Growing with Gratitude

CHAPTER 6Encourage students to lead

In 2020, Brenton Willson — head of wellbeing at Kilkenny Primary School in Adelaide — and his team set about re-evaluating their school values. But this time things were going to be different. They wanted to build a school culture that was driven by the students — something that hadn't been done before. This led to a set of behaviours that became known as the Caring Agreements.

The Caring Agreements

Brenton explains:

Our year 3 to 7s participated in a series of forums. The forums involved students coming up with 10 behaviours they wanted to be embedded at the school.

The 10 behaviours that the students came up with are known as the Caring Agreements. We felt this was a brilliant way to hand over ownership and promote a sense of belonging.

Once the Caring Agreements had been established, they had a competition. Their year 6 and 7 students formed groups of three to four and each group designed a character based on one of the Caring Agreements. They also wrote a short bio on each character, featuring its strengths. The entries were voted on by students and five winners were named. The five winning characters — which they named The Kilkenny Crew — now form their school's values, which are a key part of the school's wellbeing program (see figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1: Student hand-drawn characters of the Kilkenny Crew

The Kilkenny Way

Kilkenny ...