Siehannah continues to shine
Earlier in the year, the Confident Girls Foundation, helped the MacFarlane Diamonds make their way to Darwin for the Indigenous Netball Carnival.
For Siehannah, who won the 13 and under Rising Star award and was nominated for the Budgies representative team, there has been a huge change in her behaviour all thanks to this trip!
Her teacher and coach Hannah, who initially reached out to the Foundation to ask for assistance, shared with the Foundation how the team and Siehannah are going since the carnival in July.
“When I first started working with these girls they were disengaged from their school and had lots of social problems involving peer pressure and conflict. All the girls are Indigenous and were identified by the school as needing extra support in these areas.
They had very low attendance, showed disrespect towards each other and themselves. When at school they were often in trouble and would rarely participate in class discussions. Many of these girls come from a history of trauma and broken families.
This year I encouraged the girls to join the school’s netball team and that’s how the MacFarlane Diamonds were formed.
The expectations of the girls in the were good behaviour at school and attendance of 80%. They started coming to school more regularly.
Siehannah was one of these girls – and her attendance and attitude at school have only continued to improve since returning from the Darwin trip. Her classroom teacher, other staff and students have noticed and commented on the incredible improvement in her self-esteem, engagement and positive attitude at school.
She now identifies herself as a leader and a role model to other students and steps in when other students are being bullied, as well as showing more respect for herself, and others, including staff.
She is a leader at netball training. She has changed from someone who might have mocked others on the team to be the first one to say ‘keep it up’ or ‘try it again’.
She is incredibly fair and will quickly apologise or help another player. When we drop the girls home after netball Siehannah is full of encouragement amongst the girls saying “Hey- make sure you come to school tomorrow!”
When we were recently discussing what a role model is, and aspects of role models the girls all identified traits such as playing sport, keeping your body healthy, coming to school, sticking up for other people- they were shocked when I said to them, that they do all these things which makes them role models!”