Dear St John the Apostle community, 

Earier this week I joined our Year 5's for their overnight camp at Birrigai.

Firstly, I'd like to thank the Year 5 teachers and Inclusion Assistant, Mrs Ronneberg, for their preparation, supervision and support of our Year 5 students. Every moment of a camp is carefully choreographed, from the meals, to free time activities, the grouping of students in cabins/activities to supporting them in sleeping away from home. Mrs Love, Mrs Ewyk and Mrs Ronneberg were exceptional in ensuring that everything ran smoothly.

I was also impressed with our Year 5 students. They approached camp with excitement and openess to the experience. They embraced each of the learning activities, showed excellent maturity and collaboration and they were respectful of each other and the Birrigai staff who led them. All of the St John's and Birrigai staff commented on this to each other and we were sure to tell the students of their success. They were one of the best groups I have ever taken to a school camp.

I cannot applaud the Birrigai staff enough for their outstanding organisation and their commitment to ensuring that every student was engaged positively. The chosen activities were centred around the gold rush period of Australian history. Students learned through bushwalking, dramatic re-telling, problem-solving and trying activities like panning for gold. The Birrigai Australian history camp is an excellent experience where students learn so much more than they could in the classroom.

I was a very, very proud Principal the day I left the camp.

Bullying No Way!

Today is the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence. The theme for 2023 is 'growing connections'. This theme supports research findings that strong school community connections and social skills are protective factors in the prevention of bullying and help enable positive, help-seeking behaviours in students.

Parents who seek an enrolment at St John the Apostle regularly ask 'how do you tackle bullying at your school?'. Parents want us to work proactively to prevent bullying and respond to it effectively if it occurs.

In recent years we have had great success in shaping our school culture to be one of positive behaviour. We name, teach and acknowledge what it means to belong to St John the Apostle. We also do this in a way that is inclusive of students whose complex needs mean that they require some support to have successful positive relationships and learning behaviours.

This success has allowed us to focus on teaching more about a very unknown and very hidden form of bullying called relational aggression. Relational aggression can begin as early as pre-school and continue all through life. It is a form of bullying that is generally covert and involves friends and peers manipulating the relationships and reputation of one person. There is usually one or two leaders of relational aggression in a peer group and they have some participating followers, who are usually behaving in this way to prevent being a target themselves. 

It's a learnt form of bullying, from a young age. In a primary school setting we know that we are working with young chldren, who don't always understand that their relationally aggressive behaviour is actually bullying behaviour. That's why our approach is to teach about relational aggression and to work with students and families to proactively develop positive ways of building healthy relationships at school.

Below are the slides from our recent and informative parent forum on relational aggression. If you would like to learn more about relational aggression then please feel free to contact me at any time.