Gathered in CU1 every Monday lunch sit our Year 11 Peer Support Leaders for 2021. These leaders are preparing in feedback/feedforward meetings for the weekly Friday morning homeroom visits to their assigned Year 7 Peer Support Homeroom coming Friday 12th March 2021.
These leaders have been attending in-school trainings during December 2020 and followed by afterschool workshops in February 2021. Now, all 28 leaders are working hard in 5 different groups for the 5 homerooms and are excited to be given the opportunity to be mentoring their younger peers.
Peer Support leaders act as ‘big brothers and sisters’ to our Year 7 Homerooms so the youngest members of our school community can settle better into the new environment. This program has been an important part of Sancta Maria for many years as it assists in the building of positive friendships, growth mindsets orientated leading skills and problem solving.
For the first session, the focus is Introductions and Getting to Know You, where the key message of ‘everyone is different, so everyone is interesting’ is emphasized.
Through these visits, we hope the Year 7 students can continue learning about each other and maintain these newly built friendships on their journey at school while holding several fond memories of it. Our student leaders along the way will also have the opportunity to serve and develop relationships with our younger peers.
There are several fun activities and well-thought sessions that are in store for the Year 7 Peer Support Homeroom and – of course – the anticipated Year 7 Peer Support sing off held later in the year. We look forward to these so bring on the start of Year 11 Peer Support!!
Teresa Croker
