Student Wellbeing

The Berry Street Education Model (BSEM) provides strategies for teaching and learning that enables teachers to increase engagement of students with complex, unmet learning needs and to successfully improve all students’ self-regulation, relationships, wellbeing, growth and academic achievement.

The BSEM pedagogical strategies incorporate trauma-informed teaching, positive education, and wellbeing practices. All staff have been fully trained in the BSEM model and implement wellbeing practices into the school day, including a whole class morning meeting to ensuring students are ‘ready to learn’. The key concepts of BSEM are regularly revisited and ensure teachers are implementing evidence-based strategies for engagement and support.

Peaceful Kids’ is a Mindfulness and Positive Psychology based program to lessen anxiety and stress and increase resilience in children. The program has been created to fulfil a need in schools to offer all children a developmentally appropriate program that gives children the skills, practice and support to utilise coping strategies that lessen the symptoms of anxiety and stress.   The program also involves parental involvement and commitment to supporting the strategies at home.

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships Program aims to develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. Efforts to promote social and emotional skills and positive gender norms in children and young people has been shown to improve health related outcomes and subjective wellbeing. It also reduces antisocial behaviours including engagement in gender-related violence.

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) learning materials cover eight topics of Social and Emotional Learning across all levels of primary school: Emotional Literacy; Personal Strengths; Positive Coping; Problem Solving; Stress Management; Help Seeking; Gender and Identity; and Positive Gender Relationships. The program content is taught on a weekly basis during our Whole School Wellbeing session (Monday morning at 9:00am), but is referred to throughout the school day when dealing with issues related to student wellbeing.

The Friends for Life Program is a small group program that focuses on developing skills such as friendship skills; understanding ourselves, our strengths and others; resolving conflict; building confidence and resilience; teasing and bullying – why and how we cope; and assertiveness skills. The program is facilitated by an ACU student completing their Masters in Educational and Developmental psychology under supervision. The program operates for 10 sessions (one session per week over a school term). The program is available for students in different year levels, depending on identified cohort needs.

As part of our student wellbeing program, we are embracing the ideas and practices of Positive Psychology. T focuses on the strengths, virtues, beneficial conditions and processes that contribute to wellbeing and thriving. Positive education also works on the precept that the skills and mindsets that promote positive emotions, positive relationships and character strengths, also promote learning and academic success.‍

Research suggests that there are two significant things that help us develop positive emotions: gratitude and performing acts of kindness. People who are grateful, who feel and express gratitude on a regular basis, tend to be happier and more resilient. Similarly, performing small acts of kindness for someone each day makes you feel good. When you feel good, you are better at helping and looking after other people, which in turns creates more positive emotion.

Throughout the school there is a focus on developing the core components of a positive classroom: learning to become mindful by developing an awareness of one’s own feelings and those of others, helping children understand and express gratitude towards those who assist and support them, and demonstrating empathy towards others experiencing various challenges.

In helping our children become more mindful, we have introduced mindful meditation sessions in classrooms. The Meditation Capsules Program has been implemented to introduce our students to the process of mindful meditation. Meditation Capsules supports students to understand the concept of being mindful - maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Mindfulness has been shown to increases positive emotions while reducing negative emotions and stress; helps us tune out distractions and improves our memory and attention skills; fosters compassion and altruism; and enhances relationships. There’s also evidence that teaching mindfulness in the classroom reduces behaviour problems and aggression among students, and improves their happiness levels and ability to pay attention. Teachers trained in mindfulness also show lower blood pressure, less negative emotion and symptoms of depression, and greater compassion and empathy. ‘Smiling Mind’ is an i-phone application that provides recorded meditation sessions and is also used extensively in classrooms.

The Power Up Program is a hybrid model of the ‘M-Power Girls’ Program and the ‘Revved Up’ Program developed by Tandy Johnson, Assistant Principal. These programs were previously taught as gender-specific programs. However, it is evident that both genders benefit from support to develop social relationship skills (previously the focus of M-Power Girls), as well as anger management skills (previously the focus of Revved Up). This combined program consists of 8 sessions and is facilitated by Year 5 & 6 classroom teachers in Term 1-2.

The Social Relationships Program is a small group program that focuses on developing skills such as friendship skills; understanding ourselves, our strengths and others; resolving conflict; building confidence and resilience; teasing and bullying – why and how we cope; and assertiveness skills.