Student Wellbeing

I’m very interested in beginning a School Community Wellbeing Team this term consisting of 3-4 staff members, 1-2 parent reps and 2 student reps to continue to drive positivity in both in our school community culture and in our student wellbeing initiatives at St Joseph's School.  It would require meeting once a month on a Friday before school pickup.

In their new book, Leading Improvement in School Community Wellbeing, Dr Donna Cross and Dr Leanne Lester provide a framework for a set of high-impact strategies that can work to improve wellbeing across a school. They discuss the role of ‘wellbeing champions’ in a school setting, a school community team, that can have a profound impact  in working together to improve the culture of wellbeing at the whole-school community level. 

Schools need more than one wellbeing 'champion' working alone.  Many schools recruit a wellbeing team led by a Student Wellbeing Leader to ensure wellbeing is systematically, equitably and sustainably delivered across the school, building the sense of agency, voice and empowerment to the many stakeholders within the school in the area of wellbeing. Cross and Lester recommend that this team is best purposefully recruited to increase variability (e.g. more and less experienced staff, mixed gender and mixed learning areas) and should include interested staff and ideally, some students and parents!! 

A committed multi-skilled team, with time dedicated to this role, well informed by our own school-level data and genuinely engaged with the school community, is critical to drive wellbeing related decision making and action. 

Please EMAIL ME if you have a passion for wellbeing and would like to be involved.

Warm Regards,

Jenny Todd

(Student Wellbeing Leader)

jennyt@sjsorrento.catholic.edu.au