Saturday, 24 February 2018

Well Being & Mental Health

Hereora Cluster Teacher Only Day
25/01/18
Lucy Hone


Well-Being & Mental Health:

Well-being definition - 'feeling good and functioning well'


Increased well-being;
  • Increased ability to cope with stress
  • Lower incidence of cancer
  • Faster recovery from surgery
  • Greater immunity to colds and flues
  • More resistance to trauma
  • Greater job satisfaction
  • Increased productivity
  • Higher levels of optimism
  • Greater levels of self-control
More engaged students

What determines our happiness?
Genes 50%, Actions and Thoughts 40%, External Circumstances 10%

Positive Education:

The bringing together the science of well being with best practice teaching to support individuals, schools & whanau to flourish.

Pastoral Care; reactionary, targeted, deficit-based
Positive Education; preventative, universal (whole school community), strengths based

Adler and Seligman, 2016 - Teaching Well-Being increases Academic Performance - perseverance, engagement and personal relationships


Goal Setting
Set a goal and make a plan

Positive Emotions - engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, achievements
Check in as an individual, class, school

How can we promote well-being in school communities?

Always start with the staff (and include ALL staff)

LEARN IT ⇒ LIVE IT ⇒ TEACH IT ⇒ EMBED IT

Schools represent the only way to achieve universal well-being promotion


24 Character Strengths

To identify your personal strengths take this scientific questionnaire


Greater awareness and use of character strengths is associated with:
Improved school performance (Quinlan, 2014)
⇝ engaged learning, increased happiness
⇝ enhanced class climate
Greater odds of having higher well-being (Hone, 2015)

Martin Seligman:


Our strengths can change, we can work on them (not traits)
Character = a set of strengths that contribute to well-being (universally valued, across cultures)
Character = associated with positive outcomes regardless of socio-demographics.
When you know and act on your character strengths, they give you PERMA.
The VIA provides a framework & collective language to discuss

How can we improve PERMA in our classes?
Regular measuring so you are aware of it and work out ways to improve it.

Strengths - activity ⇒ character (what are the things we need to be good at to do the activities

Strengths are ....  things we do well, often and with energy

Resources:






SCHOOL BASED MENTAL HEATH TEAM


Providing resources to help the school to provide for the students. resources, workshops

Issues to Resources (where to find support in different areas)
Have done social skills groups with students
Have run transition programmes
Sparklers  (allright.org.nz) - has parent and teacher guides
Whanau Effect - promotes connections with whanau
Hikitia te ha (Maori Tai Chi)

Learned Optimism

Sharon Bennett

We need to practise being optimistic
Learned helplessness

To think is to know
To think is to learn

informing vs transforming

Can I control it ?

Yes - then sort it out
No - Let it be

Only 10% of happiness is based on external influences, 90% from inside

Our society focus on fixing the negative

Appreciative Inquiry - Asset based
a pholosphy
a way of looking at the work
a strength based framework
methodology
appraoch