Chaplain's Chat

It is my privilege to speak into the wellbeing space and the areas that Sharon Morton and myself have been involved in as DE Chaplains so far this year.

Duke of Edinburgh

Mrs Morton completed her training to be an Award Leader. The two of us support our Duke of Ed participants in achieving their Award. We now have 28 active participants, 14 who are in DE and 13 of those in DE registered this year. We will now be organising an overnight hike for participants which will go towards their Award, and a virtual journey for those unable to attend the camp. This is a great opportunity for our students and I am excited to see so many students in DE giving it a go.

ACC Connect

Chess Club, Minecraft Club and our daily Lunch Teleconference have continued this year. Each has a good group of students who are regularly attending. Solomon and Xander, two of our students in our DE Chess Club, represented ACC in a Schools Chess Competition in Perth and they both finished in the top 20 from 167 participants. In Minecraft Club we had a lighthouse building competition. The creativity in these builds were incredible.

Student Leadership

Student Leaders Kate and Charlee have been leading a weekly breakout room in our Lunch Teleconference called JOLT which stands for Jesus Over Lunch Time. I have been attending it and they have done a great job preparing for it and leading it. Regularly our student leaders have been posting announcements through their Secondary PC Courses with announcements for Wacky Wednesday, Thankful Thursday & Fun Friday, as well as announcements in the ACC Connect Course. We have an amazing student leadership team.

Safety

Sharon and I are passionate about DE being a safe place for our students. We have many students who enrol with us for mental health reasons, including students that experience debilitating anxiety and students who haven’t felt safe in their previous schools. Some students do benefit from having a safety plan; this is something I am involved in. Sharon and I do meet with some students regularly, but more often than not, we support students in the process of getting linked into external support services, when it becomes evident that the student would benefit from speaking to a mental health professional.