The VI Program – our new boarding wellbeing program
It’s an exciting year for our boarders. Not only have our boarding girls and boys moved into their new state-of-the-art co-educational Boarding House, Guildford Grammar School has also introduced our new wellbeing initiative – the VI Program – the journey of you. The comprehensive program will ensure we provide tailored and effective pastoral care and wellbeing support for all our boarders throughout their time in boarding.
VI in Latin has two meanings. In Roman numerals it means six and represents the important steps our boarders take along their journey from children in Year 7, to young adults in Year 12. VI is also translated as ‘you’ and represents the crucial role we all play in managing our own lives with our personal wellbeing sitting at the centre of this. The VI Program helps to prepare our boarders with the social and emotional skills they need to succeed in a complex and challenging world.
The VI Program aims to achieve the following:
- Provides a highly structured and progressive development map that enables our boarders to think, act and reflect on who they want to become as people once they leave the School.
- Engages students in activities that promote talking, listening, and understanding their own and other people’s ideas and emotions.
- Creates a weekly ‘digital-free’ environment where communication is achieved through person-to-person interaction to benefit our boarding community.
- Promotes self-confidence by presenting a series of age-specific challenges with scaffolded support to help our students overcome these obstacles.
- Encourages boarders to ‘own’ their personal journey and to step outside their comfort zone so they can learn about themselves in preparation for life after school.
As part of the VI Program, every boarder will engage with a different wellbeing-centered theme each year. These themes will be explored, practiced and reflected upon every week and include:
- Year 7: Looking In
- Year 8: Looking Out
- Year 9: Venturing Out
- Year 10: Helping Out
- Year 11: Stepping Out
- Year 12: Looking Back
As part of the program, students will continually join in discussions designed to open and explore the theories that underpin the wellbeing concepts they explore each year. They will take part in activities that help students practice wellbeing and enable them to employ the strategies they have learned in their discussion sessions. This will be supported by reflections, giving students the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and how they have applied it to their lives recently.
Each term’s workshops, activities and reflections are designed to be fun, practical and creative. We look forward to seeing what our boarders get up to each term to support their health and wellbeing as they begin the journey of you.
