To provide the best opportunities for all students to achieve their full potential, Catholic school communities seek to provide a comprehensive curriculum with strong pedagogical understandings and evidence-informed practices to personalise learning and engage young people at a level appropriate to their knowledge, skill and ability. (Horizons of Hope, CEM, 2017)

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To do this St. Patrick’s has clear expectations in regard to the teaching of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Each class is expected to explicitly teach SEL in a 45- 60 minute lesson per week.  To do this the school uses 3 approaches including a new approach for St Patrick’s being the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) program as the main source of content for SEL lessons.

 

This program aims to support students develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. The RRRR program links with the Australian curriculum and ensures that students are being consistently taught the expected outcomes across their schooling at St Patrick’s.

 

Secondly we use resources obtained from the trauma informed practices of the Berry Street Education Model particularly in the areas of self regulation and teacher instruction/ co-regulation skills. The whole school was trained in these practices over 2017, 2018 and 2019.

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The third source of information for the successful teaching of SEL at St Patrick’s is the use of the Zones of Regulation program. This program is utilised by many external specialists including Occupational Therapists and Speech Pathologists. St Patrick’s utilises this program to ensure that there is a common language among the school and external professionals in reference to emotions and emotional regulation tools. It supports students to hear consistently that all people have emotions, there are no good or bad emotions, and all people need tools and/ or support to regulate their emotions sometimes.

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The RRRR explicit learning program falls under the whole school approach of Respectful Relationships (RR). St Patrick’s is in our first Year of RR and is under the mentorship of Assumption College who also use these methodologies and the RRRR program across all year levels. St Patrick’s has combined the methodologies of Respectful Relationships and our involvement in the Berry Street Education Model to address the needs of the St Patrick’s community.

 

St. Patrick believes in nurturing student wellbeing in order for all students to engage in their learning and inevitably flourish. The school system targets wellbeing and Social Emotional Learning at an individual, class and whole school level.

 

“Engaged learners have a positive sense of identity, connection with their peers and community. They are invested in learning in and beyond the classroom. This enables them to flourish and grow in confidence as curious, optimistic and inspired knowledge-builders, problem-solvers, conceptual thinkers and self-motivated learners.” Horizons of Hope, CEM, 2017