One of the great challenges for parents and educators in today’s society is supporting our young people to develop their core values. For generations it has been parents and schools primarily entrusted with the task of modelling healthy and positive behaviours in a way which supports our young community members to understand how respectful relationships are developed and maintained.
Increasingly, this role is becoming more difficult, primarily as young people are socialising and recreating increasingly online and inevitably exposed to language and behaviours that sit outside traditional family values. Such behaviours can very quickly and easily be normalised by young and impressionable early adolescents, and as the exposure to this type of material increases so too does the likelihood that it will impact their own values.
In this context we run a Wellbeing program in the Middle Years designed to open and encourage dialogue about respectful relationships between students. Through Positive Education, Pastoral Care and Personal Development lessons we provide information to our students about respecting self and respecting others. In coming weeks, we will be providing information to the parents of our Year 8 students about some new developments proposed for our Sexuality Education program. By actively engaging our students in discussions about gender and power, consent and coercion, development of healthy relationships and sexual ‘norms’ we aim to inform them about issues that they may otherwise be misled about through a range of media. We look forward to sharing these developments with you in the very near future.
Mr James Tamblyn
Head of Middle Years