RRRR 

In 2016 Respectful Relationships (RR) education became a core component of the Victorian curriculum. The program was born after the Royal Commission into the tragic death of Luke Batty in 2014. It was a recommendation from the Royal Commission that all schools use Respectful Relationships to support students to recognise and regulate emotions, develop empathy for others and establish and build a framework for positive relationships. 

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships teaching and learning materials have been developed to support schools to deliver the curriculum and are mandated to be taught in all Victorian government schools by 2021. 

At Menzies Creek Primary School we all want our children to have an education that gives them the best start to a safe, happy, healthy and prosperous life. This approach leads to positive change in students’ academic outcomes, their wellbeing, classroom behaviour, and relationships between teachers and students. We know that changes in attitudes and behaviours can be achieved when positive attitudes, behaviours and gender equality are lived across the school community. Together, we can lead the way in creating genuine and lasting change so every child has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

The RR classroom program will focus on 8 key areas which are taught over a two year cycle:

• 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 gender relationships and the importance of acceptance of difference and diversity.

Respectful Relationships takes a whole-school approach, recognising that schools are a place of learning, a workplace and a key part of local communities. It embeds a culture of respect and equality across our entire school community, from our classrooms to staffrooms, sporting fields, fetes and social events.

Our students will be participating in RR lessons on a weekly basis within their classrooms. As the year goes on we will celebrate the work done during RR sessions by including photos and descriptions of lessons in the Newsletter as well as celebrating the students’ hard work within the classroom.

The RRRR program will also help us to focus on being more gender neutral by ensuring we use a gender lens across the school when revising policies, selecting roles within the classroom and school, using inclusive language and challenging stereotypes.  

Have a watch of this video and think about how you as a family might unknowingly create or reinforce gender stereotypes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLIG52i1mko&feature=youtu.be