Session at school. If you would like to learn more about this program, we strongly suggest you attend. As the Student Wellbeing Leader and one of our Child Safety Officers, I will be delivering the session with support of Gabee and Eva who are also our Child Safety Officers.
If you would like to view and read all of the lessons in the Respectful Relationships program, you can use the following link:
If you would prefer for your child/ren to not take part in the Respectful Relationships lessons, please get in contact with Gabee Leone.
Thank you for taking the time to read this information and I hope to see many of you at our Parent Information session.
Take care,
Fiona George
Student Wellbeing Leader / Child Safety Officer
Year 5 Classroom Teacher