Hello friends, 

We regularly tell our Mooroolbark College students that we care about them. Despite the importance of doing their best with school work, their overall wellbeing is of much more importance to us. We have had recent events within the College to emphasise this. 

Our Harmony Day school assembly had a strong focus on Mooroolbark College needing to be a caring community, especially for those of us who perhaps find life hard at times. This includes our indigenous, refugee background and LGBQIT+ students, but we need to remember that every single student who walks through our front gate could be fighting internal battles that we know nothing about. As Robin Willams said so clearly, “Be Kind Always”.  I would love that to be our college mantra that every student repeated silently as they walked through the school gate…. “Today I will be kind always”. 

 

In the last fortnight of Term1, every Year 7 student also participated in a wellbeing session with the other students from their house cluster (around 15 -20 students each time) to talk about how they have settled into school and then the importance of treating everyone with kindness and respect. It was emphasised to them the important role they each play in preventing bullying and ensuring all students feel safe at school. At our college we take a strong stand on bullying and in particular racist and homophobic language and put downs. We know that pain that those sort of comments cause and there is absolutely no place for them at our college. 

 

As I said at the start, we do care about every one of our students and their wellbeing. Your child’s mental health and wellbeing is our priority and we want to continue to provide quality welfare support to our students. If you have any concerns at all about your child then please contact your child’s coordinator or one of the wellbeing team below. We are available to parents via phone or text. Your child can also contact us directly by knocking on the door of our office. We are here to support you. 

 

John Nichol  

Well-Being Leader