Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 6 | June 2018 | Seite 17

policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
associated with students’ academic motivation, less anger and
better mental health, Collie said.
Adaptability is the third major wellbeing focal point because
there’s a “constant need to regulate emotions at school”, Collie
said. If you’re adaptable, you’ll do this more easily. More broadly,
adaptability is correlated with greater life satisfaction, engagement
and achievement.
TAKE PREVENTIVE CARE OF YOURSELF
The new #MeToo?
Academics gather to discuss why students and
teachers need to prioritise mental health.
By Loren Smith
There are tactics teachers can use to prevent emotional strain.
Noelene Weatherby-Fell outlined how resilience training can help.
The senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University
of Wollongong is a member of the OLT project, BRiTE (Building
Resilience in Teacher Education).
Although BRiTE, a free online resource, was initially developed
for pre-service teachers, it is being extended to teachers at all
experience levels.
Resilience leads to better teacher quality, retention, wellbeing,
as well as better student outcomes, Weatherby-Fell said.
Rose Pennington echoed Weatherby-Fell’s views on resilience,
with a student-centric twist. The Bondi Public School teacher
and Australian Catholic University lecturer uses the PROSPER
framework (Positivity, Relationships, Outcomes, Strengths, Purpose,
Engagement and Resilience) to increase students’ social and
emotional learning.
FIRST, GO THE F**K TO SLEEP!
“L
ike #MeToo, we need a hashtag,” Lynne Symons declared.
The former principal of the largest school in South
Australia, now an edu cational leadership consultant, was
referring to the need for greater awareness of the mental health
crisis among principals, school staff and students.
Speaking at the Education Review Managing Student and Staff
Wellbeing in Schools seminar, Symons lamented the fact that
schools are “blamed for everything”.
“As a principal, I was asked things by parents like, ‘Why was my
child on Facebook at 2am?’,” she said.
Her concerns are supported by evidence: the latest Australian
Principal Health and Wellbeing survey found significant increases in
the stress caused by mental health issues of both students and staff
over the six-year survey period.
WELLBEING FOR ALL
Most of the seminar concerned staff and student wellbeing.
Dr Rebecca Collie, a senior lecturer in educational psychology
at UNSW, offered a definition: wellbeing, she said, is achieved
through a combination of hedonism (pleasure) and eudaimonism
(meaning) and leads to healthier academic, social and emotional
outcomes. Applying this to schools, and drawing on 30 years
of research (including her own), she found three areas that
drive wellbeing: belonging, autonomy and competence,
and adaptability.
First, belonging is essential for student and staff wellbeing
“because teaching and learning is relational”, Collie explained.
Belonging is linked to enhanced student enjoyment, participation,
motivation, achievement and better personal outcomes.
Autonomy (the perception that we are responsible for our own
choices) and behaviour and competence (feeling effective) are
An optimum state of wellbeing – for students or staff – cannot be
met without adequate sleep. This was Dr Jennifer Smith’s take-
home message. The lecturer, child and adolescent psychologist,
and English and special education teacher has heard sleep
described as “a waste of time” by her child and teenage clients and
students. Her book, But I’m Not Tired!, a play on the New York
Times comedic bestseller, Go the F**k to Sleep, seeks to correct
this misconception.
Not only is sleep critical for survival, it is fundamental to
wellbeing as well as academic success. The problem is, young
people aren’t getting enough of it. A 2012 study involving 700,000
participants aged 5–18, from 20 countries, proved this. Of this
group, presently a quarter of young people are chronically
sleep-deprived.
TECH FOR GOOD?
Dr Joanne Orlando’s presentation focused on the third, equally
important school stakeholder group: parents. In particular, the
Western Sydney University researcher and founder and CEO of
TechClever is concerned that parents are only hearing negative
messages from schools about their children’s use of technology.
“Screen time is the latest dirty word,” she said. “[Parents] don’t
know what to do and they’re not convinced children should be
using technology at all.”
For the wellbeing of families, then, teachers can, in addition to
cautioning parents about technology’s downsides, inform them
of its upsides. Orlando referred to activism that’s coordinated
via social media; for example, the anti-gun campaigns following
school shootings in the US.  ■
For a full report on the seminar go to www.educationreview.
com.au/2018/05/mental-health-in-schools-the-new-metoo/
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