Introducing the Community
Year 7-12 Secondary Catholic Education School, Renmark, South Australia
St Francis of Assisi College opened to students in Term 1 2022. This innovative initiative of Catholic Education South Australia is in Renmark and provides a high quality learning and growth environment for young people in the Years 7-12.
LBI Foundation has partnered with the school community since 2021, as guided by the Resilient IMPACT capacity building strategy. The intent (or outcomes) and actions of this work is summarised below.
Intent ('What')
Build a Wellbeing and Trauma Responsive St Francis of Assisi Educational Community
As Made Practical Through the Following Co-Designed Outcomes
System
To embed a cohesive, intentional, integrated and common approach (across main site and child care) to:
- Implement a safe, growth-focused and wellbeing-responsive learning environment.
- Deliver personalised student wellbeing and support services, and to meet all students at their individual starting point (needs and context).
- Embed a trauma-responsive and inclusive support culture.
Educators
To embed the awareness, skills and mindsets to:
- Intentionally respond (rather than react) to individual student needs (e.g., trauma, growth, learning, developmental) in a relationship focused and personalised manner.
- Grow student capacity through intentionally delivered social-emotional learning, side-by-side coaching, shared Growth Action Planning processes and through both implicit and explicit learning approaches.
- Empower educators to work together in shared intent.
Students
To provide students high quality resources and content that is focused on:
- Foundational wellbeing and resilience skills.
- Social-emotional learning competencies and curriculum.
- Meta-cognitive and problem solving.
- How to work side-by-side with others in shared intent.
Actions ('How')
Positioning
The support has been personalised to the school and geographic community. The co-designed wellbeing framework has been aligned to the school’s values and the foundations of Integral Ecology. The work has also sought to strengthen the implementation of broader Catholic Education of South Australia’s wellbeing frameworks and learning initiatives (Living Learning Leading and Learn Well), as well as the whole-of-state CESA implementation of the Clarity framework.
Summary Actions
- Entire capacity building initiative founded upon the science, research and practice of intentional practice, as made practical for educational and school settings.
- Implementation underpinned by the Resilient IMPACT capacity building strategy.
- LBI Foundation Community Lead: David Kelly.
- 2021 – LBI supported the staff team to co-design a locally owned wellbeing framework to empower the school to build a wellbeing-and-trauma responsive educational community from ground up. It was made practical through an intentional practice logic model.
- 2022 – The focus has been on making this framework practical and stick in action through the IMPACT Program. All St Francis staff have been IMPACT Trained, and by the end of 2022 the school will have two key members at the IMPACT Coach (or Community Champion level). This has been supported by wrap-around coaching and embedding strategies focused on the “learn-it” to “apply-it”.
- 2023 – Dedicated IMPACT train-the-trainers, focus on taking IMPACT content to explicit teaching with students.
Commentary and Further Information
Local Quote
What Does a "Shared Intent" Mean to Us?
A shared intent at our College sees staff, students and families approaching challenging situations as a team with a shared goal in mind. We seek to have key focussed voices involved in What-What-How conversations that ensures a ‘one-team’ approach to trauma informed practice that delivers great outcomes for our students and their families!
Further information, quotes or pictures to be added here.
