Project Rockit delivered their “DOT.COM” presentation to the Year 8s on Tuesday as part of our Year 8 Wellbeing Day. The focus for this day was challenging bullying, judgement and social labels through teaching the students strategies to stand up for themselves and others to build peer support in online spaces. The presenters addressed social factors such as standing out versus fitting in, relationship ethics, privacy and consent and celebrating diversity. The Project Rockit team explored how students could manage their digital wellbeing and discussed ways to foster healthy relationships on and offline.
The day was fun, engaging and honest. The young presenters were well received by the Year 8s who encouraged them to build empathy, self-awareness and resilience by allowing a space to reflect on past behaviour and find new ways to foster connection with their peers. Students were reminded that trusting someone now doesn’t mean they’ll be trustworthy forever. They were supplied with practical information about how to respond and report hate accounts, public shaming and photo leaks. A lot of the strategies gave them suggestions about how they could stand up, call out the behaviour and say no with confidence.
Back in the classroom in Lesson 4, the Pastoral classes worked through some scenarios covering topics such as exclusion, teasing, and changing friendships. The students were able to put some of the ideas and techniques that they learnt into practice when developing their responses.