Sam Pollock, Senior Mistress, explains the new pastoral care timetable, which allows the pastoral team to introduce a theme for the week and follow it up over several days.
The school day starts with half an hour of dedicated pastoral care time, which is invaluable to the Pastoral Care team. On Monday morning, we have three separate year group assemblies (Years 3 and 4, Years 5 and 6, and Years 7 and 8) at which we set the pastoral focus for the week. We then follow this theme up on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at our Learning4Life lessons, which is our cutting-edge SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural) programme. We all come together for an assembly on Thursday morning and Friday morning form time gives tutors and pupils time together.
Our friendship theme this term has given us the opportunity to explore the thoughts and feeling of others as well as ensuring the pupils know who to turn to in times of trouble. Highlights of the term so far were the exciting 3D anti-bullying interactive workshop which allowed our Year 6 pupils to put themselves into the shoes of someone being bullied, and to think about why bullying behaviour may happen. Another highlight was the visit from the up-and-coming singer Georgie Kay who, as well as performing, delivered an inspiring talk on her own experience of cyber-bullying. This enabled our pupils guard against what they post online but also how they might deal with anything that worried them in the online world.
As ever, the world of children's mental health is at the forefront in the media. Tim Pitman (Head of Learning4Life and SMSC) and I stay on top of all the most recent advice for schools and recently attended a wellbeing conference at Seaford College on the worrying trends in children's mental health and wellbeing. One quote I came away with was 'start with kindness and encourage adventure' and it made me think of Westbourne House: somewhere where everybody looks out for each other, somewhere where we treat others with respect and somewhere which encourages a breadth of opportunity in order that children can go on to live happy, positive lives.
The next half of term will focus on developing good friendships and teamwork. We will be thinking about being inclusive and perfecting our good manners!
