Student wellbeing : part 2

Hullo to my fellow principals.  I'm still posting away.  Hope it helps.  If not let me know if it is a lot of garbage and I might desist.  I have a thick skin.

What follows is information on student wellbeing from my small treatise on effective schooling.  The treatise is meant to be an easy read and offering practical suggestions.  It would probably cause academics some concern as it is not referenced to a plethora of academic papers.  The story is being told by Tom, an eminent educator,  to a writer who is to put it all together, so please bear with me.  SDP refers to School Development Plan. Tom and his writer are on Tom's boat moored in a quiet estuary.  In Student Wellbeing part 1 I and already posted the top priority school effectiveness criterion:

Criterion #1 My School Respects Me Every Day  (Aligns with SDP element  

                                                                                                    #10)

Considering the work for each syllabus prescribed for a particular year, as in the Australian National Curriculum, Tom in his treatise on school effectiveness identifies within each age cohort the Panthers who will complete the work for their year level in less than the academic year and require extension.  Then there are the Jaguars who will need the whole academic year to complete the work for their year level.  Finally there are the Leopards who will not complete the required work for their year level within the academic year.  Tom mentions the Leopards below.

                                                                         *** 

Tom reassured himself that his explanations of each of the school effectiveness criteria provided hints as to the content of the documents each school has to show how things are expected to happen within that school : school policy statements if you will.

Tom's second criterion for school effectiveness is:

Criterion #2  My School Helps Me To Be Fit And Healthy And To Feel Good

                           About Myself (Aligns with SDP element #10)

Tom was convinced that what the school did in nurturing the physical and social growth of its students was vital.   The curriculum learning areas of physical and health education and the performing arts provided considerable opportunities to achieve such nurturing.  This is not to decry the value of the arts of drawing and design but Tom believed these to be more specialised and dependent in the areas of painting and drawing on innate talent.  He had taken some criticism over the years for this view and felt somewhat hypocritical when he admired a painting or a sculpture.

Tom had observed during his time working in schools the swelling of pride and joy of students who had just been part of a school play or performance. He well remembered the primary school that each year put on a major performance for the parents and the wider community and the  large number of students who were involved.  He saw the beaming on their faces when the audience cheered and clapped their performance.  He marvelled at the annual School Spectacular screened each year by the ABC network and could see the efforts and extensive student involvement numbers within each contributing school.  He knew of Leopards who just blossomed as performers with a great boost to their self esteem.  Here was a curriculum area made for developing a sense in students that they were respected within their school community.

Tom dreamed of a vision in physical and health education whereby innovative physical education teachers established programs based on general physical fitness leading to good health for each student.  He was sure such programs were out there.  He visualised at primary school level daily physical education aimed at improving general fitness taking into account the physical attributes of each student.  As soon as possible in primary school and leading into secondary school, each student would be skilled to participate in regularly measuring and documenting (a mathematics and computer data management opportunity) their height, weight, core, arm and leg strength and aerobic fitness.  They would be shown how to calculate the optimum weight for height for themselves.  All of this was to be handled very carefully so as not to embarrass anyone.  The fitness programs would be interesting and varied and take into account the sort of impact exercises that might be suited to girls as a hedge against the later scourge of osteoporosis.

The personal fitness data bases designed to be built up over the student’s whole school life were to be secure and known only to the teacher(s) and the individual student.  At secondary school level this whole program could become very sophisticated and extend to developing attitudes of preventative measures/medicine to ensure good health rather than the reach for a tablet approach.

Part of the learning was about a healthy diet.  A caution was the area of obesity and how to assist such students without creating conflict with the family.  An ideal would be to involve the family if this were possible.  All parents would be briefed through various school communication channels about this program. The sensitive area of the school’s dietary recommendations would need to be handled with care so as not to offend families.   Tom knew that some schools would not go for this but he was stubborn in his resolve.  He did not want parents to be told what to do but wanted to be up front about how the school’s Physical and Health Education program dealt with dietary issues and physical good health.  Tom knew that there was nothing new in schools teaching about a healthy diet.  The five food groups had received a regular hammering over the years and parents were used to this occurring. This program was also to embrace the issues of body abuse such as drugs of all sorts.

It would also cover sex education according to the developmental needs of the students and facets about relating to other persons at a sexual level.  Built in here would be warnings about being trapped into abusive situations, especially the dangers that lurked on the internet.  At its very best it could also include education on gender matters such as homosexuality.  Overall the program was to be about developing a positive self- image in each student by giving them the chance to explore these matters openly and positively.  There would need to be a seeking of parental permission in respect of many of the areas that might be covered.

The health and fitness program coordinators would also be responsible for ascertaining the level of bullying across the student population and for developing programs to counter this negative activity.  The physical education staff would have an added responsibility to educate the rest of the staff so that they could support the bullying counter measures.

Thus for Tom a measure of the effectiveness of any school was to create and measure the success of such self-image developing programs.  It was a big responsibility for the physical education teachers.  They might need to coopt other relevant staff members such as the counselling staff.  Of course the physical education staff would have responsibility for sport, and student participation in such could be part of their data gathering as to how this assists them as developing individuals. Above all there would be no students fearing that their slowness or their general physical prowess would see them floundering at the tail of the field in any sporting event. It would be about personal fitness goals.  Having indicated this Tom was not one to shy away from competitive sport situations where there is a loser and a winner.  The participating students would need to be educated to deal with this reality.

Above all it was to create an environment where the young felt safe and cared for as they learned more in their journey towards being able to look after themselves as adults who had a positive self-image and sense of who they were.  This meant that the young had a sense each day that all was well emotionally and physically and that they had some control over this. Tom knew that part of feeling comfortable at school had to do with performances of various sorts from academic to physical and artistic, but more about that later.

Tom had observed effective teachers over the years making sure they interacted positively with each student each week.  Of particular concern to a teacher were the quiet students.  Some Leopards often worked hard at being inconspicuous because they found the learning tough going.  They may even have experienced what they perceived as a snub in the hurly burly of the classroom.  Tom well remembered a year 12 Leopard telling him how way back in year 4 he asked a question and received what he perceived as ridicule from some of his classmates.  This compounded his dwindling confidence in his ability to learn and he told Tom that from that day he had deliberately remained as quiet as he could and that he never asked another question. As a precaution Tom included in his thinking the next criterion of an effective school.

Criterion #3  My Teacher(s) Talk To Me Personally Each Week (Aligns with SDP element #10)

Tom firmly believed that each student deserved each week a reasonable amount of the teacher’s one to one contact in a positive manner.  He wanted teachers to weekly or fortnightly, depending on how many students they contacted each week, to have a quiet introspective time to reflect on the frequency and quality of the contact they had made with each student.  This way no student should fall through the cracks unnoticed. For secondary teachers who had weekly contact with large student numbers fortnightly was more realistic.  Another alternative was for them to review weekly their contacts for half the number of students with whom they had contact each week.

A teacher could easily have a photo of each student on their computer and date the introspective time and type in a comment or two about the student.  It is always assumed that the computer is as protected as it can be against outside intruders.  Student privacy is vital.  In the past this process was based on teachers having a card for each student and Tom mused that maybe this was still a safer way to go in terms of student privacy.

More later!

GD