Drugs, suicide and bullying are the biggest fears of young Territorians, a national survey has found*.
How to beat these fears and build resilient and stable kids will be the focus of next week’s NT Council of Government School Organisations Conference for parents and teachers.
Clinical psychologist and author of Beating Bullies, Dr Andew Fuller will look at the skills kids need to live happy and rich lives.
“It focuses on resilience and the importance of compassion, empathy, imagination and being fun,” Dr Fuller said.
“We look at the brain systems and how they can be optimised for learning and how it’s important to teach children at a young age so they avoid some the pitfalls in life.
“A lot of my programs work with kids because they’re interactive, game-based and fun.”
Dr Fuller will be joined by UK Values Education Founder Dr Neil Hawkes, who’ll look at the positive impacts of education led by social values such as responsibility, respect and tolerance.
“It’s not so much of a program, but a philosophy that has had transformational results on the school learning of children,” Dr Hawkes said.
“I hope to encourage the importance of these values in education so that children’s learning can be enhanced and they have a solid platform from which to build their lives.”
The forward-thinking system was adopted by UNICEF through the collaboration of Living Values and underpinned the Australian Government’s introduction of Values Education in schools.
Dr Hawkes’ presentation is one of four keynote addresses at the two-day COGSO Conference from 16 to 17 September at SKYCITY Casino Darwin.
Dr Andrew Fuller is available for interviews now, prior to the conference.
Media are welcome to attend all events at the conference, which gets underway at 9am on Thursday, 16 September.
For more information on the conference and workshops visit www.ntcogso.org.au.
*Source: Youth Survey 2009 – NT, Mission Australia.
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