Care and Support of Students

a problem-solving and decision-making orientation to pastoral care

We recognise the critical role that schools must play, in partnership with parents and the community, to ensure that all-round development is appropriately supported. The support required to ensure interpersonal, social, emotional, physical, moral/spiritual and cognitive growth requires that we attend to a number of elements, including everyday interactions with teachers and peers, more challenging contexts such as King Island, final exams and performances, and group and teamwork with requirements for responsibility and accountability.

Everything we do, both at school and during the rest of our lives, is simultaneously an opportunity to make decisions that will influence the path we take, the outcomes we make, and to develop our capacity to make informed decisions.

It is the responsibility of this school to ensure the opportunities for learning are maximised, directed and supported. There is no meaningful separation of academic and 'pastoral care'. Students can only make optimum progress in an environment where they are encouraged and supported to make strong connections with the adults who hold responsibility for each student's development. Students must have significant opportunity to identify with the adults in shared commitment to the mission and goals of the school.

It is the responsibility of all teachers to be non-judgmental and respectful of individual students, to hold high expectations of behaviour and achievement, to set contexts with expectations of collaboration and participation and to demonstrate equity, fairness and respect in every context and interaction.

The role of the House Teacher or Learning Mentor, which comes with more significant and a higher level of responsibility toward each student who is a member of the group, is critical within pastoral care. This role is one of mentor, coach, advocate, counsellor. Besides strong connection, a high level of trust is required and it is the responsibility of the person fulfilling that role to develop trust through day-to-day interactions, conversations, observations and discussions where decision making is 'the main agenda'.

The role is to help make sense of the complexity of everyday emotions, needs and demands and, importantly, to develop and constantly build capacity. The orientation of any interaction must be a problem-solving and decision-making one, together with the support, belief and trust that is necessary.

The context of the work of the mentor, coach, advocate, counsellor occurs in meetings, the classroom, study sessions and in a myriad of less formal opportunities on the sports ground, the house music performance or rehearsal which are less formal, less structured, but no less important.

The business of this collaboration between Learning Mentor/House Teacher and student is to work in those areas where critical capacity and competency are to be developed:

1. High aspirations

• Each student, as an investor in their own future, must become the principal investor. Mentors must support students to forge ambitions and aspirations about identity and career.

• The student must be assisted to set achievable goals and must come to understand the value of setting goals and developing a sense of direction and purpose.

• Goal setting and optimum progress toward those goals are particularly important in the critical building blocks of learning, such as the development of literacy skills.

2. Deep engagement

• Emphasis is placed on the importance of effort, with awareness that effort is discretionary. To put little effort into something is still a decision.

• We encourage purposeful development of self-regulation and the exercise of influence over motivation, thought process, emotions and patterns of behaviour.

3. Ambitious capability

• Capability refers to the potential for optimum development in what we believe we can do in the future, with proper instruction, support and coaching. It relates to what we believe we can learn to do differently from ability, which is what we can do at present. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how students think, behave and affect behaviour and motivation.

• A necessary competency is the ability to evaluate and to self-assess with accuracy. Students must be helped to build the skills of self-assessment, to learn to assess their own work and that of peers. Students must also develop the capacity to manage their learning and to evaluate strategies for learning.

• Failures and challenges are used deliberately to promote growth.

We subscribe to a view that emphasises proactive and self-regulating behaviour rather than behaviour that is reactive and controlled by biological or environmental forces. Classroom Teachers, Learning Mentors and House Teachers are instrumental in supporting students to become independent in thought, judgment and action, and to be interdependent. Interdependence is at the heart of the social outcomes of this school because it concerns relations with other individuals, groups and the wider community.