Wellbeing

Hello GPS Community,

One of the real joys of my role is watching the children here grow into the people they are going to be. Over this term, I want to take you a little behind the scenes of how we help that along. Each edition of the Wellbeing Window will open up one part of how we teach wellbeing and relationships at Gardenvale: what it actually looks like in the classroom, and why we do it the way we do. I would love for you to follow along.

I want to start with the idea that sits underneath all of it.

We can often tend to talk about getting along with other people as something a child either can or can't do. A child is ‘a good kid’ or ‘a bit of a handful’. They're ‘kind’, or they ‘need to learn some manners’. It is an easy way to talk, but it quietly assumes that how a child treats others is mostly fixed. Some have it, some don't.

That is not really how it works. Like, at all.

Getting along with people is made up of skills. Listening properly. Naming what you're feeling. Settling yourself when you're upset. Asking for help. Sorting out a disagreement before it turns into a fight. Treating someone fairly even when you don't agree with them. 

These are not personality traits a child is simply born with or without. They are skills, and like every other skill we teach, children arrive with different amounts of them, and every one of them gets better with teaching and practice.

This matters, because it changes what we do when a child is struggling. If a child cannot yet calm down after something goes wrong, or doesn't know how to join a game without barging in, the most useful response usually isn't "be better." It is to teach the skill they are missing, and give them chances to practise it. In my experience, a child who is struggling with others almost always wants to get it right. More often than not, they are missing the skill in that moment, not the willingness.

So at Gardenvale we teach these skills on purpose, in the same deliberate way we teach reading or maths. Across the school, that work covers things like:

• understanding and naming emotions (very important)
• coping when things are hard or don't go to plan (this happens a lot)
• solving problems and working through disagreements (also, happens a lot)
• knowing when, and how, to ask for help (it’s a fine balance, but critical that it happens)

• treating people with respect and fairness (the golden rule!)

   

This is the heart of Respectful Relationships, part of the Victorian Curriculum that every government school teaches. It is also where our HERRRby values stop being words on a poster and become things children can actually do. 

Empathy isn't a slogan; it is a child noticing a classmate sitting alone and going over to see if they're alright. 

Respect isn't a rule on the wall; it is the way a disagreement gets handled and the relationship being placed first. We teach the skill, and the value becomes something you can see.

One thing I want to be clear about, because it matters to me that it is crystal clear. None of this is about replacing what happens at home. You are your child's first and most important teacher. We have the privilege of them being in our care, but when they aren’t with us, they’re with you and when it comes to relationships and values, I feel pretty confident in saying we all agree that the HERRRby values are ones we all want for the children we surround ourselves with. 

What we are doing is making sure that every child, whatever they walk in the gate with, leaves us with these skills in their toolkit. How your child grows to use them, and the values you build around your own table, are yours.

Because in the end, that is the whole point. We want the children who walk out of Gardenvale for the last time to be exceptionally good people: people with the skills to build strong relationships, get along with all kinds of others, and contribute something to the world around them. Those skills don't appear by accident. We build them, a little at a time, across seven years and we do it by working together. 

Over the next few editions I'll take you inside the specific pieces, starting with how we help children understand and name what they are feeling, which actually turns out to be the foundation everything else is built on.

As always, if anything here raises a question, or you'd like to talk about how this looks for your own child, my door is open. You can usually find me in the Junior Campus Learning Lab on Thursdays and Fridays.

Tyler, Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader