“Together we are stronger” “Belonging” “Wellbeing” “Community”
This is our final blog post for Semester 1.
Over the year so far, we have investigated our understanding of belonging to strong communities. We have look at the big ideas of:
- Belonging
- What are communities?
- Which communities we belong to
- What makes an Australian?
- Elimination of Racial Discrimination
- What are rights? What rights do children have? Why are they important?
- What kind of groups make up our community? (demographics)
- Democracy, citizenship, visas, statelessness
- How decisions are made and who gets to make decisions
- How can we ‘be brave and make change’?
Over the last fortnight, we have investigated some of these questions at a closer level- in our Neighbourhood. What does it mean to belong to this community? What rights do we have as members of this community? How do we respect each other and why is it important?
Here are some of our reflections from this learning:
- What is respect?
Max A: Respect is being polite to someone: not interrupting someone, focussing on that person and if you do something wrong to someone and you didn’t mean to do it you say sorry.
Mia: Adding on to Max, being polite is using your manners. That means not being rude or snatching and calling people mean names. You ask nicely for things by saying please and thank you.
Charlie: I would also like to add onto Max. You can also say ‘excuse me’ so that the person knows you want to talk to them. You can wait your turn.
Robert: Respect is a feeling that tells you ‘this person has done things for you that you appreciate’. You can acknowledge them by giving them respect.
Elias: Respect is helping people when they’re hurt and standing up for them in times when they’re in trouble.
Alina: You can respect yourself. When I feel upset if I do something really mean to someone or accidentally hurt them. I respect myself by taking some deep breaths, realise it was the wrong thing to do and go and say sorry. Sometimes if someone’s really annoyed at you, you feel really upset but you know that apologising is the right thing to do.
- What does respect look, sound like, feel like?
Sotir: When you’re being respected you feel safe when you’re at school, home or anywhere else.
Coco: Respect looks like someone playing with you and taking care of you. You feel welcomed into their community. It sounds like people running and having fun.
Undram: Adding onto Sotir, you feel comfortable like no one is threatening you to do something you don’t want to do.
Gigi: Respect sounds like someone using the word ‘welcome’, saying ‘sorry’ and ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon.
- How does being respectful contribute to our community?
Evie M: If someone is being respectful to someone, other people know that person is nice and they want to be friends with them. If everyone tries to be nice then there won’t be fights and arguments.
Evie H: Respect contributes to the community by, say, someone new in the community you can welcome them. You can acknowledge them and say ‘welcome’. It also contributes by making people feel like they belong. You can do this by trying to make friends.
Ayshe: I think that a way of being respectful and contributing to the community is that if someone’s being nice to someone they feel good and they go and be nice to someone else. It can have a domino effect. Then you have a happy community.
E: I have an example of ‘pay it forward’. Say if you couldn’t afford clothing you really need and then someone else bought it for you, you would pay it forward by doing that for someone else.
Robert: I have made a quote about this. “When I befriend one person, I befriend a million”.
Through learning about respect, we are thinking of ways that we can change our behaviour. Alina is now helping with dinner and helps with things like compost and setting up breakfast. E has been trying to be more respectful by making other people feel good about themselves and asking questions about how people identify and how they like to be talked about (what gender they are). This helps people feel like they belong.