Penny for Positive Education Conference 2019

Positive Education New Zealand Conference  - Wellbeing

Penny Osborne

April 2019

I have just attended the two day Positive Education conference on Wellbeing. Barista coffee was flowing for the hordes of people that had travelled around the country to be here at

Christ College with us. This was such a humbling sight after the recent events in ChCh.

I found most of this conference was based around how to incorporate wellbeing into your teaching and embedding it into your classroom, as a non teaching support staff member, I tried to take the most out of it I could, overall I enjoyed it and felt I got some goodness out of it.

Positive education in NZ, the welcome was simple - We need to look after our own wellbeing to care for and teach our tamariki and rangatahi.

We started the day with Charlie Scudamore Vice Principal from Geelong Grammar school, a very passionate and educated man. Charlie has been responsible for the development and implementation of Positive Education at Geelong and travels to conferences promoting the Positive Education model. What is Positive Education? Based on science and research blah blah.. Positive Education sounds great and appears to be working, but I wasn’t there to learn about that, I was there for what I thought was understanding wellbeing, for yourself, your colleagues, your students, everyone that comes into or is in engaged in your school. The staff, the students, the whanau, the BoT..

Charlie is a wonderful speaker and would highly recommend if you ever got the chance to listen to him, do it! This is what I took away from his discussion

Instead of looking at what went well, try what went wrong! You might surprise yourself

Learn it, Live it, Teach it, Embed it

Do wellbeing with the students, not to them or for them. Wellbeing is something that needs to be learned, learn to be comfortable and understand your own well being

Staff, train the staff, all staff but don’t over train them, by doing this you are acknowledging every interaction matters and that non teaching staff play a critical role.( I have seen first hand one of our students, not liking being in class, found the caretaker and was engaged in some gardening with him. The caretaker became the teacher, showing him what were weeds and what the different plants were. The student was asking the caretaker questions about gardens and growing plants, this may not be huge, but to that child, that is how he learned for a part of that day.) 

The Six dimensions of Wellbeing

Positive Relationships - Connectedness and strong relationships for wellbeing. Focus on developing social and emotional skills. Strong school community and culture of respect. kindness and forgiveness.

Positive Emotions - Aiming to help students and staff to develop a stronger understanding of their emotions and those of others.

Positive Health - The link between physical and psychological health. Practising mindfulness and resilience techniques will promote greater health outcomes. Learning or knowing healthy behaviours in terms of exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

Positive Engagement - Finding passions and interests to keep you engaged, being present in what is happening around you.

Positive Accomplishment - encouraging both students and staff to aim for goals that are both highly rewarding to them self, aim high, show determination, and be willing to learn and succeed.

Positive Purpose - Explore understanding, believing in yourself, and deliberately engaging.

Age of Anxiety

Anxiety is on the rise and is a big factor in wellbeing, some strategies for helping yourself or others cope with anxiety.

Grounding - an effective rewiring of the brain (countdown)

5. Notice five things you see around you

4. Notice four things you can touch around you

3. Notice three things you can hear

2. Notice two things you can smell

1. Notice one thing you can taste.

Relational

Understanding what is going on by ..

Reflective learning

Clarifying questions

Showing empathy

Disassociation

Safe space

Regular checks

Talk later

What can we do to help eliminate anxiety?

Empathise and be human

Remain curious and open

Build connections

We might not be able to change everything, but we can change how we respond to it.


Trust and believe you can help.

An emotional brain only learns through experience

Mental Health First Aid

Having the strategies to notice when somebody is struggling with wellbeing issues (mental health challenges)

Think about being in an airport where you have excess baggage, but no trolley to use. Your taxi is waiting and you need to get to that meeting..

You pick up the first bag, not to bad, you got this..

Pick up the second bag, that's a bit heavy but you have to get to that taxi

You pick up the 3rd bag, that's too much, you can’t carry on, but you know you have to, you can’t make the taxi driver ate, or let the meeting down..

STOP!! Know when to put a bag down, know when you need to go, actually bugger it I am going to make 2 trips because I am more important than that.

Mental distress is common

Mental distress can feel permanent

Recovery is always possible

Early intervention is key

Self Regulation - Nigel Latta

By far my favourite speaker of the conference and a wonderful way to end day one.

Nothing like keepin it simple to solve life's biggest problems. Although he did open this by showing a picture of him covered in spiders, as most of you know spiders are a genuine fear of mine. Nigel reckons, if you face your fear you will get over it.. I’m not so sure and will leave the finding out to another day.

Know how to: 

Recognise


Rebalance


Rewire

Your brain is a machine, but don’t always believe everything it tells you. Your brain is your biggest critic, the thing that holds you back the most.

When in doubt, chill the …. Out :)

Day two The critical factors in building whole school wellbeingFactors that appreciates and nurture wellbeing

Realising you are out of balance

Open communication

Having a chance to debrief and not let things fester

Knowing how to have a work/ life balance

Factors that challenge my wellbeing

Myself, I am my biggest critic

Lack of self motivation

Life / work / hobbies - the commitments of others around me

Factors I can influence/ change

Work / life balance

My health

The way I communicate with people

Celebrate the little things

School Wellbeing factors

Check in & Connect time

Be aware of colleagues and their needs

Move on from ‘Fitting in’ to “Make room for”

Make the staffroom more inclusive, acknowledge people daily, include people

Start the change now, Be Brave!

Creating a culture of wellbeing
A wellbeing team needs a purpose, a vision, a mission. You need to work together to develop these. Make it clear the wellbeing team cannot fix others wellbeing, they can provide the tools to help

Get the framework up and running before you push the go button.

Take notice of the needs of your environment, see where people are at with their wellbeing

Involve everyone, ask students what does it mean to be a Gilby kid? (BTB - Better than before)

Build staff relationships and get involved in events together

Make time for support staff to be involved in discussions or sometimes decisions.

Engage with the community, learn from them. Let them share their stories, we all have something to learn from others

We are all learners, we are all teachers.

I went to a couple of the open conversations, but was disheartened to learn that one titled - We’re all in this together - sounds good on paper, but in reality, that was not the case. The speaker started of with what she has done to get wellbeing off the ground in her school, sounding awesome and things I could see being discussed or implemented in our school, She then followed on with a sentence that irritated me.. ‘We do not yet have support staff in the wellbeing mix’, so really they weren’t all in this together.

At the end of the day, regardless of the title everyone should be involved and encouraged to learn it and live it. We all matter, we are all there for the same reason, those children that come to us everyday wanting to be nurtured, cared for, educated and to know they belong.