From Assistant Principals
04 March By Sharon Lehtonen, Assistant Principal - Catholic School Culture
Religious Education Learning Area Update
You may have noticed a shift in the nature of Religious Education (RE) content from Yrs7-10. In response to our commitment to the Respectful Relationships program being rolled out throughout Victorian schools, Damascus College has chosen to embed this content within both our RE curriculum and Health and Human Development. This means we are able to position a number of very challenging topics across both learning areas, offering students a broad Catholic lens through which to examine issues such as gendered violence, challenges to mental health, consent, navigating friendships, issues of personal wellbeing, diversity and identity formation.
The result is that traditional RE content is recontextualised to explore the relevance of Catholic faith within our contemporary world. Catholic Education of Ballarat (CEOB) are in the process of writing a document – Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and The Catholic Tradition - outlining this pastoral and pedagogical approach and we look forward to being able to share this with you later in the year.
Please keep this change of content focus on your radar. We hope it fosters open and valuable discussion of these timely issues with parents and our students’ broader support networks.