Dear St John's families,

This week we welcomed Mr Ian Luscombe, behaviour consultant from Behaveability, whom we engage each term to review, coach and advise us on how we support positive behaviour for learning from K-6.

Whenever Mr Luscombe is at our school he provides a great deal of positive feedback about the systems and processes we have in place. He is always very impressed with the general behaviour of our students and the way that staff assist students to return to positive behaviour when they have become off task, etc. I would like to thank our staff for their teamwork in supporting every student to be positively engaged in their learning.

Teaching Child Safety (Part 3)

Previously I have mentioned that there are two main themes that are repeatedly talked about throughout the Protective Behaviours program we teach:

I outlined a few key concepts from the first theme:

• Safety is a continuum - safety is not a binary. We often accept some risk when it is fun and we have some control over the situation, e.g. watching a scary movie.
• Early warning signs - our bodies sometimes give us signs that we are feeling at risk or unsafe, e.g. butterflies.
• Unsafe secrets -  are those that my parents don't know, feel 'wrong' or 'unsafe', where somebody might get hurt. Safe secrets, or 'surprises', are okay because no one will get hurt and usually the right people know about it.
• Public vs private -  we have private information, private spaces, private clothing (underwear), private parts to our bodies. These should never be touched or shown to anyone without our permission and for a good reason.
• Degrees of personal space - we have individual personal space bubbles and different ways we have contact with people depending on our relationship with them, e.g. a hug for parents and a wave for the neighbour.

As part of our second theme we teach students to plan a safety network. This is a

group of people that they can go to when they need help. We get them to write this onto an outline of a hand. When deciding on people to be on their network we ask them to consider people they can rely on, i.e. are available (they see regularly), will listen and believe them and will likely take action if needed. We suggest that they:

It's great to have this network. The next concept we teach is persistence. We teach students that sometimes they will go to a person on their network to ask for assistance and they may not get the response or help they need at that time. It may be that the person is away, they are unusually very busy or they may not understand how important it is to them. We need to be persistent. Either go back to them later and seek their help, or, if the matter is urgent, go to another person on the safety network. Seeking help can sometimes require persistence. We tell them to never give up. Someone will help.

Next week I will finish this series with how we put this all together into action.

If you want to know more of how you can help your child understand how to stay safe  I encourage you to read the ACT Government's Protecting Your Kids: Personal Safety Education for Parents. 

Enrolment Period Closing Soon!

The 2025 Enrolment Period is closing soon. If you have a child ready for Kindergarten next year now is the time to submit an enrolment form. If your child is heading to Year 7 next year then please submit your enrolment form for SFX within the enrolment window to ensure your child will have a place there.

I have had the opportunity to finish the week on an overnight retreat with a group of fellow Principals. In these moments I am always grateful for working in a community where I get to include prayer, reflection and Eucharist as part of my vocation.

I hope you have a lovely long weekend.

Matthew Garton

Principal