From the 

Assistant Principal

Trish Wan, Assistant Principal

Hello and welcome back South Melbourne Park families!

I am so pleased to be writing this as the ‘substantive’ Assistant Principal as this means I get to stay in this wonderful, warm and inclusive community. Our students have settled in wonderfully and are already building amazing relationships with staff and students.

I’d like to take this opportunity to share some of the work the Education and Engagement team and a couple of superstars have put together to build a new ‘Re-engagement Process’ as our schoolwide approach. This was a core part of our professional development on our two Curriculum Days, so thank you to our parents and guardians for holding on to your little people a couple more days to allow us to do this deep learning. A special mention to: Jess Shillinglaw, Leanne Kelly, Bec Drew, Evie Viera-Miller, Can Osman and Lisa Breen who all gave up some of their precious time to help bring this together. Here is the poster we are using throughout the school.

Our goal is to switch mindsets from reacting and focusing on ‘behaviours’ to responding to student needs that the behaviour is indicating and more importantly, building in proactive prevention strategies. Our students are being taught the language of ‘refocus, adjust, restore’ so that they understand the different responses they will encounter from staff. Most importantly is that there is always a form of restoration. Students will learn how to restore relationships with any that have been affected by their actions and staff will ensure that the relationship between themselves and students are maintained. This is intended as an affirming process for all students including our neuro-divergent little people and avoids black-and-white view of behaviours. 

If you’d like to do some more reading around restorative practice, take a little look at this article: A Different Way to Respond When Kids Do Something Wrong

If you’d like to read even more, take a look at Dr Mona Delahook’s work: Beyond Behaviours

Last but not least, a massive thank you to all those who responded so quickly and generously to our call out for supplies for victims of the recent earthquake. Take a look at what we were able to give!