Students of self-esteem

By Monique Ebrington
YARRA Junction Primary School students took a look in the mirror and in magazines for a lesson in self-esteem.
Yarra Junction primary’s Grade 6 girls spent eight weeks participating in the school’s first year of The Body Think program.
The program, funded through a grant from the Shire of Yarra Ranges, had the girls working on self-esteem issues and discovering that some media images can be misleading.
Welfare Co-ordinator Glenda Jewell said that the funding has been great as the program had built student esteem and confidence.
“It’s been great to get the grant as it has given us the foundation skills to run with it every year,” Mrs Jewell said.
“The program has definitely got the girls to start thinking that sometimes what you see, particularly when it comes to the media, isn’t real.”
The school has been working with The Butterfly Foundation and The Dove Foundation to encourage the girls to work on their own self-esteem, explore how to build up each other’s self-esteem and look at how some images in the media are digitally enhanced.
“It was great for the girls to know it is OK to take a compliment, it is OK to say I’m good at something and to be able to give a compliment to someone else,” Mrs Jewell said. Grade 6 student Maddie said that she had enjoyed making an edible face mask and had learnt a lot as part of the program.
“We learnt that to retrain our brain and not think that we’re not pretty just because of the pictures on TV,” Maddie said.
Mrs Jewell said the girls, their mothers and female staff members had a special dinner in the school’s new stadium to celebrate the completion of The Body Think program on Wednesday 17 June.
“We invited all the female staff members because we want a whole school approach to what was learnt in the program,” she said.
“It really was very beneficial to the girls and we look forward to running it again with next year’s Grade 6 girls."