Student Wellbeing
Returning to school and Building Resilient Students
Back to school blues: The holidays are a great chance for students to recharge and relax after a big term of learning. For some the return to school can be challenging. They have been inside their comfort zones with family and the thought of returning to school can leave them feeling anxious. To help ease a child’s anxiety about returning to school, create a calm and supportive environment at home. Start by establishing a consistent routine that includes time for home reading, relaxation, and sleep. Encourage open conversations where your child can express their worries and validate their feelings without dismissing them. Practise positive self-talk, highlighting their strengths and past successes at school. Remind them that it’s normal to feel anxious and that you’re there to support them and talk through their day with them. Overcoming these challenges are one way that we are building resilience in our students.
Resilience Building: Happy, safe and comfortable students are students who are ready to learn and be at their best. Resilience plays a large part in a person’s wellbeing. It is an important skill that helps us bounce back from challenges and tough times. At Greenhills, when we approach a challenge, we are having difficulty with, we promote a growth mindset and use the saying, “We haven’t got it yet!” Just like muscles in your body, you can strengthen your resilience with practise, overcoming challenges and obstacles is all part of learning.
It is so important for our students to develop resilience. It's like having a superpower that helps you stay strong when faced with difficulties. As parents and teachers, we need to let our children/students fail, have setbacks and give them a chance to overcome these.
Our School’s GREAT value Grit is an example of resilience building. We want all our students to persevere, enjoy the challenge and find ways to overcome that challenge.
Below are some strategies to Build and promote Resilience
Positive thinking: Always try to see the bright side of things. When you face a problem, think about the good that can come from it. Even in tough situations, strive to find something positive.
Set goals: Set achievable goals for yourself. Break big tasks into smaller, manageable steps. Celebrate your successes along the way. At school, this includes Literacy, Numeracy and personal learning goals. At home it could be an artistic, musical, or sporting goal. Celebrate these successes as a family.
Learn from our mistakes: Instead of being upset by mistakes, view them as opportunities to learn and grow. Everyone makes mistakes, and they are a natural part of life. Whilst mistakes are great, part of learning is working out what could be changed to improve it. We don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. We want to try something new to improve.
Practice Patience: Sometimes, problems take time to solve. Encourage your child to be patient. Some of our best achievements will take days, weeks or even years. Acknowledging this and celebrating that achievement is important.
It is important that we let our students experience setbacks and failures, they are all a part of life. Learning from these is a large part of how we build resilient students that can succeed in life. Building resilience is a journey, and it's okay to have ups and downs along the way. Every obstacle or challenge we overcome makes us stronger, more resilient and better equipped for what life throws us next.
janine.hough@education.vic.gov.au
bradley.ryan@education.vic.gov.au
Janine and Brad.
