Term 1, Week 9, 2026

Wellbeing Spotlight – Building relationships through Projects

At Faith Lutheran College, student wellbeing is centred on building strong, positive relationships and fostering a genuine sense of belonging within our school community. The photos, taken during our Foundation Project lessons capture students and staff coming together in their matching sports teams - reflecting more than just school spirit. They represent connection, unity, and a shared identity, helping to create an environment where students feel safe, supported, and confident to be themselves.

By strengthening relationships between peers and staff, we are intentionally creating a culture where every student feels known, valued, and included. When students experience this sense of belonging, they are more likely to engage in their learning, show kindness to others, and develop resilience when challenges arise. Moments like these remind us that wellbeing is not just taught, but lived out daily through connection, encouragement, and a strong community spirit where everyone has a place and feels proud to belong.

At Faith Lutheran College, we live out our motto - awakening potential and empowering learners for purposeful lives through Christ - by nurturing a community where every student is supported to grow, connect, and truly belong.

Year 7 Classroom Insights – Finding Our Place: Sole Stories

This term, our Year 7 students have been exploring identity and belonging through our integrated English and Visual Arts unit, Finding Our Place: Sole Stories. 

Using a sneaker as a symbol of journey, students have reflected on their own stories - who they are and what shapes them. Through engaging with texts and creating their own designs, they have used the elements of art to represent their identity and connection to place. Alongside this, students have written artist statements to explain the meaning behind their work.

Below, you’ll hear from our students as they share their Sole Stories:

Quade Coward:

In Finding Our Place we have been learning about different elements of art.  Some of these elements are shading, colour, line, space, shape and texture.  We have been using these elements to decorate an outline of a shoe to represent our personalities and things we love. After we decorated our shoe we wrote an artist statement to describe our shoe for the people who are looking at our artwork.

An Excerpt from Quade’s Arist Statement:

In my artwork I included the element of space on my shoe. I decided to create a tight space with squares and circles. I created the tight space to symbolize my brain being constantly busy and focusing on multiple things at the same time.

Sophie Eggins:

What I really enjoyed about Finding Our Place was being able to express my emotions and feelings, and I realised that Finding Our Place helped me to see that it is okay to share things, even if I feel a bit anxious about sharing everything. What I learnt from Finding Our Place was that you can go and explore things in life, and I think Finding Our Place enhances and offers a unique perspective on the concept of place, enriching our understanding of who we are and where we belong.

Mia Rotheram:

While Finding Our Place, I learnt and enjoyed lots of new things through the experiments we did during our lessons. Finding Our Place has been remarkably interesting this term because we have learnt about different elements such as colour, shape, form, texture, space, and many more. Learning these elements has given the entire Year 7 cohort a chance to understand new things that could help us in the future, and even if we believe it won’t help us, it was still a new and exciting adventure that we got to experience.

I have enjoyed plenty of new things, like creating innovative designs, experimenting with different elements, and most of all, being able to colour or paint on a real shoe! Creating innovative designs was interesting because each time we used a different element, and knowing what those elements were helped us understand our pictures more, because we knew what all the different parts meant.

After we finished all our assessment and the work we had to complete, we were lucky enough to be able to colour or paint on real shoes using all the elements of art. Everyone’s shoes were different, but they all had meaning and a purpose to the creator. All of them looked spectacular, no matter what artistic skills each person had.

I think that being able to do all these things in Finding Our Place has been a wonderful experience, and I would love to do it again.

2026 Foundation Projects Update

This year, our Projects program has moved from semester-based rotations to year-long learning areas, allowing students to develop deeper skills and understanding over time. Students have been introduced to the new project areas (listed below), selected their preferences, and begun exploring the Heart, Head, Hand model that guides purposeful, balanced learning throughout the year. Here’s what our new projects will be exploring:

Visible Voices (Arts for Impact): To make the invisible visible. This group uses the power of visual communication to amplify social causes, beautify public spaces, and tell the stories of our community through high-impact art. 

Common Threads (Textiles & Crafts): To weave care into the fabric of our community. This group focuses on technical sewing, garment repair, and textile construction to provide durable, functional goods for those in need. 

Circuit & Saw (Design & Technology): To engineer solutions for a modern world. By blending coding and electronics (Circuit) with laser cutting and 3D printing (Saw), this group prototypes physical tools that solve real-world problems. 

Building Bridges (Construction): To build the foundation for a better community. This group focuses on woodworking, structural engineering, and carpentry to create functional furniture and outdoor spaces for public use. 

Heart & Harmony (Ministry & Culture): To foster connection and school spirit. This group manages the spiritual and emotional culture of the school through music, ministry, and community-building events. 

Food for Thought (Cooking & Nutrition):  To nourish the community through the kitchen. This group uses culinary skills to tackle food insecurity, educate others on nutrition, and preserve cultural food heritage. 

Mind & Motion (Health & Wellness): To improve the collective wellbeing of our school and wider community. This group studies the science of movement and mental health to create spaces and programs that help people feel their best. 

Growing Grounds (Farm, Animals & Nature): To steward the land and care for our creatures. Utilising the school farm, this group manages the delicate balance between raising livestock, growing food, and protecting local wildlife. 

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