How does our school encourage the active participation and contribution of students’ families and relevant community agencies to support online SEL development?

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Contents

Family Participation: 

  • Schools that encourage the active participation of students’ families recognise that most student online behaviour occurs at home. Addressing safer and positive behaviour online is the responsibility of the whole-school community. Creating linkages with relevant health, educational and community agencies that provide services to students and their families will support school action.
  • The eSafety Toolkit for School’s Engage resources provide strategies to engage the whole school community and create a shared understanding of, and responsibility for, online safety.
  • The EEF’s Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning Guidance Report helps school leaders review and act on their school’s approach to engaging parents.
  • The Australian Government, Department of Education’s “Family-School Partnerships Framework” was developed to promote and guide partnership building. For each key dimension there is a set of suggested strategies that can be used to support school communities in building and improving their family-school partnership. The assessment tool can help schools identify areas of strength and focus areas for further work.
  • Families can play an important role in monitoring their child’s online behaviour and communicating with their child about positive and safer behaviour online. Given the disparities in technological knowledge among students and their parents or carers, providing families with opportunities to learn about the latest devices and their positive and negative uses, is a crucial component of effective family communication. Examples of opportunities may include*:
    • Providing families with information about children’s online SEL, how this content connects to other learning areas, and how they can support their online knowledge and skill development at home.
    • Assigning online homework SEL activities that involve families.
    • Organising workshops to help families meet students’ online SEL needs in appropriate ways. BeYou’s Organising Speakers Guide has some advice on what to consider before inviting a speaker to conduct a workshop at your school. Choose speakers who are a Trusted eSafety Provider (TEP) who meet the eSafety Commissioner’s standards and are up-to-date with the latest online safety research, trends and online practices.

*Adapted from the CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL , TOOL: Strategies for Establishing School Family Partnerships

Community Participation

  • Working to create and strengthen links with relevant health, education and community agencies will help to support the schools’ action to support online SEL development
  • Due to the social, psychological, emotional, physical and academic effects associated with negative online incidents, it is imperative to build and maintain strong partnerships with relevant professionals both within the school, such as student services teams, and external to the school, for example, social workers, youth workers, clinical psychologists, mental health agencies. The eSafety Commissioner’s office has compiled the Online Safety and Wellbeing Directory with links to information and support.
  • Forming partnerships with IT professionals is also useful to help inform school action to address online SEL behaviours. This can help schools, students and families keep apprised of technological development and the implications of this for online behaviour.
  • Links can also be formed with agencies such as LegalAID WA and their R U Legal? Program. This program includes learning opportunities  for young people, a fact sheet for parents, legal advice for about sexting, image-based abuse, filming young people fighting, and cyberbullying. It also includes information about the legal consequences if young people break these laws.
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