During Term 3, Year 7 students took part in an eight-week program on Friendships and Bullying called “Peace pack”. This program was developed at Flinders University, has been researched worldwide, and was adapted to fit Concordia’s context by our hardworking Year 7 teaching team.

Lessons covered self-concept and resilience, types of bullying and how to respond, and conflict management. Students created a “Peacepack Wall” of key ideas in Murtoa, and received certificates of completion in a graduation ceremony.

After the program, students were asked “What was the most helpful thing you learnt?”

Answers included:

• Excluding is a type of bullying.
• To know what bullying is and what is just banter.
• That there are multiple ways of dealing with it.
• How to stand up for myself. I'm not a person with a lot of self-confidence. This helped.
• I learnt resilience in tough situations and that walking away can be the best option.
• It is important to learn multiple ways to stop / prevent bullying and not to be afraid to do the right thing.
• To always tell someone so that the issues can be dealt with even if you're too scared or embarrassed.
• That there are always people that will help you.
• That if there’s bullying happening, we could just go to Rachael, our Counsellor. We can just go talk to her about it, and see what she thinks.
• How different people solve an argument.
• I learnt about the bystander effect - how if someone is struggling in front of a big group, people are less likely to help… we need to be the people to step in.

Dr Catherine Johnson
Researcher in Residence