From the Principal

The Foundations of Pastoral Care ....

Through the year College staff, have focused on developing our pastoral care structures in order to meet the evolving needs of our students. The stressors of the last few years are being seen in our student behaviours, their approach to relationships and to learning.

The 2019/20 bushfires resulted in serious impacts to student wellbeing across all levels of schooling. Most common impacts were to student relationships, especially in family settings, seeing a rise in anxiety about separation from parents, irritability, aggression and disobedience and an increase in conflict with siblings, parents or friends. In school, this translates to a drop in attendance and academic performance.

The pandemic of course had similar, and in some cases, compounding effects with students reporting impacts to their mental and physical health because of lockdowns and restrictions, along with strains to their social connections and friendships.

The College recognises too, the enormous growth toward identity and independence that students experience as they grow through College. We acknowledge that student media consumption in its many forms, social, broadcast, online, is ever present, bringing the range of issues from climate change, to gender identity, war and global injustice into the forefront of our students’ minds.

We have developed a responsive framework for Pastoral Care in the College. The Framework builds on solid foundations, asking of each of us, “how do we become the light of Christ?” and “how can we shine our Light?”  The framework builds on three foundations:

• Theology: Being the Light of Christ.
• Philosophy: How do we live the Good life
• Psychology: Understanding motivations and behaviours.

In posing foundational questions, we identified a number of virtues that we seek to develop in our learning community. These are about developing respectful relationships, becoming accountable members of the College, and people who understand the deep connections of belonging.

Working with academics and facilitators we have commenced building a series of practices to support student development. Last week we worked with Graeme George in the development of Restorative Practices in our College https://www.rpforschools.net/whats-rp.html.

We seek to keep coming to our students in dialogue as the basis for our relationships as Jesus did.  We continue in the aspiration to Be the Light of Christ.