Student Wellbeing

Wellbeing Staff

The school has a Wellbeing Leader which is a Leading Teacher position, and they sit on the school’s leadership team supporting the premise of BHHS whole school wellbeing approach. The Wellbeing Team includes 2 full time school counsellors and a Mental Health Practitioner who are available to meet with students or parents to provide support or referrals to additional services, including school psychologists, social workers, youth workers, and other external supports.

Felicity Shiel-Jones

Student Services Leader

Felicity.Shiel-Jones@education.vic.gov.au

Colin Osborn

Student Counsellor

Colin.Osborn@education.vic.gov.au

Grace Ren

Student Counsellor

Grace.Ren@education.vic.gov.au

Bowen Guan

Mental Health Practitioner

Bowen.Guan@education.vic.gov.au

Our Wellbeing Team Vision

At Box Hill High School we endeavor to provide an inclusive and positive learning environment for all our students. Fundamental to a student’s success is their emotional and social wellbeing. We support students to develop the skills for personal achievement and wellbeing through Positive Education so that they establish positive relationships, challenge unhelpful thinking, become more resilient and engage in an open mindset. All students should feel safe and supported at school. We believe students can learn from challenging experiences and develop both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. We value social justice, compassion, optimal development, fairness, self-responsibility, respect and perseverance. We want our students to be resilient, optimistic, life-long learners, curious and contributors to their communities.

Frameworks that support the work of the Student Wellbeing Team

The tenets of Positive Education (mindfulness, strengths, resilience, gratitude, positive relationships)
Restorative Practices
Mindmatters
SAFEMinds

Positive Education Year Level Vision Statements

Year 7 – Positive Relationships

Vision Statement

For every year 7 student to be happy to be at school and have positive interactions with fellow peers and staff. To feel connected to the school community through a successful transition to high school where new friendships are formed and students feel encouraged by their teachers to challenge themselves in their learning environment. It is hoped that students will develop self-compassion that can assist in them building their self-identity.

Year 8 - Gratitude

Vision Statement

For Year 8 students to develop and practice gratitude in their daily lives and for students to be empathetic to what others value too. Create a general state of compassion and appreciation of difference within their community. For students to be aware of and challenge negative bias in themselves and others and apply that when reflecting on their learning.

Year 9 - Resilience

Vision Statement

For year 9 students to be able learn strategies to improve coping with challenges and disappointments that arise and begin to understand that change is a part of living. To have the confidence to tackle solving problems and take risks and to not see failure as only negative. For students to value the importance of making connections throughout their community as a vital strength in building their resilience.

Year 10 – Focussed Attention and Mindfulness

Vision Statement

For all year 10 students to be able to learn and consistently practice mindfulness in order to develop the skills of focusing attention. For students to understand the benefits of focused attention and experience this in their learning, their copy skills and mental health, and in their relationships. It is hoped that students will find these skills invaluable in their lives with increasing academic pressure, an inescapable social media environment and greater life responsibilities.

Year 11 – Strengths and Purpose

Vision Statement

For all Year 11 students to have a greater understanding of their strengths so they are aware of how they can contribute in the world. This will come from the identification and exploration of their personal attributes, values, academic strengths, talents, interests and passions. Year 11s will be encouraged to develop a moral purpose by which they can start shaping their future. A better understanding of themselves and their strengths will hopefully improve their intrinsic motivation to work towards their goals and to make more thoughtful and informed decisions that are aligned with their values.

Year 12 – Healthy Bodies and Minds

Vision Statement

For Year 12 students to find balance in their lives and to be consolidating the healthy foundations for good mental health during what can be a stressful year but more importantly for life beyond school. Developing a toolkit for students to feel confident in self-regulating their mental or physical condition and responding in effective ways to perform at an optimal level. It is crucial that our students can leave school with the skills to manage stress and identify strategies that strengthen their wellbeing to achieve overall greater life satisfaction.

The Education State – Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO)

FISO
Priority	Positive Climate for Learning
Dimension	Health and Wellbeing	· Health and wellbeing programs have a positive and significant impact on attitudes to learning, social relationships and student achievement. Effective schools take steps to support students' wellbeing and physical needs, as well as fostering a sense of community and belonging for all. They use social and emotional learning approaches to develop students' self-management and awareness, empathy and relationship skills. Schools ensure that every student has a secure, positive and ongoing relationship with at least one member of staff. · Teachers incorporate social and emotional learning programs into their classroom to improve a range of student outcomes, including student wellbeing and achievement. Learning is reinforced when the broader school environment is consistent with the knowledge, understanding and skills taught through the Health and Physical Education curriculum as well as the Respectful Relationships program which supports students to make decisions about their health, wellbeing and safety. · · A healthy school environment for staff, students and families is developed through health promoting school policies and processes, supportive physical and social environments and partnerships with parents, community organisations and specialist services.
Dimension	Setting expectations and promoting inclusion	· They ensure that their school vision and values are embedded in everyday practices and interactions and they work across their communities to implement a shared approach to supporting the health, wellbeing, inclusion and engagement of all students. · Safe, supportive and inclusive schools celebrate and protect diversity and understanding of others, acknowledging the right of every child, no matter their background or ability, to achieve the best possible outcomes at school. · Metacognition and self-management approaches have high levels of impact on student achievement and wellbeing, enhancing students' resilience, optimism, confidence, social and emotional skills.

The principles of restorative practices are incorporated into our discipline and wellbeing procedures, and we believe that all our students are important members of the school community.

Some areas that students may benefit from having additional support include:

Organisational & study skills
Building resilience and coping skills
Improving emotional wellbeing
Feeling bullied or socially isolated
Cyber-safety
Coping with stress
School attendance
The impact of physical illness
Relationships
Diagnosed learning problems

Gifted Student Wellbeing Information

The journey through the educational system can frequently be long and difficult for gifted students and their parents. The Victorian government Inquiry into Gifted and Talented Students found that “in addition to their academic needs, gifted students often have specific social and emotional needs that must be met in order for these students to fulfil their potential.”

“Giftedness has an emotional as well as an academic component. Research has demonstrated that gifted students display heightened intellectual complexity as well as emotional hypersensitivity. They ... experience their world in a more absorbing, vivid, intense way than their age peers … Gifted and talented students ponder the big questions, feel genuine empathy for the marginalised of the world and also feel disenfranchised because they feel so much more intensely than their peers do." Gifted students also have a strong sense of justice. They may also at times feel under incredible pressure from themselves or even their families to keep up with their peers and work at a high level”.

The fact the gifted children are often different from their age-peers may make them susceptible to isolation, loneliness, and even bullying. In addition, boredom, frustration and social issues at school may have negative impacts on their mental health.

Box Hill High School is committed to meeting the needs of gifted children. All staff are cognisant of the issues surrounding gifted children and they are sensitive and understanding of their particular of the needs. All teaching staff have undergone training in gifted education and many staff have post graduate university qualifications in the area of gifted education.

Martin Seligman’s Tips for Helping Your Child

Every night for a week, write down three things that went well that day and why. These can be relatively unimportant (I had a cup of tea in the sun) or significant (My sister gave birth to a healthy baby). Teach your child to do this.
Work out your greatest strengths and use your highest strength each day (sit a signature strength test on the website authentichappiness.org).
Help your child to find something that gives them “flow” – the sense of being so engaged that time flies.
Give thanks, make a gratitude visit and thank someone who has helped you. Depressed people look inwards, teach your child to focus outwards.
Parents pass on their own explanatory style to their children. How do you respond to adversity? Do you catastrophize (imagine the worst) or ruminate (play the same negative tape over in your head). Practice arguing strongly back to that negative tape. http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

Another useful expert in the area of youth resilience is Australian psychologist Andrew Fuller who provides a wonderful guide for parents with the following: www.andrewfuller.com.au

Ten Hints for Creating Resilient Families

Resilience is the fine art of being able to bungy jump through life. The pitfalls are still there but it is as if you have an elasticised rope around your middle that helps you to bounce back from hard times.

No. 1 Promote Belonging

Resilience is the happy knack of being able to bungy jump through the pitfalls of life. It is the strongest antidote we know of for self-harm, depression and drug abuse and it’s built on our sense of belonging. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 2 Have some mooch time

We live in a world that suffers from attention deficit disorder. We rush children from activity to activity, from lesson to lesson and from one organised event to another. Then we wonder why, when there is a lull that they say” I’m bored”. Be a counter-revolutionary. Find some time each week just to be at home without anything structured happening. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 3 Rediscover some family rituals

It doesn’t matter whether it is the family walk after dinner, the Sunday roast, the Friday night pizza or the Saturday morning clean up, rituals are highly protective. The best rituals often cost nothing. These are the activities you hope that later on your children will reminisce and say “ Mum always made sure we did” or "Dad always made sure we did.” www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 4 Spontaneity and curiosity

Spontaneity and curiosity are the building blocks of good mental health. You cannot tell someone how to have better mental health and you can't give it to them by getting them to read a book. So the really hard message here is that if you want to raise your children to have mentally healthy lives you are going to have to have a good time yourself. If you want your children to succeed you need to show them that success is worth having. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 5 Love kids for their differences

When families’ function well people are allowed to be different and to be loved for those differences. We all know that children take on different roles. A father of three said” it’s as if they have a planning meeting once a year and say ‘ you be the good kid, I’ll be the sick kid and the other one can be the trouble-maker’! And then just when you think you’ve got it figured out they change roles again”. Having children who are strongly individual and who have a sense of who they are is a sign of good parenting. The problem may, of course, be that they will then express their independent spirit in ways that you don't like. The ideal is a mix between someone who preserves their own uniqueness and is able to work with others without becoming dictated to by them. Someone who has their own independent nature but is comfortable enough with themselves to allow inter-dependence. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 6 It is clear who is in charge

Families do not work well as democracies. In fact they seem to work best as benevolent dictatorships in which the parent or parents consult a lot with their children but at the end of the day, the parent has the final say. Some parents fear that if they take charge that they will lose the friendship of their children, but often the reverse is true. In families where parents fail to take their own role seriously, children may feel that to express their independence. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 7 Consistency

Consistency is the ideal. Having parents who agree on rules and standards and who convey the same sorts of messages and who value compassion over coercion, clearly has the best outcome in terms of children’s well being .It is also important that parents not be open to manipulation and work together as a team. 2 Life however is not always so simple and we all know from sad and sour experience that parents cannot always be consistent. Sometimes parents have different value systems or can’t come to a consistent way to handle particular areas. In these situations, a second possibility is to for one parent to take charge of a particular area. This is not the most desirable solution but it is better than having parents in conflict over management issues or worse, undermining one another. In single parent families or where parents are separated the same principle applies. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 8 Teach the skills of Self-esteem

Families that work well seem to praise one another a lot. Compliments are made, positive efforts are commented on. Optimism is in the air. Even in these families, teenagers still shrug and say, “yeah Mum” or “yeah Dad” whenever a compliment is made. Teaching the skills of self-praise is useful. One way of doing this to ask questions extensively about any achievement or accomplishment. Asking questions that like “how did you do that?” “How come you did so well at that test?” “What did you do?” and “have you been doing homework behind my back. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 9 Know how to Argue

Families that work well know how to argue. It seems strange to say this because we all have the sense those families that work well don't have conflicts. The family is really where we learn to resolve disputes fairly. The way that parents teach children to resolve differences of opinion with their brothers and sisters provides the basis for sharing, negotiating and problem solving in the world beyond the family. While differences of opinion should be allowed to be expressed, children also need to learn that they will not be able to win at all costs. www.andrewfuller.com.au

No. 10 Parents are reliably unpredictable

With young children it is important to provide consistency and predicability. This allows them to feel sure of you. After a while though, a bit of predicability can go a long way. To many children, most parents are about as predictable as a washing machine cycle. It is important to have structure and consistency but it is also useful to act in ways that your children wouldn’t expect. This keeps them interested in learning from you or least wondering what you are up to. Perhaps the most important feature of parents in healthy families is that they realise that all of the above is desirable but not always possible and so they look at how to promote good functioning while not wasting energy on blaming themselves for the times when things don't quite work out as they had planned. www.andrewfuller.com.au

His article on the adolescent brain can also be found using the link below and is recommended reading for parents and teachers. http://www.andrewfuller.com.au/free/TheAdolescentBrain.pdf

Youth Beyondblue

The following information from Youth beyondblue may be of use to parents concerned about their teenage child’s change in behavior.

Adolescence is a time of change and it can be hard to tell the difference between ‘normal teenage behaviour’ and depression and anxiety. In Australia, 160,000 young people (16-24 years) live with depression and around one in six young people have anxiety. If your son or daughter shows warning signs of these conditions, getting help early can improve their wellbeing. It can also help to stop the problems happening again when they become adults.

Warning signs of depression and anxiety for parents:

Depression doesn’t just cause sadness or feeling blue, and anxiety doesn’t just make people worry. Young people can express depression and anxiety in many different ways. They might:

Have trouble falling or staying asleep, or spend much of the day in bed
Be tired, grumpy, irritable, tearful or upset most of the time
Feel restless, keyed up or on edge
Lose interest in things they used to enjoy, and have trouble starting and completing assignments or work
Lose concentration and be forgetful and easily distracted
Become withdrawn and lose friends
Be worried and panicky about doing anything out of the ordinary
Either refuse to eat or eat a lot
Complain of feeling physically awful, with unexplained aches and pains, and does not want to go to school (Source: www.youthbeyondblue.com)

Useful links to wellbeing information for parents:

Parenting support:
www.michaelcarr-gregg.com.au
www.familyrelationships.gov.au
www.andrewfuller.com.au
www.parentingstrategies.net
www.anglicarevic.org.au

Cybersafety:
http://bullyingnoway.gov.au/

http://www.thinkuknow.org.au/index.asp

http://cybersmart.gov.au/Parents.aspx
www.amf.org.au

www.cybersafetysolutions.com.au

ASD and Asperger’s – support

http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/index.php

http://www.assnvic.org.au/
http://withyoueverystepoftheway.com/

Mental Health

http://www.headspace.org.au/parents-and-carers

www.reachout.com.au

www.nimh.nih.gov
www.kidshelp.com.au

www.youthbeyondblue.com