It’s all about connections
There’s no mystery to good pastoral care – at its best it means that students are well connected with peers and teachers. They feel that they belong.
While we can’t compel friendships, we can enable connections through effective leadership structures and practices. Such connections are fostered at Santa Sabina where the Dominican pillar of community is fundamental to who we are and how we operate.
Our structures that promote community are designed with the age and stage of each student’s personal and academic development in mind. They involve Houses, homerooms and dedicated classroom teachers.
All students belong to a House family, helping them make friendships across all ages. They grow in both their formal pastoral connections of homeroom and House as well as through their co-curricular participation and enjoyment of community events.
Students are at the heart of our approach to pastoral care and at the soul of our teaching and learning. They co-construct with teachers their code of conduct, and a number of other policies that shape them. They contribute to the ongoing strategy of the College.
Our pastoral care program is evidence-based and tailored to each stage of the personal, academic, spiritual and physical development of our students. They are known at every stage:
- Prep to Year 4 on the Primary Years Del Monte Campus have their classroom teacher as their advocate and guide for their holistic development.
- Years 5-6 in Gioia House also have their classroom teacher as their advocate and guide for their holistic development.
- Secondary Years 7-12 are organised into vertical homerooms with their homeroom teacher as their mentor and advocate.
All students have access to counselling services provided by our two in-house clinical psychologists. Our Director of Students and Wellbeing 7-12, Assistant Head of Gioia House and Pastoral Care Coordinator P-4 work together and across the College to help ensure a seamless approach to pastoral care at Santa Sabina College.
