Carey’s Student Wellbeing Framework holds Relational Practices at its core: building a relationship and, where necessary, knowing how to restore it to a healthy place. It is a framework that encourages students to step from their comfort zone and to be challenged, with the understanding that progress will involve a degree of struggle. All year levels have programs that focus on our Carey Learner Attributes within the domain of Relationships, including the student experience at Year 7 with a deliberate path that invites students to ‘Connect, Collaborate and Communicate’.
The Year 7 student cohort at Carey is a broad mix, arriving from both Donvale and Kew campuses and from many local primary schools. It is a time of great change as students consolidate old friendships and begin to forge new friendships in their year level of 260 students. The focus on social connection is prioritised in planning the programs. The placement of students with a designated class teacher for several core subjects, together with the decision that the class travels with their teacher to our Camp Toonallook in Term 1, provides an ideal pathway for social development. It is an environment where most will recognise similarities to their primary experience, yet is deliberately inclusive of activities and routines that are new. It is a safe space to learn that continues to evolve as the year rolls out. In Term 3, Year 7 students will again be on camp, but this time it will be exploring a specific environment in Victoria with a wider group of students outside of their class group. It is the right time for further challenge.
Building positive relationships, whether that be amongst peers or between staff and students, remains a key to a student’s engagement. We will continue to develop pathways at all levels that find that balance between familiarity and discomfort that enables each individual to grow.
Peter Robson
Deputy Principal – Wellbeing
