Wollongong ahm Hawks Community Development officer Matt Flinn has spent a part of the off season initiating a behaviour modification program for a number of year eight students from Berkeley. The Wollongong ahm Hawks Assistant Coach is a PD-H-PE teacher who has skills in wilderness leadership and adventure therapy.

Selected students from the local high school in Berkeley were identified as having various behaviour difficulties in the classroom and as a consequence the Hawks Assistant coach has spent seven weeks working with the students setting behaviour targets and working on ways to achieve their personal best in the classroom.

"We set small goals everyday for the classroom; mostly it involves them executing the job of a student. They would get direct feedback from their teachers each lesson, then they would come back to me and we would evaluate their performance as well." Matt Flinn said.

The program concluded at the end of the term, where students who had done enough to show improvement were rewarded with an overnight hike into the Budawang Mountains, near Milton in Southern NSW.

"The Castle climb is one of the toughest hikes in NSW in my opinion. Students who make the hike are suddenly presented with a whole new challenge. This climb is pretty full on, they are tested physically and mentally."

The following video shows Matt Flinn and the kids breaking some of those barriers, making the right decisions and being rewarded with positive outcomes.

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