Deputy Principal - Student Wellbeing 

At St John’s we know a lot about how young people flourish, and about how they progress and achieve success in learning and in life.  We understand that all student outcomes are inextricably linked. Students with higher levels of wellbeing achieve better in school than those with lower levels of wellbeing. And students who are engaged in their learning, making progress and achieving success, tend to have stronger wellbeing. In 2020 this has never been more evident given the impact of COVID restrictions on our students and teaching staffs ability to engage in onsite learning and the need to embrace remote learning. Staff and students were asked to remodel their whole learning philosophy and take onboard the importance of self-directed learning and the use of technology through our SEQTA platform of things like TEAMS. Where once we had direct access to students and their learning we had to now come up with new ways of engaging in both our learning and wellbeing.

Whilst some of our students flourished in this new environment most found it difficult to adapt and still remained engaged. It is a credit to the students and staff that they continued to look for the right fit and teachers continued to modify programs and adjust expectations so that students could still experience success and gain something from a challenging time.

Our student leaders also continued to stay engaged with their peers and other year levels to ensure some level of connection was maintained whilst most were learning at home and away from their friends. We had inspirational speeches and messages for students at home and Pastoral activities designed to get them up and moving. I thank our College Captains Aker Mawith and Tofy Jorissen for their contribution all year as well as those of our House Captains and other Student Leaders for their efforts in keeping us together. I look forward to working with Maria Hinen and Aiden Cachart as our College Captains, Tiana Amoretti and Kent Mijares as Faith and Mission Captains and the House Captains in 2021.

Resilience Project key ideas built into Student Planner to be used in daily activities as well as forming part of the whole school Pastoral Program to ensure we are giving students skills to support their wellbeing and ability to cope with difficulties. Use of key words and themes such as Mindfulness, Gratitude and Empathy to ensure an ongoing inclusion of the program.

We look to build on the progress made this year with our teachers and Learning Mentors with our students in regards to relationship building and student wellbeing. We need to find the positives from a difficult year and look to incorporate them into our ‘normal’ teaching going forward. Things like TEAMS video meetings and CHATS allow us to engage with students in ways not used before. SEQTA has great advantages for submission of work and feedback of assessment tasks and the opportunity for students and parents to receive real time updates on how they are going.

We can only hope that 2021 is a better year for our students but at the same time praise our 2020 students for their efforts and resilience in what have been unprecedented times for both teaching and learning. Thank you all for your efforts in supporting our students to be the best that they can be.