Senior students at St Cecilia’s Catholic School at Balgowlah are extending the traditional peer support they give to younger students to focus on the issue of cyber awareness.
St Cecilia’s runs a weekly school-wide program developed in conjunction with Peer Support Australia to help with resilience and assertiveness that also extends to cyber awareness, to encourage students to tackle technology in a positive way.
Each week, senior students at St Cecilia’s who have been trained to facilitate lessons, help younger children develop practical skills with a focus on problem solving.
“St Cecilia’s has a contemporary mindset in educating students in a world where blogs, tweets, texts and emails are superseding more traditional forms of communication,” said St Cecilia’s Principal Suellen Garey.
“We need to empower students to help them deal with issues that may arise on social media and online and give them the personal skills needed to enhance their own social and emotional wellbeing.”
At St John’s Catholic School at Narraweena, school librarian Kylie Cardow has developed an innovative program to encourage the social and emotional wellbeing of children.
The Family Story Investigation Project, dubbed FSI, encourages families to regularly read together, with children acting as “reading agents” and complete reading investigations on books of interest with an adult at home before completing a log to take to school.
Children who reach time targets or who complete a review are eligible for prize draws, special achievement badges and certificates.
“More than 200 children have so far entered the FSI program and it is providing encouragement for children to borrow from our library and for parents to be engaged in reading with their children,” said Kylie.