Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine Issue 3 - March 2022

Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine

COVER ARTWORK: LUIS MARTÍNEZ (PAN-AMERICAN SCHOOL, COSTA RICA)

MUSIC EDUCATION AS FAMILY

CULTIVATING EFFICACY AND PURPOSE

DISTRIBUTION SUPPORTED BY OUR MEDIA PARTNERS:

PRESENTEEISM AND WELLBEING

CONTENTS 4: Editor's note 6: Combatting presenteeism in a post-pandemic world: Are we still coming to school unwell?

8: School as a safe haven: Supporting students and families affected by war In Ukraine

10: The myth of the resilient educator

18: The why and how of student agency and intrinsic motivation

12: "Jack and Me"

22: Making a “home” in the international school music department

16: Living with eating disorders: The realization that there Is no perfect self, only a more perfect world

24: School counselling: An underutilised resource in Hong Kong 26: Student-led Change Your Mind aims to transform youth health and wellbeing 28: Developing the ‘Infrastructure for Success’ in secondary pupils: An evidence-based response to the worldwide pandemic 32: Being an Amazon Rainforest Hummingbird: Back to us 34: Building wellbeing by developing self-efficacy 36: School Spotlight: Wellington Colleges China - Wellbeing across the group 39: Coming home: Managing wellbeing during transition 41: Who’s counselling the counsellor?

43: The Debate Project: The role of conceptual learning in PE

ARTWORK BY MOMOKO NISHIDA (REGENTS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PATTAYA, THAILAND)

Student artwork features: Luis Martínez, Momoko Nishida, Sieun Yeom, Ankita Chakrabarty, Jack Savage, Annie, Ignacio Hearsey, So Min Jin

THANK YOU wism editor: Sadie Hollins, WISM copy editor: Adam beeson

45: Organisational Focus: COBIS Beacon Status for Wellbeing 47: Wellbeing Impact: Minds Ahead aims to revolutionise mental health 49: Podcast Profile: The Coming Out Monologues 51: Wellbeing Library with Nadine Bailey

Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine

WELCOME TO ISSUE 3 OF THE WELLBEING IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS MAGAZINE A very warm welcome to issue 3 of the Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine!

In this issue I'm really excited to share several new features for the magazine. We are introducing 'Wellbeing Impact', which showcases the work of individuals and organisations that are pushing wellbeing forward in schools, and first up we share a conversation with 'Minds Ahead'. We have a 'Podcast Profile' where we spotlight different podcast series that are making a difference, and in this issue we get to learn more about 'The Coming Out Monologues'. We have an 'Organisational Focus' piece, because we know that accrediting agencies are important gatekeepers when it comes to facilitating widespread positive change, and this time we are talking with COBIS about their 'Beacon Status for Wellbeing' initiative.

I am truly grateful for all of the stories, experiences and knowledge shared in these pages, which I believe have the power to truly advance discussions about wellbeing in the international school context (and beyond!) I can't thank every single contributor enough, this magazine would not exist without you, and the future of education is that much brighter because you are a part of it. This is a bumper issue that is full of articles that I have no doubt will resonate deeply with some, and will inspire others.

A huge thank you is also owed to Adam Beeson who does a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes, and who has a true talent for bringing articles to life. One more thank you is definitely owed to my wife, Laura Davies, who discusses and debates with me the ways in which we can continue to make this a real community, full of connection and purpose.

Looking forward, we are passionate about including student voice as part of the magazine so please get in contact if you'd like to find out more information, by emailing sadie.wiseducation@gmail.com. I'd also like to give a big shout out to Luis Martínez who did an incredible job designing our front cover for issue 3, and to Momoko Nishida, Sieun Yeom, Ankita Chakrabarty, Jack Savage, Annie, Ignacio Hearsey, and So Min Jin for their fantastic artwork pieces, which have really brought this issue of the magazine to life!

I hope you enjoy the issue and that it helps to spark conversations about wellbeing in your schools!

Thank you.

Sadie Hollins, Editor

Take a temperature check on your students’ wellbeing Register for updates on CEM’s new Wellbeing Check

www.cem.org/wellbeing

COMBATTING PRESENTEEISM: IN A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD ARE WE STILL COMING TO SCHOOL UNWELL?

ARTWORK BY SIEUN YEOM (REGENTS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PATTAYA, THAILAND)

BY ZOUBIYA AHMED FCCT Slippery slope of ‘just’ Working when unwell - known as presenteeism, (also defined as work productivity loss caused by ill-health) is a globally prevalent practice that blurs the lines between work, home and 'busyness'.

The Global Report on the Status of Teachers 2021 highlights that prior to the pandemic, teachers were already notorious for cutting into their downtime to ‘clock in’ online and getting sucked into digital presenteeism from out-of-hours contact compelling us to reply to ‘just’ one email on a Saturday evening while out for a meal.

Worse still self-diagnosing on a Tuesday night to ‘just’ work through to the weekend with severe laryngitis (personally guilty as charged) to bear the cross for the team, telling ourselves that organising the cover will take too long and that it’s not worth facing the stigma of knowing looks on return from sickness nor the bombsite of a classroom - 'soldiering through' at the huge cost of potential burnout.

"Research shows more hours working ≠ better performance" Always ‘on’ In the wake of coronavirus lockdowns, doomscrolling and remote working mandates, our work lives barged into our homes avalanching all-hours needs into our chill-out times and safe spaces. Parent-teacher conferences back-to-back with governor meetings, interrupted by grocery deliveries while keeping an eye on streams of social/team ‘Whatsapp group’ updates.

Teachers and leaders have been conditioned by necessity and self-perceived increased productivity to remain ‘on’, i.e. psychological presenteeism. School leaders are highlighting cognitive and emotional overload, one principal described a double-whammy of being completely mentally absent at work from sleep deficit and anxiety and equally disengaged during a Sunday family trip to the park due to being behind with school tasks.

'I cannot serve from an empty pot' The impact of presenteeism Costing the economy circa £15bn in the UK alone, presenteeism and close cousin leaveism, reduce productivity greater than absenteeism. Findings from the 2020/21 Teacher Wellbeing Index found that 74% of education professionals suffered from behavioural, psychological or physical symptoms due to their work and 46% of teachers (54% of school leaders) always go into work when unwell. Echoing a pre-pandemic CIPD survey which highlighted that 80% of professionals would not take time off when ill and 83% witnessing presenteeism - indicating the general weight of obligation to 'show up' still being greater than that of our selfcare responsibility - even after a major global health crisis.

The key question is what drives us to be present at work when we know we are not going to be productive? We can sometimes be our own worst enemy - loading unrealistic demands on ourselves, engaging in presenteeism with noble intentions i.e. a work martyr task ethic, upholding a guilt-led 'grafter' image or a desire to maintain an 'unblemished' record of attendance.

"Being present ≠ being productive" Are we really discouraging presenteeism?

With wellbeing being a pandemic buzzword the question is, are we really enabling a culture where communication, incentives and support go hand-in-hand with being a productive team-player?

With 42% of educators believing their organisation's culture has an adverse impact on their wellbeing and a perceived stigma for asking for support, the onus is on school leaders to form a sustainable social contract consisting of team-agreed wellbeing non-negotiables that clearly identify presenteeism as a negative phenomenon.

The layers of team culture need to be permeated with authentic 'wellness over illness' narratives with any 'toxic talk' or practice inconsistent with this (e.g praise for those dragging themselves in, subtle undermining of absent colleagues, nonverbal signals/implied communication intended to discourage absences) stamped out and replaced with celebrations and narratives of self-care that give employees the autonomy to demonstrate professional integrity in making attendance decisions that protect their holistic health on balance with performance targets and expectations.

School leaders can collect staff views using the World Health Organisation (WHO) Health and Performance Questionnaire which addresses links between work and health in order to frame caring conversations. Recognising and sharing examples of balanced resilience in your teams and rewarding employees who promote and permeate a social contract of good health has the benefit of sustainable productivity, minimised stress and reduced teacher attrition.

"Productivity = collaborative culture + wellbeing focus + realistic targets" The takeaways:

Wellness programmes that offer a 20% discount voucher for a neck massage are all well and good but are we looking at mitigating root causes of neckache? HR experts are highlighting structured flexibility as a way to ensure that staff can maintain a distinction between work and home life.

The majority of staff are observant experts of the rules of engagement and astutely steer clear of negative attention at work. This pressure can lead to high presenteeism.

Examining attitudes and values together, setting realistic wellbeing goals and realigning the cultural meaning of productive work, can greatly help to reduce the conditions that give rise to presenteeism.

With less psychological danger attached to taking a break, unplugging or being absent to get well also prevents the spread of illness to others and reduces organisational costs and increases productivity.

School culture is experienced by what behaviours, attitudes and norms are rewarded formally and informally. If overwork is considered the benchmark of workplace interaction, we are actively perpetuating a vicious cycle of damage that erodes away at net productive organisational value.

Addressing the complexity With the challenge of no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to combatting presenteeism at your school, first steps are to consider your own attitudes to presenteeism to address any underlying negative biases and consider creating a co-constructed wellbeing action plan. Being as transparent as you can about personal and team goals, making holistic wellness a regular talking point and perhaps bringing in a positive employee development model like ikigai to support a presenteeism checklist. Interestingly, 2021’s most searched included themes of reflection, healing and pulling together. Bringing in weekly team gratitude activities can foster psychological safety and openness.

Zoubiya Ahmed FCCT is Director of School at Read Academy, a not-for-profit all-through independent school in London. She has held leadership posts in a number of international schools and began her expat teaching career in Dubai. She is pursuing a PhD in Education and she is on the latest iteration of the NPQEL both at UCL's IOE. Connect with Zoubiya on Twitter @EdLeaderEMEA

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO ZOUBIYA'S AUDIO VERSION

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SCHOOL AS A SAFE HAVEN: SUPPORTING STUDENTS AND FAMILIES AFFECTED BY WAR IN UKRAINE

BY ADAM BEESON “We support peace and a world that cares to give rather than take. We are allied to all those who feel the quiet whispering of their conscience telling them to replace conflict with confidence and crisis with hope.”

– Paul McLean, Headmaster at The American International School-Salzburg Like many international educators, the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine elicited my memories of and concern for the Russian and Ukrainian students and colleagues that I have had the privilege of working alongside over the course of my career.

For several years, I was a resident assistant and teacher at The American International School-Salzburg, an intentionally small collegepreparatory boarding school in Austria that each year welcomes a maximum of 100 secondary school students of approximately 25 nationalities. In Salzburg, I had witnessed, at the time of the Crimean Crisis in 2014, how quickly support in this unique community of learners was provided for and amongst students whose passport countries were being affected by the annexation.

Fast-forward eight years, and it was no surprise to me that, just hours after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I received a Statement from the Headmaster at AIS-Salzburg, Paul McLean. The statement begins as follows:

“The community of the American International SchoolSalzburg is a community defined by openness, acceptance of diversity and the appropriate college-preparatory education of young people from all over the world. For 46 years, our staff and faculty have welcomed students from all nations, all cultures and any belief systems. We welcome them with open arms and provide them with a safe place to live, to grow, to develop and to learn. We know them almost as well as their parents because we learn together, live together, take our meals together and trust each other with our health, security and happiness. We are one and many; different and similar; unique and diverse.”

“The critically-essential values that underlie the remarkable transformation of a group of strangers from five continents into a community of mutually-respectful citizens are those that are essential in any family and in any community that identifies and works together toward a legitimate and worthy goal. They include acceptance of diversity and a willingness to subdue one’s personal desires in order to further the interests of all; supporting the concept of a greater good and a more inclusive and mutually-caring society. They promote respect to all community members in their development of confidence and maturity while realizing their unique potential as individuals and global citizens.”

Supporting School Communities During War In an effort to understand how international schools are supporting the wellbeing of Russian and Ukrainian students and families, I reached out to AIS-Salzburg to learn more about the current situation at the school and the actions they have taken since the invasion.

“We presently have eight students from Ukraine; nearly all of them from Kyiv or the immediate area around Kyiv,” McLean told me.

“One of them is from Kharkiv. Two of the students' parents have moved to the western part of Ukraine and several have notified me that they are presently safe.”

“I have been in contact with them throughout the last five days and we have, of course, suspended any tuition payments, offered their children accommodation over the spring break, and are looking into requests from them to assist their children in getting their visas extended so as to stay in Austria over the summer as well.”

“There are four or five students directly from Russia at the school. I have also been in direct written contact with all of the families, primarily in order to reassure them that their children will not be singled out for blame or experience any other form of mistreatment here at the school.”

5. All members of the school staff have been invited to donate funds, with the school administration committed to doubling the amount, while making general school donations of funds as well.

6. The AIS-Salzburg Student Council will be discussing and deciding upon means to general funds and materials for direct assistance to those in need.

7. The school has offered the use of the school vans for transport to the Polish border.

“Due to the immediate need of those suffering because of the Russian Army's invasion of Ukraine, our efforts are a little bit scattered at the moment,” McLean said, “but we expect to be able to focus these initiatives very soon and get badly-needed materials on the road and to the border where over 300,000 women and children primarily, need immediate assistance.”

McLean noted that those who are able to assist the school in these efforts, or who have further ideas about how the school can provide the assistance required by this emergency, should contact AIS-Salzburg, and that monetary donations to support those in crisis can be made to Nachbar in Not (Ukraine Hilfe).

Replacing Conflict with Confidence, Crisis with Hope

“There has been a bit of unnecessary tweeting going on online, but overall, these students and their parents are as shocked and regretful about the invasion as anyone else. We have pledged our support to them as well, although we have cut all formal agreements with agents and educational representatives in Russia.”

School-Wide Effort to Support Displaced Populations In addition to caring for members of the school community affected by the invasion, students and teachers at AIS-Salzburg are taking action to support the wider population fleeing war in Ukraine.

“Although everyone is more than busy with their daily educational duties, we are putting together a number of efforts to directly support those who have been displaced and have abandoned their homes in a search for peace and security,” McLean said. These efforts include: 1. Collecting all dried and canned food from the school’s kitchen storage for shipment to a local Polish Church organization, which is transporting goods directly to the Polish-Ukrainian border. The school is emptying shelves and vending machines to contribute to this effort.

2. The school has rounded up all extra clothing, bedding, blankets, including extra physical education uniforms (t-shirts, sweat pants, hoodies, and shorts) and are shipping these forward.

3. AIS-Salzburg has declared itself a gathering point for any and all local donations and will see to their delivery into the hands of those who can reliably deliver it to the point of need.

Actively supporting refugees of war is one way AIS-Salzburg is harnessing the energy of the moment to create a sense of hope within the school community. In his February 24, 2022 Statement from the Headmaster, McLean also reinforces the ways in which the school’s mission and beliefs support a more peaceful path forward: “These same values also reject violence, prejudice, discrimination and abuse. They abhor entitlement and injustice and stand strongly in opposition to all forms of illegitimate advantage and disregard for the truth. They provide a robust and justified opposition to those who would take advantage and gain benefit at the expense of others as well as those who would equate right with strength and power…”

“We stand firmly on the side of responsible actions, thoughtful consideration and positive futures. Our investments are in knowledge, healthy activity, kindness and creativity. We support peace and a world that cares to give rather than take. We are allied to all those who feel the quiet whispering of their conscience telling them to replace conflict with confidence and crisis with hope.”

Adam Beeson is copy editor for Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine. He has more than a decade of international school teaching and leadership experience in the United States, Austria and Costa Rica. Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO ADAM'S AUDIO VERSION

4. The school has purchased a large number of first aid medical cases and will be sending these forward as well.

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THE MYTH OF THE RESILIENT EDUCATOR

ARTWORK BY ANKITA CHAKRABARTY (INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF HELSINKI, FINLAND)

BY DR HELEN KELLY In 2020, I wrote an article that attracted much attention, The Myth of the Resilient Child. I drew on current scientific thinking, which suggests that, contrary to popular belief, children are not naturally resilient. Instead, they are particularly vulnerable to emotional and behavioural issues brought on by stress and trauma, which can significantly impact their lives into adulthood.

I argued that the myth of the resilient child has conveniently developed to help adults to avoid addressing the truth, that most childhood trauma is a consequence of adult behaviour, brought about by our own vulnerabilities and dysfunctions. I asked whether the focus on school-based resilience programmes may be unfairly placing the onus on children to build coping skills, when what students need most are secure attachments, developed through supportive and consistent relationships with adults.

In recent years, there has also been a growing focus on the need for educators to build resilience, to help them cope with the demands of their work and avoid occupational burnout. Is placing the onus on educators to be resilient, just a convenient way for schools to abnegate their responsibility to provide a workplace that minimises the risk of burnout?

In our current work-obsessed culture, we consider work-related stress to be a problem of the individual. It is thought that people become overwhelmed with stress and burn out because of flaws in their character, their behaviour, or because they lack the resilience to cope with the demands of their work. Burnout, or overwhelm, is viewed as a failure on the part of the individual employee and the solution is for the individual to change. The recent proliferation in schools of resilience training, and initiatives to support workplace mental health, is a manifestation of this mindset.

While raising awareness around and supporting mental health is important, I would argue that these approaches fail to address the factors that are actually causing poor mental health and burnout.

A considerable body of research shows that, while personal characteristics and behaviours can be contributors to burnout, such factors are hugely overestimated. It is instead workplace factors that play the greatest role in the development of occupational burnout. Foremost burnout researchers Maslach and Leiter have found that burnout occurs when there is a chronic imbalance between the demands of an individual’s job and their needs, in one or more of six areas – workload, control, rewards, community, fairness and values. Research in the field of educator burnout identifies workload and community as the two areas most associated with burnout in teachers and school leaders.

Workload refers not only to the amount of work but also to the emotional demands of the educator’s role. For teachers, the quantity of work is the most significant factor, whereas for leaders the emotional demands of adult relationships, particularly those with staff and parents, have the closest association with burnout.

The quality of Community has a double impact on employee burnout. Firstly, supportive relationships mitigate against other factors that contribute to burnout, offering a protective effect. Secondly, workplace loneliness, or a lack of a sense of belonging, can make an individual more vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed. This is a significant factor in the burnout of both teachers and school leaders, with the quality of adult relationships in school playing a key role in both vulnerability to burnout and coping. In my 2021 report International School Teacher Wellbeing During the COVID 19 Pandemic, only a third of teachers said they felt supported by their school, two-thirds said they had felt lonely during the pandemic and only 20% said the workplace culture at their school had a positive impact on their wellbeing.

So, the upshot is that educators are particularly vulnerable to burnout when their workload and the emotional demands of the role become more than they can sustain and when there is an absence of supportive adult relationships in their school. These issues are not problems of the individual but are organisational issues. It is a school’s policies and practices that determine an educator’s workload, and it is the culture of the school that determines whether teachers and leaders feel supported.

Educator burnout is primarily shaped by the organisational systems, structures, characteristics, and culture of the school. These factors either compound or reduce the physical and emotional burden of an educator’s work and determine the level of support they receive. Ultimately, it is these organisational factors that will have the biggest impact on determining whether a teacher or leader can sustain their role or will instead burn out.

If school factors are primarily responsible for teacher and leader burnout, then change at the organisational level is needed to address this. Initiatives that seek to improve wellbeing at an individual level, such as resilience and stress management training programmes, will essentially fail to get to the real issues. These interventions are popular because they are inexpensive and easy to implement and require very little commitment from the school. In truth, however, regardless of how cheap they are, they are likely to yield a poor return on investment, because they fail to tackle the organisational factors that are the real problem.

In schools around the world, too little is being done to bring about effective change at the organisational level in schools.

Meaningful interventions that will bring lasting improvement to educator wellbeing need to focus on enhancing working conditions and building positive workplace cultures.

Interventions of this kind, while more complex and expensive to implement, are the only way to effectively address the incidence of overwhelm and burnout sweeping through the profession.

There is a growing body of evidence to show that burnout among teachers and school leaders has a significant effect on their job performance. In my 2021 report, 45% of teachers said that stress was impacting their ability to do their job well. A 2020 meta-study, by York University, of 5,000 teachers and 50,000 students, also found a strong association between teacher burnout and student behaviour and outcomes. Students taught by teachers showing signs of burnout were more likely to exhibit disruptive behaviours and reduced motivation as well as perform less well on assessments than other students.

Educator burnout is, therefore, impacting the core purpose of the school and reducing its effectiveness. It is essential that schools move away from the myth of the resilient educator and move towards addressing workload and improving school community.

Helen Kelly is a researcher, writer, speaker and consultant in the field of school wellbeing. Between 2006 and 2020, when she retired from her work as a school principal, Helen led international schools in Bangkok, Berlin and Hong Kong. Through her work as The Positive Principal, she aims to provide practical support for schools to help them to enhance wellbeing and maximise the potential of the whole school community.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO HELEN'S AUDIO VERSION

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“JACK AND ME”

ARTWORK BY JACK SAVAGE

BY MATTHEW SAVAGE A new podcast series: about transinclusivity, unconditional love and keeping #wellbeingfirst at all times for every single student.

In early 2017, I almost lost my son. Any parent knows that there can be no pain greater, and having stood at that precipice and looked into that abyss, the axis on which my world had revolved shifted forever. A few weeks ago, and, by his own admission, now “thriving”, Jack agreed to record with me a candid conversation about his transition from AFAB* (*assigned female at birth) Year 6 pupil to 20-yearold out, proud, queer young man.

I have released this conversation as a podcast series of six episodes, and called it “Jack and Me”. Whilst it is very much a story of one trans man’s journey, it is also a story of identity, of courage, and of unconditional love, equally relevant for all parents and their children navigating the powerful but perilous terrain of transition in their own families, and for all international educators passionate about the wider pursuit of #deij in their schools.

For this article, I have chosen but a few of the insights he shares in the podcast, but I strongly urge you to listen to the entire series. At a time when the world is moving further and further away from equity, inclusion and justice, never have Jack’s words been more important than they are right now.

“Whenever we were asked to group into boys and girls, someone would say that I didn’t really fit into either.”

Jack describes in detail the transphobic slurs he endured even as a 10-year-old child, and the insistence of so many teachers to refer to, and group, their children by a gender binary. At first, he was puzzled by such language, as it seemed to predate his conscious questioning of his own gender; but now, looking back, it was his brutal introduction to a world rife with transphobic ignorance and hate.

“I remember an overwhelming feeling that I was dressing up, and I was in drag or something.”

“All I was thinking was that I had told my parents this thing, and they then hadn’t mentioned it at all, so they clearly didn’t care.”

Like in too many schools, the first uniform he was obliged to wear as a Secondary student could not have been more gendered, perversely accentuating and revealing every nuance of the adolescent female body. He did not have the courage to fight it, but wearing such clothes on a daily basis served also to accentuate and reveal to him the dissonance between his identity and the body he inhabited.

One thread that runs through these conversations is how many mistakes we made as parents, despite the best possible intentions and all the love in the world, in our struggle to ‘catch up’ with Jack and walk his new road hand in hand. We got there in the end, but it took us too long and, in the meantime, his journey was even harder as a result.

“At school there would always be words thrown around belittling trans women, and I hadn’t really heard anything about trans men.”

He was struck from an early age by how pervasive explicit transphobia seemed to be, and how legitimised and unaccountable were those fuelled by, and fuelling, such hatred. He reflects now on how much harder becomes your transition if you are coming out in a world that seems to regard your very existence as the subject of laughter, revulsion or, worse still, denial.

“I started binding, but I wasn’t binding in a safe way because you can’t bind safely without a proper binder.”

Jack talks candidly about ‘binding’ – how essential it is for many a trans male teen, and how we can either support them in sourcing safe and quality products or leave them to fashion their own dangerous and painful alternatives.

Thankfully, this issue finally reached a broad audience with some of the scenes in the recent series of Netflix’s Sex Education, and hopefully his words will help educate too.

“It is a lot easier to come out as gay or bi than it is to come out as trans.”

Before Jack ever came out as trans, he decided to come out as lesbian, and it is his experience that this is too often a common first step by many trans boys and men.

Such is their desperation to be part of the wider LGBTQ+ community that they would rather enter it through an inauthentic door than not belong to it at all.

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“I just wanted to be me and for everyone to know that.”

Reflecting back, Jack is remarkably understanding of the difficulty facing many an international school in choosing between supporting LGBTQ+ students at all costs and avoiding the opprobrium and moral panic of the wider parent body. But at the time, he felt like a caged bird, denied his right to fly freely.

“Because I wasn’t on hormones, I just started not really eating, and I lost a dangerous amount of weight.”

Jack is frank and open about the comorbidity of gender dysphoria and the onset of eating disorders, and how trans children and young people will often be willing to go to dangerous lengths in order to chase the body their unblocked puberty seems so determined to deny them.

“It’s hard to be happy when you are hiding something really important.”

For so many years, Jack had to hide the very essence of his own identity, and the detriment from such denial affected every stratum of his physical and mental health. I write and talk daily with schools around the world about the masks that so many students wear every single day, and Jack’s was as hard and heavy as any.

“Most breaks and lunchtimes I just locked myself in a toilet cubicle – in order not to be looked at.”

Listening to Jack made me reflect still further on what I call the five Cs of visibility – campus, climate, culture, curriculum and communication – and just how far we have to go before our schools are safe for every student. Above all, however, it has made me realise just how different it is for a student to feel “looked at” and for a student to feel “seen”.

There is much talk now of #deij in the international schools sector, which has to be a good thing, but we have to remember that inclusion, unlike gender, is a binary: either we are inclusive of all identities and characteristics, or we are inclusive of none.

I do not question the sincerity of those international school leaders newly carrying that torch, but I hope they will find a way, despite the sociocultural context in which their schools are located, to enable every single student to be known, be seen and belong, regardless of how they identify or who they are.

Conditionality and contingency abound in all of our schools, but we must not let the winds of performativity and normativity blow us from that path. Surely we take an invisible oath when we join this profession to “do no harm”, and I hope that Jack’s story can help us realise just how important that is.

Scan here to listen to "Jack and Me" * “Jack and Me” is available now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, but please use his words carefully, sensitively and with respect – and to the benefit of all the LGBTQ+ students in your own schools. Jack has fought long and hard finally now to have the privilege to decide what he shares and with whom, and I am determined this podcast neither dilute nor detract from that agency in his own, private life.

Matthew Savage is an international consultant, trainer and coach, speaker, writer and content creator, determined, through #themonalisaeffect®, to help schools across the world keep #wellbeingfirst and enable every child to be seen, be known and belong. He is also a member of the #deij team at ECIS, and the proud father of two transgender adult children.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO MATTHEW'S AUDIO VERSION

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Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine Call for articles/artwork As we continue to grow the Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine we'd love to hear from anyone who is interested in contributing a piece related to wellbeing - whether that be as a counsellor, teacher, leader, school nurse, support staff, or from a personal perspective! We're also really keen to share student contributions (written or digital art/ photography pieces)!

If you are interested in contributing an article for the next Wellbeing in international schools Magazine in June then please send an email to sadie.wiseducation@gmail.com.

LIVING WITH EATING DISORDERS: THE REALIZATION THAT THERE IS NO PERFECT SELF, ONLY A MORE PERFECT WORLD

ARTICLE ARTWORK BY ANNIE (SHEN WAI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, CHINA)

BY ANNIE TRIGGER WARNING. Surely everyone has heard of the comment of “You're getting fat!” I wonder why: why do people’s aesthetic focus become so simple, so single, focusing on a skinny body? As a Chinese citizen, our current culture has been pursuing white skin and thin body. But why?

I used to have to count how many calories are in each food, how many grams I should eat, even what time of day I should eat it, and the reason behind this extreme dieting is absurd: a boy I had a crush on in elementary school once told me, "You're getting fat.”

Discouraged by his unintentional words, coupled with my busy interview preparation for entering my current school, my weight slid rapidly and even fell to a weight that nearly sent me to ICU. To prevent this tragedy from “nearly” happening, I spent the entire COVID-19 lockdown period in hospital being treated with intravenous nutrition.

"You're getting fat.” This sentence broke the heart of an inferior girl. In order to be attractive, I began to go on a diet. I have to admit that I am extremely self-controlled, and I can easily cut out all snacks, even carbs, and eat almost nothing but fruits and vegetables. Four years ago, during the fall physical examination, I was too cold to take off the heavy coat, and when I stood on the scale, it read, 39 kilograms.

Everyone was stunned, under the context where everyone aspires to be morbidly thin, health seems to have been forgotten. The girls cast envious vision to say: “How did you lose weight? I want to learn!”

If I could escape strange looks from passers-by and malicious sneers from classmates by losing weight, what would happen if I lost more? I started skipping meals until I only ate one apple per day. I enjoyed the feeling of hunger so much that I was so engrossed in it until I entirely ignored the peering eyes. At the time there was subtle information about anorexia and I was ignorant of its danger. However, as the days passed, my weight dropped rapidly. Until once when I woke up, blacked out, and then woke up again in a hospital bed from low blood sugar level caused by excessive dieting. I started to notice: things might go wrong.

When I left the hospital, I was prescribed a diet, and I became inseparable with a kitchen scale to ensure my nutrition intake.

My father thought I was in a cult, and my mother, in tears, begged me to eat more. During the years suffering from anorexia, my parents anxiously watched me wasting away.

They thought I was physically ill, but the true illness was in my heart. They took me all over the country seeking treatment.

Still, my stomach was rebelling, my heart was screaming, I don't want to return back! As I walked past my parents' room with the dim moon shine, I heard my father crying, “What happened to our girl?" despairingly and chokingly. As I lay in bed that night, I felt like a skeleton in every breath, lingered on the edges. “What happened to me?” I questioned myself, “Where is the girl who never let her parents down? Why am I so selfish? I am the biggest bastard in the world, a bastard who has hurt who loves me the most!”

I've consistently vowed for change starting tomorrow, but greeted with endless returns. I became experienced at deceiving my parents: throwing egg yolks out of the window, washing out oil in meals with water, eating only the skin part of cantaloupe, and flushing bread down the toilet. They weighed me every day, and I had to fill my pockets to gain a few pounds. Until midnight, I would go back to weigh my real weight. I lived in a lie. I became lonely. Spending the weekend wandering the busy streets alone became my entertainment.

The truth is I know I'm abnormally thin, but every time I stand in front of the mirror, I still see a fat girl staring at me. I'm trapped in my body. I call for help, but my brain won't let me. I thought about suicide a million times. Every time I stand on the building roof, I will put my head infinitely close to the railings. My parents were aware of this, entreating me for long-term hospitalization. I had been refusing it because I was afraid of jeopardizing the good grades I had kept throughout my life, and that was the last thing I possessed. It was only when COVID19 struck and we were forced to go online that I reluctantly agreed to be hospitalized.

I feel strongly about the experience of online classes in the hospital. I can still sense my nervousness on the first day of online lessons. That was an anxious sense of unknown events.

My brain repeatedly echoed, “Can I gain knowledge and participate well in this environment with the smell of hospital disinfectant and intermittent Internet?” A week after, I found out the answer. I have to say I admire the occupation of teacher from the bottom of my heart. Since I am in an international school, many teachers are thousands of miles apart rom their families. I had expected that they would be immersed in confusion and uneasiness like me, but to my surprise, all our teachers were very earnest during the class. Our teachers had been very patient to answer every question we have and provide us with mindfulness advisory sessions. This moved me very much. Although there are some difficulties in learning and communication, we never give up. Even with intravenous nutrition on my left arm, I can still participate in Kahoot!, literature tests with my right arm, and I can see my teacher’s effort from this customized test.

ARTWORK BY ANNIE

Online learning in the hospital makes me realize, in order to improve our grades, it is necessary to obtain selfmanagement and inquiry skills, while being principled and persistent. With the help of the school, I adapted to this learning environment well. I also came to realize that my perseverance and principles of learning can also be adapted to support my recovering health. My parents told me that "body is the capital of learning." Without a healthy body, no matter how good the grades are, there is no blessing to enjoy the honor. My conscientious daily study lessens my sensitivity on food, allowing my health index to improve quickly. When I left the hospital, the doctors and my family were proud of the changes I had made.

Since then, I threw away the kitchen scales and never looked back. I won academic honor awards, and I think this “honor" should be shared with all who support my health and learning.

My key to recovery from ED was my realization that there is no perfect self, but there is a more perfect world. No one has any idea of what could happen tomorrow, and I could never guarantee whether I would follow my tracks.

What I can guarantee is that there are so many things that I haven‘t done, and I need my healthy body to support myself to stand up again.

Annie is a Grade 10 student from Shen Wai International School in Shenzhen, China. She considers self-management as one of the most important skills needed to succeed and manages herself strictly to achieve her goals. In the face of knowledge gained through her experience with eating disorders, she realizes that we have to “quit while ahead” and move towards new things in our life.

Although self-management does assist one to achieve their short-term goals, reflection prevents us from leaving regrets to encounter tomorrow.

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THE WHY AND HOW OF STUDENT AGENCY AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

BY SIAN MAY “We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.”

- Antonio Demasio Demasio asserts that we should view all neuroscientific findings from the perspective that we are fundamentally “feeling beings.” As educators, perhaps even more importantly we are simultaneously seeking to impact both our students’ feelings and thinking. However, in reality school systems may present us with a challenge as their design often separates out these aspects of our students’ lives. For example, at the extremes we may find a pastoral system which addresses our students as “feeling machines” alongside a contradictory academic system which classifies students as “thinking machines”. How can we respond to such tensions? One possible solution is to drive learner agency and intrinsic motivation as both strategies require a distinctly human, but rigorous approach, which meets the feeling and thinking developmental needs of students.

The discussion that follows highlights areas of evidence which challenge us to rethink our long held beliefs about the educator-student dynamic. Most importantly, it will describe pragmatic starting points in order to apply these strategies

in our own classrooms or school contexts. The evidence will clearly demonstrate that educators can positively impact student wellbeing through our everyday practices and build strong foundational efficacy and purpose in our students by harnessing student agency and intrinsic motivation. The seemingly trivial interactions which we are all responsible for, both implicit and explicit, shape the long-term protective factors which students develop, and educators play an essential and exciting role in growing them.

The Evidence for Student Agency In 2019, the OECD, (following extensive focus groups with students across the globe) reported that young people were seeking an environment of co-agency in their school community.

These findings were analysed to form a definition of student agency as “concerned with acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others.” The report also found that students who experienced agency were able to create a sense of purpose and meaning, in their own lives. However, the evidence is clear, students who experience meaningful agency attain higher achievement and educational success (Buchmann and Steinhoff, 2017). This aligns with longitudinal evidence of students setting higher goals (Johnston 2014, 2019) and possessing a sense of self-efficacy

and an ability to engage with deeper learning (Fullan, Hill, & Roncón-Gallardo, 2017; DET, 2017). A well-developed sense of agency can also help individuals overcome adversity and therefore the strength and longevity of this strategy are clear.

These findings create a collective opportunity to create networks of empowerment of young people to create, choose, take charge of, and own and create knowledge, learning, and skills.

Any discussion regarding student agency must confront the reality that some of the notions of student empowerment can appear to challenge traditional hierarchical school environments, as we wrangle with tokenism when “student agency” is often used as a substitute for “student autonomy”, “student voice” and “student choice”. However, student agency is a means of creating teacher practices which address the development of feeling and thinking in our students. Further, the evidence is robust that it also raises student attainment via any traditional metrics.

How do we practically start to activate student agency?

A good starting point for an agentic culture is to ask students questions such as: Who owns the learning?

Why are you learning this?

How do you feel about your learning?

A potential next step is to begin examining how we, as educators, are progressing in fostering student agency in our schools and classrooms. In effect, we must be prepared to examine ourselves as educators, and the environment we provide to empower students to exercise their agency. Simple indicators can provide us with the insight needed to release agency in our students.

The beginnings of agency are emerging when our students can state: I can choose my own resources I can explain the question I am investigating I can describe what my finished product or performance will look like when it is a success I can explain what I do not understand about _____ yet I can voice my opinion Similarly, for educators to be able to make the following statements means the beginnings of the equitable environments which enable agency are emerging: We ensure that all students are known and heard in our school community We focus on student progress rather than outcomes We actively build peer to peer and broader community cohesion We cultivate intrinsic motivation in our students We ensure that students regularly learn in natural settings

One of the ultimate goals is a learning community in your school.

The OECD findings indicated that students are seeking coagency and this illustrates the importance of the intentions of the community interacting with young people. It indicates that from their earliest years, children learn to understand the intentions of people around them and develop a sense of self, an important step towards agency. As students move through school, a student’s sense of purpose in their own lives should be developed with their belief they can fulfil that purpose by setting goals and taking action to achieve those goals. That is when student agency becomes a learning goal. As a learning process, student agency and learning, therefore, have a circular relationship. The sundial of co-agency by OECD has been designed with this in mind to allow all members of a school community to work together on developing a culture of coagency i.e. students and adults genuinely engaged in authentic endeavour to develop a learning community.

The evidence for intrinsic motivation Research on motivation, outlined in the Self-Driven Child

by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, has suggested that a strong sense of autonomy is the key to developing the healthy self-motivation that allows children and young people to pursue their goals with passion and to enjoy their achievements. These findings can be a challenge to our systems to move beyond extrinsic rewards, and the work of Dr Helen Street certainly echoes these sentiments.

However, whilst our systems might require critical review, there are many things educators can do on the ground in the meantime. As we have already explored earlier in the discussion, the evidence is compelling that when students develop quality, equitable relationships with each other and

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their teachers based on agency, life-long mental health protective factors which promote resilience and wellbeing are generated.

Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory of motivation makes clear that the Why of learning is fundamental and the practical implementation ideas for student agency in this article also reflect this reality. While past research has established the importance of autonomy in facilitating motivation, a new article published in February 2021 demonstrated more clearly and precisely the importance of motivation, by demonstrating how motivation can be developed through teacher and parent behaviours to student outcomes. For example, to foster optimal student motivation, i.e. a combination of both intrinsic motivation (i.e., enjoyment) and identified regulation (i.e., meaningfulness), teachers and parents should engage in certain supportive practices. The most effective practices support systems which hold the student as a person, meaning that their feelings and preferences should be acknowledged (through empathetic interactions and provision of choices meaningful to them) and that they are entitled to rationales explaining why school tasks suggested to them are meaningful. These positive interpersonal gestures have demonstrated in meta-analytic investigation the ability to increase meaningfulness and intrinsic motivation among students and to lead to adaptive academic outcomes and are supported by the demonstrated effectiveness of interventions designed to increase autonomy supportive teaching practices.

How do we practically start to activate intrinsic motivation?

Many systemic elements of extrinsic motivation are inherent in the school cultures in which we work. Therefore, a good start is an inquiry into some of the alternatives, for example Starr Weinstein's work into other approaches to traditional assessment models. However, we are not proposing a revolution! There are many examples of practice below which can encompass a focus on driving up intrinsic motivation amongst students.

Harvard Graduate School of Education recommend these as a first starting point: 1. Allow students to select a text or book from a reading list.

2. Offer students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding through a variety of multi-model mediums from which they can choose, for example, vlog, podcast, essay, poetry.

3. Establishing clear peer networks is another useful approach in building intrinsic motivation. This can move from group work to meaningful peer assessment routines which guide the formative feedback process.

4. Using generative and social protocols for discussions.

Dr Katie Martin highlights in Evolving Education the practical means of shifting to a learner-centred paradigm. In practice this means moving from a school-centred to learner-centred paradigm.

For example:

However, in your own classroom you have the option to look at what this means for your own practice:

How might you guide learners to understand their strengths, interests, challenges and goals?

In most cases the above question represents a shift in the role of the teacher’s practice. For instance, a survey at the start of each new class induction which provides you with the information you need to drive the class’ common and individual interest through the curriculum.

First and foremost, all of these practices have to be contextualised, therefore the strongest recommendation that the evidence points to is to engage and speak to our students about their learning. If we are to develop both feeling and thinking to create powerful and durable learning mind-sets, then co-agency is likely to be our goal. Coagency starts among educators, for instance, pairing up to test out ideas regarding agency and intrinsic motivation in your classroom with a critical friend doing likewise in theirs, then swapping notes, is one of the most powerful things we can do.

This article forms the first installment of a two-part series - the next article turns its focus to belonging and peer networks as they link to cultivating student agency and motivation.

Sian May, Director of Senior School for Dulwich College International, most recently was High School Principal at the International School of Lausanne following her tenure as Head of Middle School at Sha Tin College (ESF), Hong Kong. A passionate advocate of innovative practices in Student Mental Health, feedback and assessment, Sian has helped create dynamic student leadership models.

She has also led the way in implementing professional learning communities in schools, partnering with educators to develop talent amongst colleagues, student autonomy and self-management agendas. Connect with Sian on LinkedIn or Twitter.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO SIAN'S AUDIO VERSION

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MAKING A “HOME” IN THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MUSIC DEPARTMENT

ARTWORK BY IGNACIO HEARSEY (GARDEN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, MALAYSIA)

BY CHRIS KOELMA Prolific music education advocate Vaughan Fleischfresser recently posted some tweets that resonated widely in the online #musiced community:

Reading these tweets, I realised that I had felt that gravitational pull to the music department as a student, and I saw it many times as a teacher during my time working in international schools in Argentina and Malaysia. Most of my elective music students (defined as those taking GCSE, A Level, BTEC or IB music) lived in the music department. But, why was this so? I spent time chatting to a group of elective music students and alumni in an attempt to find out.

Identity formation and socialisation In a world in which music permeates our daily life in myriad ways, music can be used to formulate and express our individual identities. It not only allows us to regulate our moods and behaviours, but also to present ourselves to others in the way we prefer. These ‘musical identities’ are often linked closely to subcultures in our school communities, especially for adolescents.

The standard social groupings, labels and identities in schools are often shattered when students step into the music department. Students that are sporty, nerdy, cool and quirky can all coexist simply because they all love music and have elected to study it further. Students from disparate cultural backgrounds in an international school can also find common ground. Thus, an elective music class regularly develops a subculture of its own: the muso’s.

Elective music courses often run with small groups of students meaning a wonderful sense of community can form. One student I spoke with described this community as being, “like a family…where we laugh, cry, support and share”. Another student commented on the way that, “smaller class sizes can make it easier for everyone to get to know each other and find connection through music”.

A study by Adderly et. al. (2013) explores the way that the social aspect of music-making fosters a sense of profound belonging amongst students. Interestingly, participants referenced the way that these relationships assisted them in negotiating the often-turbulent high school years.

Morrison (2001) highlights how elective music students often interact extensively outside the bounds of the classroom.

Students have compulsory music lessons to attend, but they will also have ensemble rehearsals, concerts, shows, trips and camps that will unite them further. This sense of unity also permeates through other aspects of social life, such as going to the movies, parties or hanging out at the mall. Music appears to have a powerful socialising force.

Curriculum Most formal music curricula in international schools require that students complete performance and/or composition components. For a young person navigating the social and cultural dynamics of an international school, these can be confronting and sensitive tasks. After all, the emotional expression needed to effectively communicate a piece of music requires a significant level of confidence. It also calls for a willingness to be vulnerable to constructive criticism and feedback from teachers and peers, which will be fundamentally subjective in nature. Of course, there are assessment frameworks in place, but these must ultimately be interpreted on some level by the individual giving the feedback.

A student I spoke with mentioned how, “sharing our performances or compositions with each other builds trust”.

As each student develops their performance or composition skills in response to feedback, a sense of security and togetherness forms within the group. Students find solidarity together and begin to equate this with a feeling of safety in the confines of the music department.

Environment A music department can be a seriously cool environment for a young person. Where else in the school might you have sound-treated practise rooms, a bunch of instruments, and the freedom to make plenty of noise?

For students that are over-sensitive to sound or struggle with the stimulating and crowded environment of the school playground, the music department can be a safe space to find calm. Twenty minutes of tinkering on a piano or bashing away on the drum kit can be exactly what is needed. With exam pressure, parental expectations, time constraints, and the constant demand for student attention from multiple competing school initiatives, the music department can be a place to destress and find space, belonging and community.

It is not uncommon for elective music students to spend most of their break times at the music department.

Students commented on the way that they felt, “part of the wider music department” at their school. In their senior years, students may be invited to use the department fridge and have a special space to store their instruments and bags each day. Not just a locker, a whole room! That’s right, the department becomes their place. Their home.

Their safe space.

The above reflections do not suggest that students can’t make their home elsewhere in the school. At its core, I believe that this phenomenon largely depends on whether a teacher fosters this environment for students. What is certain is that I have seen how this sense of home can be wonderful for enhancing student wellbeing in the international school setting.

Chris Koelma is an experienced international school music educator. He is currently completing a PhD looking at the unique cultural and political influences on participation in elective music in international schools. He is also founder of beginnerorchestra.com, a platform for beginner orchestra resources for international schools.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO CHRIS' AUDIO VERSION

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SCHOOL COUNSELLING: AN UNDERUTILISED RESOURCE IN HONG KONG

BY DR MARK HARRISON The wellbeing of children in Hong Kong is poor compared to that of young people in other regions. A meta-analysis published in 2019 and covering 22 years of data found “higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower levels of general mental health among Hong Kong adolescents than adolescents in other regions,” and in the 2018 PISA survey Hong Kong was ranked 64 out of 70 in the life satisfaction of secondary school students.

Among the many challenges facing young people in the city, a high-stakes education system focused on academic achievement as a narrow measure of success stands out as a major contributor to poor wellbeing. Recent research found that 44.6% of school-age children named school as a factor with an “extremely or fairly negative impact on mental health.” This high-pressure academic culture affects both local and international school students. On top of this, the social unrest of 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a toll on the wellbeing of Hong Kong’s children, the extent of which is only starting to become apparent.

At the same time, support available for young people in Hong Kong is lacking. For example, the number of psychiatrists in the territory is far below that in other developed countries relative to the population (WHO, 2017) and, according to the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre, children have to wait, on average, more than a year to get an appointment with a public-sector mental health professional. In addition to this, stigma related to mental health issues has been called a “perennial problem” and inhibits help-seeking behaviour. Although the populations of local and international schools are different, both are increasingly drawn from the local Chinese community and so share a similar cultural background.

Given the pressing need to support young people’s wellbeing and the poor provision available in the community, school counselling has the potential to be of enormous value. Mick Cooper, a professor of counselling psychology in the UK, has described school counselling as “a non-stigmatising, accessible, and effective form of early intervention, which ensures that every young person has someone to talk to in times of trouble.” While school counselling in Hong Kong’s local schools is woefully underdeveloped, the more than 91,000 children attending international schools in the city (according to ISC Research, as of July 2020) fare relatively better and have greater access to this resource. This is not to say, however, that counselling in international schools is robust.

Over the past few years, my colleagues and I have carried out research into school counselling in Hong Kong which has highlighted some of the barriers which prevent counsellors from being as effective as they could be in supporting children’s wellbeing. The following is by no means comprehensive but hopefully gives a sense of the challenges which need to be addressed.

First, counsellors are most effective when they are embedded into schools’ wellbeing support systems.

Counsellors perform a highly multifunctional role and often have a “big picture” of the entire ecosystem of a school, making them well placed to understand students’ needs and influence wellbeing policy. However, despite this potential, counsellors often find themselves in peripheral or marginalised roles with little power to advocate for effective wellbeing practices. This is not unique to Hong Kong: research in the UK has also concluded that counsellors can be little more than an “extra appendage,” treated as quasiadministrative assistants. As a result, counsellors’ training and experience are underutilised.

Second, counsellors often suffer from a lack of role clarity. To some extent, this is part of being a school counsellor, researchers in the US suggest that “struggle with role ambiguity and incongruence” is common. In Hong Kong this experience seems almost ubiquitous, since a poor public recognition of counselling combines with the multifunctional role of counsellors to result in poor differentiation between counsellors and other professions such as social workers.

This in turn constitutes a barrier to young people and their parents approaching counsellors since their roles are not communicated effectively and, therefore, they don’t know what counsellors actually do.

Third, weak relationships between school counsellors and parents limits the support counsellors can offer. In research we conducted during the school suspension period caused by the pandemic, we found that schools responded most effectively where strong pre-existing relationships between counsellors and parents existed. However, such relationships were often not present and hence made it difficult to offer effective counselling throughout the school closure.

Our research suggests that school counselling is often located peripherally, and at a time when wellbeing is an increasingly dominant part of school discourses. Why is this?

One possibility is simply that the reality of wellbeing provision has not caught up with all the noise about it. Wellbeing provision can be superficial and piecemeal, playing second fiddle to a focus on the academic. This may be particularly the case in international schools as they compete for higher grades and more impressive university matriculation profiles.

School leaders, therefore, have a big role to play in developing school counselling to provide effective support for children in Hong Kong’s schools. Principals need a clear sense of the importance of school counselling, and a real commitment to making it part of their schools’ vision. Senior leaders can establish clear roles for counsellors, embed them into the school’s wider student support service provision, and empower them to influence wellbeing policy.

Indeed, the International Model for School Counseling Programs highlights the importance of “clear expectations and purposeful interaction with administration, teachers, staff, parents and students” in leading to “systemic change,” but only school principals can bring this about. In addition, school leaders are well placed to communicate the importance of counsellors to parents and students, and to build a school climate where counselling is normalised and wellbeing is genuinely a communal enterprise.

School counselling has been described as having “major potential to contribute to the public good.” The positive effects of school counselling are well established by research, and young people in Hong Kong would benefit greatly from the kind of positive and supportive relationships that good school counsellors can provide. The leaders of international schools are well placed to make this a reality.

Mark Harrison is a lecturer in the Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in school counselling, wellbeing, and social-emotional learning.

Mark is the author of School Counselling in an Asian Cultural Context: Insights from Hong Kong and The Asia-Pacific region. Originally from the UK, he worked as a teacher, counsellor, and senior leader for 19 years in schools in Hong Kong.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO MARK'S AUDIO VERSION

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STUDENT-LED CHANGE YOUR MIND AIMS TO TRANSFORM YOUTH HEALTH AND WELLBEING

BY MAZEN KAFIENAH What is Change Your Mind?

Change Your Mind (CYM) is a student-led initiative focused on educating children about their own health and wellbeing, by delivering interactive, informative, mind-opening workshops.

These highly professional workshops are made and presented by teams of students who aim to cover a range of essential topics, including: Digital Detoxing; Basic First Aid; Transition to Secondary School; Health and Development; Relationships; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Each of these workshops further branch into six ten-minute sessions that explore the different aspects of each theme. We aim to present two workshops a week to 10-11 year-olds in local primary schools. Additionally, with each presented workshop comes growth and improvement as we enhance our material for the sake of the quality of the workshop and the children's learning.

Now we work as part of a programme that has been recognised in a range of platforms such as on the radio, the local press, and the book Just Great Teaching by internationally recognised education author and consultant Ross Morrison-McGill.

This has attracted schools and colleges into this programme as it consistently proves its value every year. I am proud of the programme's expansion as schools across the UK join and unite in the movement to thrive in being an ambassador for children's health and wellbeing. Together we aim to help them make informed decisions about their own physical and mental health and apply what they have learnt into their daily life.

Locally, in the past five years, we have worked with over 50 primary schools and deliver to around 1500 pupils per year.

Overall, the programme now operates over 100 schools and colleges across the UK, in 67 Local Education Authorities.

Why did I choose CYM?

How has Change Your Mind expanded?

In 2016, CYM started as a small-scale project and evolved into an extracurricular activity where more students were engaged in the likes of presenting and teaching topics they were passionate about. It then further developed into a timetabled option and competed in popularity with the EPQ and Further Maths alike.

CYM was initially presented as a programme that mimics a workplace environment; one with teams, sub-team leaders (posing as line managers) and our own coordinator (and overall CYM programme director) Mrs. McPhee. This professionalism was very appealing to me as it allowed me to

treat the programme like I was an employee rather than a student. From the get-go, I knew I wanted to have the opportunity to be a sub-team leader to put my leadership skills to the test. It's truly a rewarding experience.

What also drove me to join CYM was the drive for constant improvement and seeing previous students become more confident with their speaking and constant engagement. There is also an immense sense of accomplishment with CYM, as everyone has the same overall goal to offer pupils different perspectives on their health. I have submerged myself in a sanctuary of like-minded people who care about their future and the future of the next generation. I also joined CYM as a way to become more knowledgeable about mental health and to overcome the stigma associated with talking openly about our mental wellbeing just as importantly and openly as our physical wellbeing.

PowerPoint and Word to make resources that my audience could easily use. Most importantly, it improved my creativity to produce the most interactive ways to engage younger pupils. As for presenting, improving communication skills is paramount for success. I developed skills such as projecting my voice, even with a mask on and using a gentle yet informative tone, calm yet dominant. This took practice, but by my third workshop, I had managed to find my own ‘presenting tone’ that worked for me.

Furthermore, I developed skills such as punctuality to the workshops and appearance to be as professional as possible.

Regarding improvement, these skills are highly related to good employability. I improved on my teamwork and leadership by listening to everyone’s ideas, and applying them accordingly in preparation for the next workshop. I further expanded on my initiative, responsibility and time-management to meet given deadlines.

Would I recommend other schools/colleges setting it up?

What have I got out of Change Your Mind?

If asked to list everything I had got out of CYM, I wouldn't know where to start. I can confidently say that the skills I have acquired, I don't think I would have developed naturally through everyday academic life. I can split the skills into three parts; those acquired when planning, presenting, and improving the workshop.

When planning to make these presentations and resources, I developed my ability to read and scan through large chunks of information to find the most crucial quality parts to be added to my session. I enhanced my abilities in using platforms such as

Undoubtedly, all schools and colleges that want their students to develop the skills above should join the ever-growing movement and become members of the CYM family. For me, CYM is one of the best youth programmes available. Don't believe me? Find us, and we will change your mind!

Mazen Kafienah is a Year 12 student at Queen Mary’s Grammar School Walsall, UK. He is a member of the 2021-22 Change Your Mind team there, and holds the position of sub-team leader for the Digital Detoxing subteam.

DEVELOPING THE ‘INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SUCCESS’ IN SECONDARY PUPILS: AN EVIDENCE-BASED RESPONSE TO THE WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC

BY GRAHAM MALLEN AND AMBER WITHERS ‘It will be the nature of our collective and systematic response to the pandemic that will determine how children are affected by it’ (The Impact of Covid-19 on Education; Insights from Education at a Glance 2020 – A. Shleicher, 2020) On February 4, 2020, my colleague, Amber Withers, and I met in her office at Al Yasmina Academy (AYA) in Abu Dhabi. In this meeting we discussed what was, unbeknownst to us, soon to become the forefront of all schools: wellbeing.

Both being heads of year, we already had a shared vision of creating a strong pastoral environment for our pupils to ensure they were emotionally supported and prepared, both for now and their future, providing them with what we call the ‘infrastructure for success’. Little did we know that in a few months’ time this was going to be of overriding importance across the globe.

Strong research has time and again shown the importance of wellbeing, not solely because of the pandemic (WHO, 2020), but because of the recent rise of social media related pressures (Richards et al., 2015) and the overuse of the internet in general (Yoo et al., 2013). In fact, child and adolescent mental health has appeared, in particular, on the UK political agenda since the early 1990s (Williams & Kerfoot, 2005) and worldwide through the World Health Organisation (WHO) since as early as 1983 (Sartorius, 1983). However, despite this research, it was never really put at the forefront of political educational agendas until the pandemic finally put the spotlight firmly on pupil wellbeing.

With wellbeing in the spotlight, Amber and I wanted to take an evidence-based approach; we simply did not want to go with our ‘gut instinct’ in the wellbeing strategies we implemented.

Much like a doctor would want the best for their patients, we wanted the best outcomes for our pupils. Like the field of medicine, education has also become more empirically informed, allowing leaders to make decisions which have an increased likelihood of ‘favourable outcomes’ (Jones, 2018), thus decreasing the research-to-practice gap.

When Amber and I look back at that meeting, we now realise just how important using an evidence-based approach was to AYA’s response to the pandemic.

Positive Education at AYA is focused around our ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ live sessions and ‘EPOCH’ (Kern, 2016) wellbeing screening. Every Wednesday during tutor time, all secondary pupils and their tutors tune into a live wellbeing session, based on the most current evidence-based wellbeing practice. This will often involve a presentation from myself or one of the pastoral team, followed by a tutor activity.

"Every half-term we begin a new topic and in total cover six areas across the school year. We have been influenced by a number of people and organisations, in particular by the work of Ilona Boniwell and Lucy Ryan whose evidencebased resources capture the science of wellbeing (Boniwell & Ryan, 2012). Recently, we have been using the Chimp Management model, which is accessible despite being based on fairly complicated scientific facts yet, to teach pupils about the adolescent brain, helping them understand why they might make cognitive errors or have poor judgement (Peters, 2012)."

As a pastoral team, we sat at length last academic year discussing what we will teach and when. For example, we considered the fact that a large number of our pupils had not been in school face to face since the pandemic started.

Therefore, to help pupils adjust, we looked at positive relationships first in September 2021, which as evidence suggests, also increases resilience and wellbeing (Roffey, 2012).

In term three, the much-anticipated exam season will start with many pupils sitting their first ever exams after a very interrupted three years of education. We have therefore implemented a resilience topic for this period to support pupils with their stress levels and focus during these exams and building on the previous resilience research mentioned.

The ‘glue,’ however, to all of this has been our wellbeing screening and something that, without the support of every tutor within our secondary school, we would not have been able to achieve so effectively. Being proactive in relation to pupil wellbeing and not merely reactive is imperative if we want to build an ‘emotional cocoon’ around our pupils and allow them to be all they can be in their life. Wellbeing screening is something that has been recommended recently in response to the pandemic (UN, 2020 & ISC, 2021) and, again, something discussed previously in relation to education prior to the pandemic (Watson & Emery, 2012, White & Murray, 2015).

Each term we measure every secondary pupil’s wellbeing using the EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Wellbeing, as developed by Professor Peggy Kern (2016) and based around Seligman’s PERMA model (2011). The EPOCH measurement allows pastoral leaders to understand a pupil’s engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness and happiness levels, five essential aspects related to adolescent flourishing (Kern et al., 2016). In doing this we can establish any pupils who may require further support from both a pastoral sense, but also academic, and communicate this information to parents, tutors, subject teachers and of course the pupils themselves to develop any particular needs that will allow them to flourish in school and beyond and develop that all important self-esteem in our children.

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Our approach to developing that infrastructure for success in our pupils is still very much a work in progress but is an authentic reflection on the responsibility we place on ‘wholechild’ development as a school to reduce the impact of the pandemic on our children. As pastoral leaders, Amber and I recommend that all schools consider what their approach is to improving pupil wellbeing during this ongoing pandemic. Every school will of course find their own path, and ours may not suit yours. But ask those key questions, use the abundance of evidence-based research that’s out there and importantly do what you can to improve your own pupils' infrastructure for success, now and for the future.

As Amber and I look forward to the future of wellbeing at our school, we have to say how proud we are of how far we have come in a relatively short space of time and with all the challenges the pandemic has presented. Our pupils have embraced our wellbeing vision and engaged in discussions, whether this is on how to manage their ‘red head’ better or thinking about what healthy ‘daily habits’ lead to success.

"The small wellbeing ‘discretionary efforts’ that our staff have been making with our pupils have made a huge difference, and those everyday wellbeing conversations have created a real family feeling to our school. It just shows how much we genuinely care for each other’s wellbeing over everything else."

Moving forward, our pastoral team is looking at using positive psychology as a teaching and learning tool, incorporating our wellbeing vision not just into pastoral care but also into how we deliver our lessons. It is certainly an exciting time to be at our school from a wellbeing perspective and there is no better time than now as we come out of the pandemic to really put wellbeing at the forefront of what we stand for as an educational establishment.

Graham Mallen BA (hons), MA, NPQSL has been teaching PE and psychology since 2006 and has spent much of his career to date within pastoral care. He is currently an associate assistant principal (pastoral welfare and standards) at Al Yasmina Academy, Abu Dhabi, UAE and has previously taught in both Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, UK. Most recently he completed his NPQSL and is looking to soon restart his PhD. Connect with Graham on LinkedIn. Amber Withers BA (hons) is in her ninth year as a teacher and middle leader within a physical education, whole-school competition and pastoral context and has gained her experience within the UK and UAE. Amber works at Al Yasmina Academy, Abu Dhabi as head of year 11 and teacher of PE to create exceptional teaching and learning environments in which all students and staff are motivated to participate and succeed. Connect with Amber on LinkedIn.

GRAHAM MALLEN AND AMBER WITHERS

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BEING AN AMAZON RAINFOREST HUMMINGBIRD: BACK TO US

BY ANDREA CARRERA PRADO The magical nights in the Amazon Rainforest have a lot of stories to tell. I have one for you today. How many voices you can hear on those nights! None of those voices speak any of our languages, but there is something that we can all understand: “We are…” Keep reading; you will find the message on the road of reading this experience.

One of the best decisions I have made was pursuing psychology as a career. I have been working in schools for almost 12 years. I have worked as a crisis psychological support worker for the Ecuadorian government in natural disasters, and I am also a family therapist, a book writer, and a human rights and mental health advocate. But beyond all this, I try my best everyday to be an Amazon rainforest hummingbird. You will understand this later.

Now more than ever, the world is talking about mental health and wellbeing. We, who work in education, have “the duty of care,” and sometimes we try really hard to support our students and families but, usually, we are the last ones to be cared for by ourselves.

It is not just practicing self-care, it is deeper than that. It is a change of perspective and a jump from the “take care of others” paradigm to the “I take care of myself because I have the call of taking care of others.” It is important to mention that self-care routines or lifestyle need a support system but, before talking about external supporting systems, it is necessary to talk about the internal process.

The goal is to take a look inside before going outside.

Who are you?

What are your personal resources?

What are your strengths and areas to improve?

What are the tools you have in your life backpack?

Do you have pending emotional matters?

These questions need to be answered first before being able to properly support someone else.

You are (not have) everything you need to support yourself and others, but this needs additional measures.

Mythology says that carers have an “eternal wound” and this is why we care about other people. We heal ourselves while we support others. This concept was born with Quiron, a centauro who was son of the god Kronos and nymph Filira. Quiron was abandoned by his mother because she was ashamed of him for being half horse half human. The story says that Kiron used that emotional pain as a way of transforming his pain into actions: helping others. He owned his experience and used it as a way of being empathetic with others who experienced something similar.

Did you know that “operation room” (quirófano in Spanish) was named because of Quiron? His way of dealing with his “wounds” was acquiring knowledge to help people, and he created the concept of Quirofano. He was the “healer” with the eternal wound.

Do you know which is your eternal wound? Do you know how to handle that?

We always say students and families are first, but if we are not in a good place, we will not be able to support them. It is not about being first or last, it is about "being." Self-compassion involves a healthy, caring, and kind attitude that is directed towards oneself in times of suffering. Self compassion has three interrelated main elements: Mindfulness Look at the bigger picture: perspective. When we analyze just day-to-day impact, we might feel discouraged sometimes because we work with a population in constant development. But, when we think about the impact we have made throughout our career, that might feel more encouraging. This is being mindful about ourselves here and now, with no judgment. What about if instead of thinking, “This student doesn’t understand me. I don’t know what else to do,” you think “I have made a lot of students understand my subject over the years. I can do this again”.

I want to focus on trying to plant the seed of a “let’s take a look inside first” point of view. Therapy is useful when we are lost inside ourselves. How do we find a path? I want to promote an inner conversation about who we are, how we are, where we are, when we are.

And then, we can talk about strategies. I can’t identify how to help myself if I don’t know how I am in this right second.

In Ecuador, there is a tale about the Amazon rainforest that can explain this. Once, the forest was burning on fire.

Animals started to run away because the king or queen of the jungle said so. Everyone was leaving their homes. A hummingbird started flying towards the fire and told the king or queen it had an idea on how to save everyone. It said they all needed to take water in their bodies and try to put the fire out. Everyone laughed at the hummingbird and kept running. The hummingbird started taking water in its beak and working towards the goal. Everyone was looking at it and felt inspired. All the jungle started doing that and together, they saved their home. The legend says that this is why, when you see a hummingbird in the Amazon rainforest, you smile because its courageous spirit is written on the trees it helped to save.

This is how our body-soul works: we just need a decision of trying to save our inner home. In this way, we will inspire others to do the same.

Oh, by the way, do you remember I left something incomplete in the beginning of this road? The Amazon rainforest would like for us to embrace the fact that “ We are, and that is all that matters.”

Tupananchiskama Quechua word for goodbye that means “until life will allow us to find again”

Common human experience We are superheroes definitely. We work in the field that inspires the rest of the careers in the world, but we are still humans. We make mistakes and that is fine. It sounds so simple but oh! how difficult sometimes this can be. For example, if you react to something in an explosive way and then you feel horrible about it, you can make the thinking exercise of saying, “I made a mistake.

I am human. I will try to fix this like everyone else,” and move forward.

Andrea Carrera Prado has worked in education and supporting mental health for 12 years in South America, and she is now working as a counselor in Asia. She has worked as a crisis psychological support worker for the Ecuadorian government in natural disasters. She is a family therapist, a book writer, and a human rights and mental health advocate. Connect with Andrea on Linkedin.

Self-kindness We often treat others with more kindness than we treat ourselves. How are the levels of self-criticism in your mind? Is your self-talk as kind as the words you have for your students?

As an additional note, remember that, psychologically speaking, kindness is a behavioral action that others can see. Compassion is an inner experience that can translate into actions others can see, but it is the result of an inner healing process.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO ANDREA'S AUDIO VERSION

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BUILDING WELLBEING BY DEVELOPING SELF-EFFICACY

BY KRISTIN LOWE, MAOP, ACC, CPPC In my first article of this series, I introduced the construct of Positive Psychological Capital, a set of four internal resources that can be built intentionally to support wellbeing and learning. Those four elements spell out the easy-to-remember acronym of HERO: Hope Efficacy Resilience Optimism In my previous article, we looked at ways to build wellbeing by developing Hope. In this article, I’ll share more about the E of HERO, including what efficacy is, how it differs from confidence, and some practical strategies for increasing self-efficacy for yourself and with your students.

People with high levels of self-efficacy approach difficult tasks, seeing them as challenges. They’re deeply motivated and engrossed in activities they pursue. They lean in and keep trying in the face of failure, viewing failure as a signal to keep learning. When our efficacy is high, we also experience less stress and depression.

In contrast, people with low levels of self-efficacy avoid difficult tasks, seeing them as personal threats. Their aspirations are low, with weak commitment to their goals. They give up quickly when faced with obstacles, and they struggle to bounce back after failure. When our efficacy is low, we’re more vulnerable to stress and depression.

How is Self-Efficacy Different from Confidence?

What is Self-Efficacy?

Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to succeed in a particular situation. It impacts our mood, psychological wellbeing, motivation, behavior, and performance. Our self-efficacy levels vary depending on the situation or task at hand.

Simply put, confidence can refer to any strong belief (such as, “I’m confident the train will be on time”), while self-efficacy specifically refers to our belief in our ability to make something happen.

In my work, I notice that people often talk about wanting to “feel more confident,” when they’re referring to an area where they have lower self-efficacy. In other words, they are lacking belief in their own abilities and would like to improve both their selfbelief and the relevant skills. To align with this everyday usage of the word “confidence” and to avoid getting bogged down in semantics, I often use the word “confidence” as shorthand to talk about self-efficacy.

5 Strategies for Building Self-Efficacy So...how does it look to build self-efficacy in everyday life, work, and learning? Here are five approaches that have been shown to boost efficacy in people of all ages. These approaches are based on the works of Bandura, Taylor, and Maddux.

Experiencing small successes in safe situations creates “quick wins.” Quick wins increase our confidence and encourage us to continue. To ensure we’re stretching ourselves but not stressing ourselves out, it’s important for us to find the right balance between challenge and achievability, and to try new things in a safe space first. Taking time to acknowledge and celebrate our small wins also creates a sense of incremental mastery, building it gradually over time.

Observing others like ourselves who are successful in the areas we’re working on can increase our belief that we can do it too. One way to do this is talking with and learning from people we know in our work and personal lives who we admire for doing the thing we want to become more confident about.

Another option is to study the work and life of relatable leaders and highly respectable individuals who are known for doing what we want to do more of. The more similar these people are to us, the better – so we feel that our goal is attainable.

Understanding our bodies’ stress response and changing our beliefs around “feeling stressed” can help us respond confidently under pressure. Sometimes we misinterpret our body’s “challenge response” as a “stress response,” so we focus on the classic two options of “fight or flight.” The hormones in a challenge response are different from those in a stress response, and they can be seen as our body’s way of telling us something important is happening, urging us to act, and providing a burst of energy to help us do it.

When we turn that burst of energy into focused growth and action, we align our internal resources with the outcome we want. #5: Visualizing Our Success

#1: Creating Mastery Experiences

#2: Learning from Role Models

#4: Directing Our Nervous Energy

Exercises that enable us to imagine our future success in detail help build our belief that we can do it, and they help us perform better. Studies have shown that imaginal experiences, or “mental rehearsal” is almost as effective as the actual physical practices we’re visualizing. Our thoughts produce the same mental instructions as when we take the actions themselves. The brain gets trained for actual performance during visualization, as it helps us work through the details of our desired actions in a safe way, helping us create realistic, achievable plans.

Start Building Self-Efficacy in Your School Community Today For many people I’ve worked with over the years, the approaches above are refreshingly simple, effective, and practical ways to build their confidence. It’s always exciting to see how once people start trying out a strategy or two, the increases in their efficacy and confidence are significant, energizing, and repeatable.

#3: Finding Our Cheerleaders

To get started with giving yourself and the people you live and work with an efficacy/confidence boost, Click here for a downloadable handout/poster.

Another way to build our confidence is by getting verbal encouragement. Trustworthy, influential people in our lives can strengthen our belief that we have what it takes to succeed, when we ask for their support. We are usually our own worst critics, especially in areas where we don’t feel good about ourselves. When someone who knows us well believes we can do something (even if we’re not sure ourselves), it encourages us to try. Generally speaking, when we share with someone that we’re trying to grow in an area, they are motivated to help us - and we’re motivated to follow through.

Kristin Lowe is a former international school teacher now working as a consulting organizational psychologist and certified positive psychology coach. She helps school leaders build a culture of wellbeing through Positive Peer Coach training and schoolwide Positive Education programs. Kristin is the Visible Wellbeing Program Leader at American School of The Hague. She is also the founder of The Positivity Playground, a global peer coaching network focused on building staff wellbeing at international and independent schools.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO KRISTIN'S AUDIO VERSION

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School Spotlight

WELLINGTON COLLEGES CHINA: WELLBEING ACROSS THE GROUP INTERVIEW WITH FIONA CARTER Could you tell us about the Wellbeing work that you do at Wellington Colleges China?

Since our first international school in Tianjin, ensuring that wellbeing is a priority in our policies and practice has been at the heart of everything from curriculum development to group governance. The foundation for the approaches in our international and Chinese bilingual schools are based on a pioneering approach first started in The Wellington College in Berkshire, UK. In Wellington College International Shanghai, a key focus for this year is the evolution of a taught wellbeing curriculum. All pupils from Year 1 to Year 13 now have a timetabled wellbeing lesson which follows a new developmentally sequenced curriculum, rooted in the principles of Positive Education.

However, they are conscious that simply teaching wellbeing does not mean it magically appears, and so they are consistently looking at ways that daily provision can offer pupils the chance to ‘live’ what they have learnt, be it through house and tutor times, pupil leadership schemes or through modifying school practices to support their wellbeing and mental health.

Across all the early years departments in Wellington Colleges China, pupils are observed for their levels of wellbeing and involvement using the Leuven Scales and then graded from one (lowest) to five (highest). These are reported and monitored internally at pupil progress meetings, during the monitoring process of the quality of our teaching teams and, of course, as a meaningful and effective way of triangulating levels of wellbeing with standards of attainment and rates of progress. Investment in training our teaching teams and making leaders accountable for pupil wellbeing has moved this aspect of the curriculum from being an add-on or initiative to the golden thread which runs through our schools.

At Huili School Shanghai, one of a growing number of bilingual schools in the Wellington College China group, the wellbeing curriculum has been adapted to incorporate aspects of the Shanghai City Moral Education curriculum. The programme is embedded through every facet of school life, from break times to assemblies. Children are encouraged to reflect not only on their own wellbeing, but also that of those around them – at school, at home and in the wider community, ultimately making a contribution as a truly global citizen.

What was your ‘why’?

A further development of the role of Shanghai International’s pupil services department now means that wellbeing and learning support work much more closely together with support from the designated safeguarding lead. The department has a new custom space which offers an escape for pupils, as well as the reassurance of always knowing where counsel can be found in a variety of forms from counselling, art therapy or simply a place to talk.

Initial wellbeing programmes began at Wellington from the belief that children should learn about a life well-lived and what that looks like. Our schools hold very strong beliefs that the purpose of education is far removed from just getting pupils to achieve excellent results in exams and that our educational offer is rooted in the shared principle of developing well rounded individuals, equipped to deal with the rigours of modern life.

For Wellington Shanghai, when it came to developing their taught wellbeing curriculum, it often came down to a simple question: “What do we wish we’d known when we were at school?”

Supporting pupils to discover a breadth of skills such as emotional self-regulation, the power of discovering their own values and character strengths, to engaging flow state, truly offers the ability to shape pupils as people, not just learners.

Involving parents in understanding the importance of wellbeing has been a major focus across all age groups. All our new parents to our nurseries attend an induction session on the relationship between wellbeing and levels of engagement in learning. In Huili School Hangzhou, parents receive a comprehensive booklet which outlines how wellbeing is taught and monitored across all age groups.

We also feel that using tools and approaches like the Leuven Scales and PASS data to get the most holistic and thorough view of a child will ultimately lead to every individual child being given the chance to maximise their potential. Wellington College Tianjin began a project to look at the correlation between PASS data and CAT4 scores in pupils from Year 7 and above, aiming to bring pastoral data to the table as part of internal reporting. By working with consultant Matthew Savage, the data showed the likelihood that pupils with a larger verbal deficit were not fulfilling their potential. The pupils studied had low self-regard and did not feel great about the curriculum, and by observing wellbeing this closely, the changes that needed to be made were clearly highlighted.

What have been some of the challenges that you have faced, and how have you tried to overcome them?

In our bilingual schools in Hangzhou and Shanghai, where the demographic is largely Chinese pupils whose ultimate tertiary education and beyond is likely to be in countries outside of China, the ‘why’ is focused on developing alumni who are committed to ‘living’ the school’s values and identities.

Tianjin and Huili Shanghai schools are weaving inquiry much more into their junior and primary schools’ planning, and Huili School Hangzhou has transformed grades One and Two with classrooms of continuous provision and project-based learning, including a specific timetable for outdoor learning, all of which are really improving wellbeing amongst pupils and staff.

What have been some of your proudest achievements in relation to wellbeing, and what has the impact been?

For the Wellington College UK, setting up a mediation service in 2019 and the development of an engaging curriculum which most pupils consider to be useful and relevant have been the proudest achievements as well as incorporating Aristotelian character education, which has given it philosophical coherence.

A comprehensive use of the Leuven Scales as a central focus for measuring and improving wellbeing in Wellington Colleges China has been instrumental in the improvement of the standards of not only pupil outcomes but of the quality of teaching. It is highly noticeable in adaptations to learning environments, planned proactive interventions, much faster rates of second language acquisition and our youngest children being able to label and explain how they feel.

Developing teaching materials that have weight and credibility is challenging, and the most helpful resource reported at Wellington UK has been the pupils themselves There is now a much greater focus on listening to the pupil voice as a way of not only improving wellbeing but removing as many barriers as possible when challenges occur. In turn, this is leading to our schools considering how much agency children have in their daily learning experiences and impacting on curriculum development in primary.

The current context of the global pandemic has provided all our community with some of its greatest challenges but has also highlighted, more than ever, the need for a concerted and well thought out approach to wellbeing, for both pupils, their families, and for our staff.

If you were to give three top tips to schools when devising a wellbeing policy, what would they be? What should schools think about?

A school should be very clear about the differences between wellbeing, safeguarding and mental illness. They are not the same thing and are potentially in conflict. A lot of the current messaging about ‘mental health’ and safeguarding has the danger of pushing pathology on young people, and this is a distortion of a properly worked philosophy of a flourishing life.

Wellbeing is not just the absence of dysfunction. Equally, a school should be clear that wellbeing education is not therapy and teachers need to avoid constantly asking children to talk about their feelings.

Have a clear philosophy of wellbeing education which runs consistently throughout the school and across all age phases.

Think about how you can engage the whole community, as this is vital for ensuring its success. Every wellbeing initiative should be considered first through the lens of the pupils, parents and staff and even if one area is neglected, it will undermine the overall effort and strategy. Moreover, wellbeing should be given curriculum space and taught intentionally rather than being considered as something which can be ‘absorbed’ through tutor programmes and assemblies.

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Remember that wellbeing can be a very disruptive concept in schools and that safety nets might be needed once monitoring has highlighted areas of need for either one pupil or a wider group. Be prepared to change other policies and practices if you are serious about embedding wellbeing through planning strategic and operational interventions as well as conversations with families.

Finally, by adding the reporting of wellbeing to our termly academic sub committee board meetings, its importance and correlation with deep levels of learning has given a real gravitas to the teaching and assessment of this part of our curriculum. What is assessed and reported at the highest level reflects our values as a group.

Do you use any products or set programmes to support wellbeing in your school? What resources/support is your school drawing on?

Our international and bilingual schools are lucky to have access to the pioneering wellbeing programme from Wellington College in the UK whose taught curriculum has been a huge help and foundation for any individual school development. The materials are devised in-house and slowly refined since 2006 and are coupled with the Dialogue Road Map from Peaceful Solutions in their mediation work. They feel it is an incredible approach to conflict resolution and change management rooted in Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication.

The Institute of Positive Education has assisted Wellington College Shanghai with their knowledge and expertise to ensure that work remains focused and content from the Moral Education curriculum in our bilingual Huili schools is useful, especially in the area of social responsibility. Play therapy techniques are used in our bilingual school in Hangzhou for three to 12 year olds.

Staff versus students - how does your approach differ, and can you talk us through how your wellbeing focus supports all of your school community and how the different elements join up?

As Ian Morris from Wellington UK suggests, “Approaches to wellbeing should be consistent across a school community and should be rooted in compassion and dignity. Whilst there are necessary differences relating to children as pupils and adults as employees, the ways in which we support the wellbeing of people in our school communities shouldn’t be any different just because of age”. Indeed, Professor Ferre Leavers who created the Leuven Scales also has talked about the approach being used across all age groups – adults and children. Giving senior leads the responsibility for staff wellbeing is a great way of ensuring this.

Fiona is the Director for International Business Development at Wellington Colleges China and is supporting the group`s strategic aim to extend their bilingual offer to countries outside of China with a mission to be the best bilingual provider in the world. Her previous roles with Wellington have included leading the Institute of Learning and when originally joining the group, overseeing the quality of its pioneering Early Years education as well as supporting leader recruitment and mentoring, international networking for teachers and the development of CPD from both internal and external sources.

CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO FIONA'S AUDIO VERSION

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COMING HOME: MANAGING WELLBEING DURING TRANSITION

BY CHRIS BARNES "One of these days you'll stop this jet-setting, come back home and get a proper job."

I doubt I'm the only international teacher who's been told this.

Around two years after moving overseas, I was visiting family and met a friend - also a teacher. He didn't really understand why anyone would want to leave their home area. Suggestions such as 'a challenge' or 'a change' didn't resonate. It would take five more years before he would be convinced that I had made a good decision.

As the first term of 2022 begins, international teachers are now in one of two positions. They have either committed themselves to their school for a further period of time or they have given notice.

Given the burdens placed on international schools by the pandemic, the period of hiring has become protracted to ensure that new staff will be there for the start of the next academic year.

Teaching away from one's passport country has changed since 2020. The ease of being able to get on a plane and return should something happen has now gone, as restrictions alter within hours.

All international teachers have experienced it - being on coloured lists; watching situations change rapidly; missing time with family and other loved ones; and the reality of not being there during family emergencies due to restrictions in both countries. Whilst international teaching is not seeing a Great

Resignation, it is seeing a Great Reevaluation. In many cases, people are staying put - the unpredictable nature of change is increasing aversion to job switching and teachers are opting for the security of their existing posts.

For those returning to their passport country, the experience, resilience, flexibility and openness to change all count for nothing if highly-qualified candidates are not able to land a position that reflects their talents and skills. In many cases more than one person is affected by a return home: nonteaching spouses need to plan for their own return to work; schools and nurseries need to be found for children; tenants may need to be given notice, if a house is being rented out...the list continues. Unlike working for a large company, where the whole process is handled very much by HR, international teachers are much more on their own when it comes to repatriation or any kind of move.

International schools are used to running a fully online recruitment process. Depending on the country, schools and educational bodies may still be parochial, with knowledge of the local area being preferred over international experience and knowledge. Unless members of the governing body or school leadership team have experience of working internationally, they may have little insight into the kind of work you have been doing. Whilst some processes work at a national level, there is no approach to consider the skills and contribution of teachers returning from overseas.

This then trickles down to opportunities for interviews and, like many, you'll be willing to present online if it increases the chances of being shortlisted. Yet when it comes to the final rounds in particular, schools still want to have face-to-face interviews, meaning that highly-experienced international candidates are losing out because schools are unwilling to meet the demands of 2022 and realise that candidates will not just 'jump on a plane' as before.

5. Everything will be the same, but different: Many of us have not seen family and friends for two or three years.

What we remember won't chime with reality. Friendship dynamics have changed; families have grown (and sadly, broken apart as well). People that we were previously close to may not have the same things in common with us any more. For our own wellbeing, it's important that we celebrate the good parts and grieve the sad parts. Undoubtedly we'll find out some items that happened soon after we left to go overseas but - as I can attest from personal experience - it's not that people leave you out on purpose, they just forget.

What should we do?

It all feels like an episode of 'Star Trek: Voyager' at the moment - we're stuck in the Delta Quadrant and trying to find wormholes to navigate our way back to the Alpha Quadrant/Earth that we remember. I’m always grateful for the time that my wife and I spent in her home country, where life can be more reactive and multi-active. Switching into a more international, cross-cultural mode can be helpful when navigating uncertain times.

Watch your wellbeing

1. Leverage your connections: Be open about the fact that you are moving and where you are looking to move to. Whilst there are no guarantees and, as a recent CIS report noted, there are problems with access and equity, it is helpful to be open as those who know your character, skills and approach will be aware of opportunities that you are not. Being away from the immediacy of what is happening locally can be a deterrent to some, as much as it can be a preference to others.

2. Use your time productively: If you see a job that looks suitable, contact them to see if they will consider an online interview. If they don't respond or they reply 'no', don't spend your time on an application. There's nothing more disconcerting than completing an application only to get feedback that 'overseas applicants will not be considered due to the nature of the interview process'.

Moving jobs and moving countries - even when returning to your own - both have an effect on wellbeing. There can be a temptation to spend every spare minute scouring job alerts, updating your LinkedIn profile and CV and writing applications. We work in jobs that have their fair share of stress as it is, and this isn't going to help us get the position that we want. As teachers we seem to spend all day dispensing advice but find it very difficult to take it. What I'm learning as I go through this time of job seeking is that it's about working smarter, not harder.

I remind myself that when I repatriated from Russia to the UK it was April before I got my next job, and that the head at the school where I had applied for another role passed my application to the CEO of the group, which also owns the school where I became Deputy Head. I found that my name had already been mentioned and my future Head was already aware of me before I submitted my application. You never know what is happening in the background!

Chris Barnes is currently searching for stable wormholes that will help him and his family to return from Malaysia to the UK this summer, where they can be close to their wider family in the UK and Russia. A Member of Council for SATIPS in the UK, he has leadership experience in all of the countries named and has been a Deputy Head of Primary/Prep in the UK and Russia. He is on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

3. Step down, if necessary - then step back up: If the main goal is to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, then the job title and role are secondary. Ensuring you have a job to come home to may mean that if you have a leadership role overseas, stepping back into the classroom for a time until you find what you are looking for could be an option. A current colleague was Head of School in Europe but was unable to find a similar role upon returning to his passport country. He taught secondary-level Maths in a purely classroom-based role for a year before returning to a comparable role.

4. Treat the move like an international move: A return to your 'home' area can feel you've never been away. People expect you to return to the familiar routines 'just like you did before'. In reality, you've changed and moved on, and so has everyone else. Craig Storti, in his book 'The Art Of Coming Home' talks about how those returning from overseas found a 'normal' in moving to a different area of their passport country, as it was like an international move. They were having to do all of the things they were used to (making new friendships and networks, finding places to eat/visit etc) which made the transition much smoother.

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CLICK ON ICON TO LISTEN TO CHRIS' AUDIO VERSION

WHO’S COUNSELLING THE COUNSELLOR?

ARTWORK BY SO MIN JIN (REGENTS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PATTAYA, THAILAND)

BY SCOTT LANGSTON Wellbeing is now a much-vaunted phrase in education circles: student wellbeing, teacher wellbeing, community wellbeing. There has been much written about a crisis of mental health amongst students and teachers in the wake of the ongoing COVID pandemic. There are ‘apps for that’ as well as a lot of wellintentioned advice to ‘have a work-life balance’ and to ‘ask for help’ if you need it.

There seems to be a strong awareness of the problem - overwork, stress, staffing cuts, moving goal-posts and complex expectations - but relatively little methodical and concrete action being taken to address the symptoms of this crisis. Education managers are not trained psychologists and neither are teachers. What we frequently see in international schools is a rather ad hoc collection of selfhelp strategies, more often than not putting the responsibility for maintaining mental wellbeing with individuals themselves.

I recently completed a research project (as yet unpublished) on the issue of counsellor wellbeing in international schools. It is natural that some of the wellbeing work with the community should fall to this person - or people - within an international school. Counsellors often construct or deliver wellbeing lessons, variously known as PSHE or Advisory or Life Skills.

The counsellor is usually a trained professional with experience of psychology and as such has a keen insight into what an individual child, teacher or member of the community may be going through and what they may need in terms of support.

The question that prompted my research, however, was, ‘Who’s counselling the counsellor?’ And as an international educator for over 25 years, a school counsellor with experience of every level of K-12 teaching and as a qualified psychologist, I have some insights to share.

ISCA, The International School Counsellor Association, states, ‘We know that counsellors are the heart of a school. When the heart is strong - your school stays healthy.’ In times of need, when stress levels are high - such as during the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic or local difficulties facing a community or its members - the school counsellor plays a pivotal role. When wellbeing is addressed in meetings and strategies are developed, the school counsellor provides valuable input and expertise.

A 2020 study by Popov and Spasenovic suggested that school counsellors adopted a huge variety of roles: “Advisor, advocate, agent, believer, collaborator, conductor, consultant, coordinator, diplomat, educator, enthusiast, expert, explorer, guide, initiator, leader, listener, mediator, mentor, navigator, negotiator, observer, pedagogue, professional, psychologist, researcher, specialist, supporter, teacher” (34).

But in this context, what systems are in place to protect the wellbeing of the school counsellor? We are by now familiar with the expression ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup.’ With each professional intervention, the mental resources of the counsellor are taxed. When the stress is ramped up, the counsellor is called upon more, and less consideration, energy or time is available for her own wellbeing.

So what can international schools do to promote counsellors’ wellbeing? I’ll focus on just two concrete areas: role definition and support.

Role Definition The first thing to consider is the role of the counsellor. It is often poorly defined and without a relevant, up-to-date job description. Their roles can be blurry or not clearly understood by the communities in which they operate. Sometimes they are expected to be a substitute teacher following the rationale that they are ‘free’. School leaders, in cooperation with counsellors, need to establish clear and firm guidelines for the role. School counsellors ought not to be acting as disciplinarians; no student should ever be sent to the counsellor as a form of classroom management or as a punishment. It is not the role of the school counsellor to be involved with attendance records or ‘assisting’ management in an undefined, as-needs model. It is not his role to substitute for absent teachers.

In therapy and counselling outside of schools, it is the norm for practitioners to have clinical supervision.

Counsellors have a counsellor of their own to meet regularly in order to confidentially discuss cases, celebrate ‘wins’, work out strategies and reflect on their own state of mind and energy levels. This can be an individual arrangement, or can operate in group settings. As a licensed counsellor, this is a requirement. As a school counsellor, it is not. And this is odd, especially in international schools, given the high potential to be dealing with secondary trauma, the regular transitions, the likely lack of local resources and the additional strains of expat living.

There are options for international school counsellors.

ISCA provides Counselling Circles in association with Linden Global Learning and Support. The Truman Group also provides a similar service. But currently, counsellors need to advocate for this and to have sympathetic and understanding leadership. My contention is that it ought to be built into a job description and be a requirement for school counsellors dealing with social and emotional support.

Whatever the parameters of the role in a specific school, they need to be clearly defined with equally clear boundaries established. The uncertainty and lack of clarity on roles is a key stress factor for counsellors.

Many schools appoint a counsellor as a 50% post, requiring some teaching for the other 50% of the full role. I’ve yet to see this model work well. Your psychology teacher is not necessarily equipped to be a counsellor any more than your counsellor is the right person to be teaching psychology.

It is the role of the counsellor to be the first line of defence in the psychological, academic, and social development of students. They are uniquely trained to do this, through individual or group counselling as well as indirectly, through their work with parents, teachers and administrators. They can work to resolve conflicts between all members of a school community, help students to face their personal problems and plan and implement preventative strategies.

Support

Working within a clearly established professional framework and having access to a formal supervisor outside of the school setting can provide the additional training, care, and support which counsellors need to do their job, and to effectively support the wellbeing of students and the wider community.

Take a moment to think about your own school. Who’s counselling the counsellor?

Scott Langston has worked in International Schools in Europe, Asia and Africa over a career of 20+ years.

He has been a school counsellor at every level from K-12. He is a qualified Psychologist, Teacher and Counsellor. He currently runs an online counselling service: ExpatCounsellingNow. Connect with Scott on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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THE DEBATE PROJECT: THE ROLE OF CONCEPTUAL LEARNING IN PE

BY JAMES SIMMS Physical education is a subject in transition. Following the publication of the UK House of Lords national plan in December 2021, there is a real possibility that, for the first time, England and Wales will promote physical education to the status of “core subject” alongside English, maths and the sciences.

In a post-pandemic context, with obesity levels at record highs, activity levels amongst children worryingly low, the sense of this proposal is clear. But, ironically, at this exact time of potential growth for the subject, physical education practitioners are challenging the very meaning of their subject.

For many years, physical education has been a sport-centric, skill acquisition experience. Most PE lessons in most schools taught by most PE teachers have been lessons on “long jumping” or “serving in tennis”, say. But, for some time and particularly since the release of Lee Sullivan’s book Is PE in Crisis?, PE teachers have been challenging the core purpose of the subject.

Listen to my podcast with Lee Sullivan here.

Amongst many other things, Lee Sullivan argues that, without sacrificing the experience of movement, other crucial life skills can be the explicit aim of PE lessons. Lee believes that units of learning on holistic health or on resilience, for example, can be taught through movement rather than movement being the sole aim and that PE is uniquely positioned to be able to teach these “life skills”. Lee has presented his Concept Curriculum as one possible way of achieving the teaching of these concepts through movement.

Others disagree and argue that “the lane” that PE must operate in is narrower and must have the central aim of causing more movement by teaching the value of movement.

As many topics do in education, this has been discussed frequently on social media, with many conversations emerging about the nature of a new type of PE curriculum, pedagogy and assessment model. An example of this was the publication of Greg Dryer’s blog post “The questionable rise of PE-as-lifecoaching.”

Watch the debate on YouTube Listen to the debate on Spotify The event went very well and both Lee and Greg argued passionately for their respective position. Of interest to me was the reality that both debaters clearly believed that change in PE was necessary, but it was the nature of this change that was hotly contested. Both colleagues believe that physical education has a pivotal role to play in the lives of young people as they progress into adulthood.

Both colleagues believe that physical education, as a subject, has great untapped potential and both presented their respective vision for the future.

Since the debate, over 5,000 colleagues have either watched or listened to the recording. I would like readers of this article to consider that number carefully. In the PE teaching sector, over 5,000 teachers have spent 90 minutes engaging with a passionate debate about the central meaning of their own subject within one month of that debate being published.

This represents a remarkable success for this project, and I believe that the debate has equipped colleagues all over the world to seriously consider their “Why?”—meaning their core teaching philosophy. Lee, Greg and the debate panellists have caused teacher after teacher to rethink their own purpose and have done so in a supportive and professional manner. I am extremely grateful for this and, as a PE teacher of 20 years myself, am also very proud of it.

Greg argued squarely for the “staying in lane” philosophy of PE. As the post got more traction, PE teachers repeatedly expressed their desire to see Lee and Greg debate their ideas.

So, in late 2021, an idea was hatched to provide a platform to Lee Sullivan and Greg Dryer to publicly debate the topic of conceptual learning in PE. I became the facilitator of the conversation and established The Debate Project, an online meeting between willing participants of a debate with a clear structure and properly and independently facilitated by a debate moderator.

A date was agreed upon and the topic of the debate was confirmed: “The role of conceptual learning in physical education.”

As teachers, as parents, as school leaders: what do you believe the core role of physical education in schools to be? Given the world we live in today, I believe there is no better time to answer this question.

Thank you to Lee Sullivan, Greg Dryer, Laura Davies, Vik Merrick, Ronnie Heath, Will Swaithes, Phil Mathe and Marta Soteras Munt for participating in the debate. Thank you for reading.

James Simms is a PE teacher of 20 years experience, an experienced member of SLT, Owner of The EverLearner Ltd, Creator of theeverlearner.com, Creator of ExamSimulator, and host of The Changing rooms and The Teacher in Classroom 21 podcasts. He is also the creator and author of Education Reimagined published in 2017 and has recently established The Debate Project which allows relevant and contemporary educational topics to be discussed on camera.

It is necessary to express at this point how challenging it was to establish the precise wording of the debate topic, to establish a representative panel to be present for the debate and to reassure everyone involved that the debate was a non-threatening and supportive environment.

Nonetheless, having achieved that, the debate took place on January 21, 2022.

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Organisational Focus: COBIS Beacon Status for Wellbeing INTERVIEW WITH MAEVE O’LEARY In the most recent survey of COBIS members, 68% of schools reported they have developed increased wellbeing and pastoral support since the pandemic. The challenges of the past two years have brought wellbeing into sharp focus for many British International Schools.

However, ensuring pupil and staff wellbeing has always been at the core of the COBIS Accreditation standards. COBIS, the Council of British International Schools, has been running the Patron’s Accreditation and Compliance scheme since 2017, accrediting schools that have gone through a rigorous and collaborative quality assurance process to meet the COBIS standards.

Every school is unique, and the scheme recognises that a differentiated and personalised approach to the process is necessary. Since 2021, COBIS has awarded select schools ‘Beacon Status’ for particular areas of best practice. These are schools who have demonstrated particular excellence against one of the standards. This is a rare achievement – not every school who achieves Patron’s Accreditation attains Beacon Status.

We asked three COBIS schools who have achieved Beacon Status for Wellbeing to share their insights. These schools, in different ways, have successfully implemented practices that have had a real impact on staff and student life.

What are some of the key elements in your school’s approach to wellbeing?

Magnus Cowie, Deputy Head of Pastoral at Marlborough College in Malaysia, shared that they are driven by the fact they do not believe that outstanding examination results, excellence in sport, music, drama, art, debating or any aspect of education is possible unless those involved have good mental and physical health. At Marlborough, it’s important to have a holistic approach; wellbeing is built into the curriculum. “A wellbeing model allows for the better understanding and embedding of wellbeing principles within the school community. Pupils (and staff) are better able to understand the strategic direction we are taking with wellbeing and be active participants in the process. Combining the tutoring and wellbeing elements in which tutors are also delivering wellbeing lessons has increased the trust among pupils and teachers which also has allowed for greater conversation and interest in wellbeing topics.”

The Kellett School in Hong Kong has also taken similar steps, embedding wellbeing into the curriculum via ‘Positively Kellett’, a whole-school initiative. They shared that “Positively Kellett is a whole-school community initiative involving students, staff and parents. Working on the basis that ‘schools find time and make compulsory the areas which they value most’, each student from Reception to Year 13 has a timetabled lesson each week where we try to explore character strengths and embed a range of tools, such as journaling or meditation, to cope with the challenges that life throws.”

What elements of your schools’ wellbeing provision have had the greatest impact on the school community?

At Marlborough College, they ensure that students always have their say, and sought student input in to their schemes. Magnus shared, “We have a highly prominent pupil voice so pupils are confident in leadership and their views inform decision-making at all levels so pupils believe Marlborough is ‘their college’.” They also have “a consistent application of positive mindset and language in lessons, tutorials, discussions, newsletters, policies etc.” They also look to the future with a proactive approach to wellbeing. “A proactive approach to health keeps our community healthy, and positively engaged with the opportunities provided and to see a purpose in their life.”

With the successful Positively Kellett initiative, wellbeing activities are built into the school life through the classrooms, in policies and everyday life. Kellett says this has “normalised the topics of mental health, wellbeing, resilience and character strengths which means they are part of our everyday vocabulary”.

If you were to recommend one quick win or one longer-term initiative to a school looking to further develop their wellbeing provision for staff and students, what would it be?

Each school we spoke to all said the same thing about implementing a wellbeing initiative in your school; your staff are your best asset. Use them! At Real School in Budapest, they created the role of Head of Community Wellbeing, a role designed “to ensure that wellbeing is lived and breathed and becomes cultural.” Nicki Lorenzini runs sessions for parents, staff and students through a personalised programme for the school. Dave Strudwick, Principal of REAL school, said “if they are a passionate part of the leadership team they will ensure that wellbeing permeates everyone’s experiences and approach.”

The Head of Wellbeing at Marlborough College, Diane Trif, said that, “You don't need to train your entire staff, but rather have a selected group of ‘champions’ who are willing to be of informal support to others. It would offer staff the opportunity to increase their psychological capital while at the same time spreading the concepts through the community and increasing understanding and support.”

At Kellett, an effective “quick win” was taking an event-based approach. “At Kellett, we went with "Feel Good Friday" which meant that, throughout the year, thematically different events would be organised on these days. They include a different dress code for the day (casual wear is always our most popular one), specific activities during class time, breaks and lunch and have been a highlight for our students.”

The value in the COBIS network lies in the accomplished schools in our membership, sharing their insights and perspectives with their peers in the international education community. To read more from our member schools, check out our blogs and webinars.

Maeve O’Leary, Marketing and Communications Manager, COBIS. Maeve has worked in Marketing for over a decade, and has an MSc in Marketing from Smurfit Business School, Dublin. She has over 7 years’ experience working in not-for-profit membership bodies, in healthcare and education. She has worked on international campaigns and events, and has experience in member recruitment and retention. Maeve joined COBIS in November 2019.

MAEVE O'LEARY

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Wellbeing Impact: Minds Ahead Aims to Revolutionise Mental Health INTERVIEW WITH NAOMI RUSSELL How was Minds Ahead formed?

Over a number of years working in education, Minds Ahead’s CEO and founder Dean Johnstone witnessed evidence of a rising level of need amongst young people, coupled with a gap in mental health training for school staff.

Minds Ahead was founded in 2017 to help develop an education workforce with the knowledge and skills to effectively support the mental health of pupils, staff, parents and school leaders. Minds Ahead’s vision is to revolutionise school mental health for generations to come. It provides the UK’s only postgraduate, specialist qualifications to school leaders, teachers and staff.

Initial research in 2017 highlighted the growing need and declining support, the link between mental health and forms of disadvantage, as well as that between mental health support and attendance or attainment. Minds Ahead undertook a significant consultation with school senior leaders, which established schools felt that, whilst they needed to provide support for those children at the preclinical (medical) threshold, they rarely had appropriately trained integrated staff to deliver this support.

How did the Centre of Excellence and the partnership with Leeds Beckett University come about?

Minds Ahead and Leeds Beckett were the first organisations in the UK to establish a centre for mental health in schools. There is one in the US and one in Canada, so it was only right that school colleagues and children in the UK deserve such a resource too. There was no single point of reference for school leaders to evaluate and improve their mental health work and so The Centre established the School Mental Health Award, which is now used by over 1,200 schools and colleges across the UK and internationally.

The Centre of Excellence hosts The UK’s first Masters degree for School and College leaders of Mental Health as well as a range of Professional development courses for educators online and face to face. All our programmes have been approved by the Department for Education as senior mental health leads training courses to support a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing.

What have been the results?

Over 3,000 teachers, support staff, educational leaders, and governors have attended our programmes, including more than 60 school and college leaders who have attained their postgraduate status in educational mental health leadership.

Priya Mitchell, child protection and mental health specialist at International School of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, told us, “the MA is a course I would recommend to anyone interested in promoting and facilitating a more proactive approach to mental wellness in school. The opportunity to learn and consider different perspectives and how to apply these to our school to facilitate change is refreshing as is the online discussion with other students in the course.”

“One of the most significant learning experiences coming from undertaking the qualification as both a school leader and mental health lead in school, is the understanding of the importance of mental health and wellbeing sitting at the heart of the whole school curriculum,” said Kim Fox, Head Teacher at Dhekelia Primary School, Cyprus. “The school has developed its curriculum, over time, to ensure that there are a range of opportunities for children to develop skills such as resilience, healthy living and influencing change through pupil voice which underpin positive mental health and wellbeing. Working closely with the Educational Psychology Service in the authority, the school has also developed a strongly understood graduated approach to mental health and wellbeing and a tailored timely approach to emotional literacy support, which addresses individual needs, underpinned by effective research.”

Kerry Hill, Education Advisor for TAP and School Improvement Partner for TT Education, says, “the learning and development gained from the Masters has given me the confidence, as a school leader, to try new things to positively enhance my school. We have now designed a bespoke curriculum to support child and learning development across our school. It is genuinely helping to transform our whole school approach.”

What are some recent wellbeing research projects that students have been undertaking?

All students on our Masters and postgraduate programmes complete a research project as part of their qualification.

Adam Gillet, Assistant Principal at Penistone Grammar School in the UK, recently researched the topic of the efficacy of mental health interventions in schools.

“I developed a formula to clearly identify in our setting which interventions had the biggest impact for the lowest cost. This led to a complete shift in our approach to mental health interventions. We became evidence driven as an organisation, ensuring we assessed the impact of all our interventions moving forward. We also found that the biggest impact on students was from our own staff doing one to one mentoring.

Gillet also said that "It was also enlightening to assess the cost of each intervention; we rarely do a cost-benefit analysis in education but they are commonplace in business. From this I could justify our spending to both the principal and governors and also request further funding as I had the evidence to support it. This was a seismic shift not only for the school but for me as a leader in education.”

Jane Hull, Deputy Headteacher at SS Peter & Paul’s Catholic Primary School in the UK, researched the following topic: Adverse childhood experiences and mental health; what can schools do?

“Despite the connection with poverty, what was most interesting and surprising in the research was that mental illness in children was more prevalent in western countries where there is greater disparity between those that have and those that have not,” Hull said. “This constant pressure on families to give their children these material possessions to make them feel popular and fit in so they are not exposed to being bullied or ridiculed for not having these things is overwhelming.”

“In my dissertation, I argued that the problem primarily needed to be tackled at a national level through government policy to reduce societal inequalities."

Hull also explained that:

"One of the most significant ways in which schools can help is by nurturing positive, supportive relationships between pupils and school staff.

Research on attachment theory has proven that even if a child has not got a caring adult at home, if they have a caring, supportive adult at school, this can mitigate some of the risk factors caused by poor attachment in the home environment, particularly in primary schools.”

You can read more about our students' research projects here.

For more information about Minds Ahead’s programmes contact info@mindsahead.org.uk or stay connected through social media: Minds Ahead Twitter / Minds Ahead Facebook / Minds Ahead LinkedIn page / Minds Ahead Instagram

Naomi Russell is Mental Health Improvement Lead at Minds Ahead. She leads on stakeholder relationships and teaches on the masters programmes which Minds Ahead run with Leeds Beckett University. Naomi is a qualified psychotherapist with many years experience of working with schools on large scale mental health programmes and supporting young people and teachers.

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podcast profile

THE COMING OUT MONOLOGUES INTERVIEW WITH KRISTINA PENNELL-GÖTZE AND TRICIA FRIEDMAN

Could you tell us about The Coming Out Monologues podcast and how you started it?

Tricia: I’ve been following Kristina online for a while, and she’s been generous in making the time to share on the Be A Better Ally Podcast work she’s done. Kristina was talking about the amazing Coming Out Monologues project she did at her school, and we got to chatting about how amazing it might be to do an educator version. We wanted to curate the amazing stories within our community, and do it in a way that leveraged creativity while not being massively overwhelming for anyone involved. Making the project sustainable means being ok with no true schedule, and being very open minded about where the project could go.

Kristina: It’s so fascinating to reflect on the process and how it all started for us. When Tricia invited me to chat to her on her podcast, I had no way of knowing the world of opportunities that would open up to me and the community I would find so much solace in. The Coming Out Monologues was initially a passion project of mine that ended up being produced at my school, where LGBTQ+ students, staff and folks from around the world shared their coming out stories related to sexuality and gender in monologue or short scene form. It was such a fantastic coming together of community, and someone who wrote a monologue even travelled to

Berlin from the US to watch one of our students perform their story.

It was truly a night of celebration. When talking to Tricia about this production, she had the initial idea to turn it into a podcast for educators to share their stories and to take up space, and really, it just developed from there. With this podcast version though, I really wanted to focus on the intersectionality of our identities, and be more intentional about that.

Could you tell us why you started TCOM, and why you choose the format of using monologues?

Kristina: The initial project in 2019 was a school theatre production where I wanted to make space for our LGBTQ+ students and their stories. After reading The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, I had this idea of doing something similar, but using coming out as the theme. Many students had also written fantastic short plays with queer themes in Drama class and I wanted to showcase them periodically throughout the production as well, just to break up the monologues. One of our staff members, who has a trans child, even sang a song they wrote after the intermission.

When sharing this with Tricia, we decided to collaborate on a podcast version of The Coming Out Monologues. At the time of these initial conversations with Tricia, I was also taking part in other conversations with my AIELOC Academy radical dreamers,

and knew just how powerful the arts can be as a form of resistance and healing for members of the global majority and marginalised folks. As I paraphrase a little of what I heard on an episode of Layla F. Saad’s podcast, Good Ancestor, Leesa Renée Hall says that in a world fueled by capitalism and consumerism, creating art for ourselves and centering our joy is radical. Sharing these stories is radical and healing and a form of resistance, because LGBTQ+ educators are taking up space where traditionally, this space didn’t exist. And using monologues as the format is intentional, because it implies that only one person is speaking and others are listening.

Monologues are uninterrupted. Monologues are long. Monologues are an invitation to see things from another perspective. Our stories are exactly that, our stories. No one else can take that away and tell us how we feel or what the narrative was really like when it comes to experiences of coming out, sexuality and gender identity, because it is personal, and you simply don’t understand unless you are living and breathing it everyday.

We have no intention of monetizing this podcast for profit, but we would love to get to a point where we can pay our contributors for their time and stories as this is fundamental in disrupting systems of oppression and paying folks for their labour, because while nonLGBTQ+ folks may listen and learn something from each episode, that comes at a cost to those contributing. We would really love to help promote LGBTQ+ businesses and their work with sponsorship spots, so please get in touch if that’s you!

What have been some of the learnings for you both from the episodes that have been shared so far?

Tricia: Our stories are assets. Every episode has reminded me that when we make time for stories to be appreciated, heard, and valued we make our networks stronger.

Kristina: Being instrumental in working with others to help them share their stories, my learnings come more from the process.

Art is so healing, and when queer folks and marginalised folks go through the process of writing or speaking words to their experiences, it becomes such a cathartic and therapeutic process. Every episode is a reminder of the conversations I’ve had with our contributors and how the process has helped them to work through some of those unspoken thoughts and feelings that are sometimes such a jumble of emotions inside our heads.

How can people get involved in The Coming Out Monologues podcast?

Kristina: If you are interested in sharing a coming out story, or an experience about your sexuality and/or gender identity, you can read more information about the project and the process, and listen to past episodes on our website: https://www.thecomingoutmonologuespodcast.com/. Please reach out to either of us and we would be honoured to share your story. You do not need an invitation from us to contribute.

What makes for good digital collaborations?

Tricia: We mainly use Slack as our go to collaboration space. What I love about that is that it works really well both synchronously and asynchronously. Kristina and I are both aware that family, health, and our full time jobs come first. This means we respect one another’s boundaries and need to not be connected all the time. If I don’t hear from Kristina for a while I of course miss her, but I appreciate that any collaboration needs trust and care. I feel so trusted and so cared for in this collaboration, and I appreciate that.

I’ve long felt like micro-management is the fastest way to kill creativity and to corrode trust. Collaborating with Kristina has been the opposite of that; it has been restorative, compassionate and a joy.

Kristina: I couldn’t agree more with Tricia. Trust and care are two of the most important factors when it comes to collaborating with others. Tricia and I “met” virtually about a year ago now, but I truly believe that despite this, working and collaborating with her has been one of my most successful collaborations because of the boundaries we set and the trust that we have in one another. I owe a lot of that learning to her because she modelled that on various occasions when I was in conversation with her on the Be a Better Ally podcast and when I attended some of the professional development sessions she leads. Face-to-face or in-person collaborating does not always mean better or more effective. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have found more value and more community in my digital collaborations. Now is not the time to try and go back to “normal” because we are living in a new digital and hybrid era where “normal” no longer cuts it if it means that trust, care and community are not present in our on-campus environments.

Kristina (she/her) is a queer Filipino-Australian creator, teacher, mother, and activist, currently teaching Drama and English Language & Literature at the Berlin Brandenburg International School in Brandenburg, Germany. She is passionate about actively pursuing equity and justice through student voice and amplifying the experiences of the global majority and marginalised folks through theatre. With 10 years of teaching experience in both public (UK) and international (Germany) schools, and a Bachelor of Education from QUT in Australia, Kristina is currently studying a Master of Educational Leadership as she pursues school leadership to shift the narrative of dominant culture and cultivate an environment that celebrates resiliance and healing. You can connect with Kristina on Linkedin and Twitter.

Tricia Friedman (She/Her) is an experienced International Educator and Coach. Having lived and worked in the US, China, Thailand, Morocco, Ukraine, Indonesia, Switzerland and Singapore, Tricia is passionate about Global competencies. Tricia is the founder of allyed.org and the Be a Better Ally Podcast. She is the Creative Content Director of Shifting Schools. She’s recently joined the International Marketing team at Vancouver Island University in 2021.

Tricia lives in British Columbia with her wife and their puppy.

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Kristina

Tricia

THE WELLBEING LIBRARY WITH NADINE BAILEY Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music

by Margarita Engle, Rafael López (Illustrator) (ISBN: 9780544102293) Inspired by the Chinese-African-Cuban girl, Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, this Carnegie Medal Winner tells the tale of tenacity and following your passion, and defying sexist mores. The story manages to convey the hard work and practise needed to master an instrument while remaining fun and inspiring. Zaldarriaga was part of Cuba’s first female band and played for US President Franklin Roosevelt at age 15. The text and illustrations personify the rhythm and motion of drumming with the fun of needing to turn the book sideways! Suitable for all ages from Kindergarten.

Too Small Tola by Atinuke (ISBN: 9781536211276) Tola may be small and competing with a very clever sister and a very fast brother and a very bossy grandmother, but she holds her own in these three stories. Despite her size and not having much money, she’s extremely determined and has the support of her family and neighbourhood community. The stories are perfect for children on their first chapter books with illustrations highlighting the Nigerian setting, and a message that is non-preachy but relevant. Suitable for readaloud for all ages from 6 years.

The Genius under the Table by Eugene Yelchin (ISBN: 9781536215526) A lovely memoir that manages to be both funny and poignant with great illustrations. Eugene Yelchin literally has to sleep under the table each night, in the tiny apartment shared by his ballet obsessed mother, poetry loving father, angry grandmother and figure skating brother. With a stolen stub of pencil he creates doodles of his life in Cold War Russia where he’s trying in vain to find a talent that will make his parents proud and thereby find a way out of poverty. This book celebrates finding our own creative place in the world which may be a less traditional path. Suitable for ages 10 and up.

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (ISBN: 9781646140893) Confidence, leadership and bravery do not always require grandstanding and force, but can also be spoken quietly in the voice of storytelling. This science fiction newbery winner tells the tale of Petra who flees earth with her family to find an alternative planet.

Everyone is obsessed with filling her mind with scientific “useful” facts and knowledge while all she wants is to be a storyteller like her grandmother. This book celebrates the power of stories to unite, calm and persuade. Suitable for ages 12 and up.

The Antidote - Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking by Oliver Burkeman (ISBN: 9781429947602) The perfect book for people who are tired of being told to just “be positive” and who feel that their organisation has become imbued with toxic positivity. This witty read based on research amongst philosophers, psychologists, motivational and other leaders confirms the suspicion that there are better ways to contentment than being forced to think in certain ways. Avoiding thinking of failure, uncertainty, and death can in fact cause anxiety, insecurity and unhappiness. Suitable for teachers, school counsellors

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander, Benjamin Zander (ISBN: 9780142001103) Written by a psychotherapist and teacher musician / conductor partnership, this book presents twelve breakthrough practises for bringing creativity into all human endeavours. While Benjamin Zander particularly refers to his practice in teaching music, the principals can be applied by any educator. The benefits of assuming the best and allowing students to live up to that expectation as well as substituting possibility and contribution for measurement is a powerful paradigm. If you can get hold of the audio version it’s particularly beautiful as the music referred to in the text is played in between the narrative. Suitable for teachers and administration.

Nadine is a middle school teacher-librarian / technology integrator at the Western Academy of Beijing. She's passionate about multi-cultural books and resources that reflect the diversity of students in International Schools. You can check out her blog at: https://intlnadine.org/

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