Vice Principal 

& Wellbeing

PROBLEM SOLVED

At St Mary's we embed Social and Emotional Learning into every aspect of the day. One of the great resources we have is our Problem Solved spiral and we refer to this with the students every day. Whether it is to solve an issue with our learning, a social issue or a bigger problem, we ask the students "Hey, did you use your problem solved?"

The thing with problems is that every problem has a solution! Sometimes we just need a little help getting to the end result. I will use the example of a social conflict:

Student A is saying something to Student B which is annoying.

Student B can try to solve the problem by themself by thinking about the possibilities - what could I do to fix this? 

Student B asks Student A to stop.

Student A continues the behaviour so Student B approaches a friend and says "I'm feeling a bit sad, can we play something together?"

Best case scenario is that Student A does stop because Student B has moved away.

However, sometimes children can make poor choices and in this case, Student A follows student B and continues the behaviour.

Student A then approaches a teacher and asks for help. The teacher then steps in and supports the students in solving the issue.

At times, a teacher needs to seek Leadership support and therefore, an investigation takes place and this usually results in a restoring the situation.

Sometimes, students can find it very difficult to follow the Problem Solved model and may talk to family at home. If this is the case, we encourage you as parents, to support your child to attempt to solve the problem using the Problem Solved approach, but if necessary, we ask that you contact your child's teacher first, and then if necessary, please contact leadership.