Student Wellbeing  Update 

Greetings from Wally

Wally the Wanderer (our school mascot) made a cameo appearance today at recess time to introduce himself to the Foundation students, new students who have joined us from other schools, new staff members and to say a big hello to our returning students. Wally the Wanderer was very impressed with the number of Wally stickers the children had received for demonstrating our school values of Resilience, Respect, Responsibility, Inclusion and Academic Excellence today. Wally reminded our students about the importance of being a good citizen in our school and we do this by always demonstrating our school values. Our students are to be commended on the way they have started the year. 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Supports

We have some great news to share with our community! Our school has reached the Blue Award for the School Wide Positive Behaviour Support Framework. This means we have successfully embedded all the requirements for Tier 1. It is time to celebrate. We look forward to celebrating this achievement with our students and our wider school community this term. We are now working towards our Bronze Award. 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Supports uses a tiered intervention framework which invests in prevention (tier I), identifies and provides targeted supports for individual students at risk for developing challenging behaviour (tier II), and provides individualised and intensive interventions for students with significant support needs (tier III). Our school began the SWPBS journey 3 years ago. 

Mental Health & Wellbeing Practitioner Pilot Program

Our school, along with 100 other schools in the state have been selected to participate in a Mental Health & Wellbeing Practitioner Pilot Program. This is strongly supported by the Department of Education and Training in partnership with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne (MGSE).  This pilot program aims to provide more mental health support in primary schools and to test what works to support the mental health & wellbeing of primary school students.

At the end of last year, Anthea Mathers was appointed to the Leading Teacher (Wellbeing) role at ETRS and this pilot program will be a significant component of Anthea's role.  We look forward to sharing more information with you as the we embark on this journey.