Student Wellbeing at Portside

If you are a student needing support or a parent needing support for your child please contact our Student Wellbeing team via email studentwellbeing@portside.sa.edu.au

Restorative Practices and KARR

Relationships are the heartbeat that thread us together at Portside. We believe that God created us for relationships, and that His grace and love for us can be shown through our relationships with those around us. We use restorative practice to help us in this. Restorative practices helps to establish a culture that is supportive and respectful, helping students be accountable for their actions. It empowers individuals to repair harm that may have been caused  to others or self through their actions. We partner this with our KARR framework.

KARR stands for Kindness, Agency, Respect and Responsiveness. KARR supports our restorative approach in modelling how we can use kindness in our words and actions, how we can have agency over our choices and be responsible for them, how we can show respect even in challenging times, and how we can be responsive by connecting and engaging with those around us in healthy ways. This all happens through zones of regulation. When we are regulated and feeling calm we are able to engage in our learning and with others around us. When we become dysregulated, we are feeling big emotions or withdraw, both of which stop us from engaging in the world around us. 

Restorative practices have been highly successful in helping our young people understand natural consequences and the responsibilities of life. We all know that relationships can be hard and that everyone experiences conflict, frustration and disappointment at times. Through Restorative practices and KARR we are able to maintain a safe and supportive environment where healthy relationships can be built and every individual can flourish. 

Social and Emotional Learning

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is explicitly taught throughout our college. Each fortnight, students across the college have a focus of learning and developing a new disposition and skill to help build their SEL.  These learning dispositions are based on the Habits of Mind by Art Costa and Bena Kallick. In addition to exploring this in care group classes, students also engage in SEL lessons with skilled teachers who teach a variety of strategies to support developmental needs, building self-awareness and supporting them in outworking KARR and Restorative practices in their everyday. 

Wellbeing Centre

Student wellbeing is a central part of our everyday process at the College. At Portside our main aim is to make sure that students are regulated, feel safe and are able to engage with their learning and connecting with others. Our wellbeing center helps us to facilitate, social skill groups including ‘What’s the Buzz?’, SEL learning, restorative conversations, counselling and a safe place for students to regulate. 

The wellbeing team partner with the students and teachers in work with the students to learn  when they are starting to dysregulate (we call that yellow zone) and give them strategies of how to regulate. When this behaviour gets more intense and they can not regulate on their own we call that the orange zone. This is where they need an adult to step in and help them. We then have the red zone which is dangerous dysregulation, where they are not able to control their actions or reactions at all. .

The wellbeing team are able to support students across the college in co-regulation, providing counselling and referrals to outside organisations, and offering strategies to small groups and individuals. We also provide parenting and family support through one-on-one conversations and online webinars, knowing that it is a privilege to walk alongside students and families, to truly help equip students for life. 

For out of hours assistance, please see the resource list below: