Wellbeing Resilience

At YSC all staff are trained to teach Wellbeing, Thriving and Optimal Functioning to every student. We have worked diligently to develop an educational environment in the college that enables every learner to engage in established curriculum explicitly teaching Resilience, Character Strengths; and a variety of specific skills to develop wellbeing and engagement in our students.

Every student at YSC benefits from our whole school implementation of the GEM program which includes addressing the following:

• Gratitude: for the positive experiences and people in our lives.
• Empathy: for others and the pursuit of kindness in our interactions.
• Mindfulness: building a consistent mindful practice to improve motivation and concentration.

To view the specific content framework for how we embed GEM in each year level, please visit our website. We also enjoy a strong whole school approach to recognising character strengths, practising mindfulness and growth mindsets.

Students receive their GEM training through explicit teaching in GEM classes at the beginning of every day, embedding of GEM through every learning area to reinforce GEM knowledge and skills, a character strengths based, solution focused Student Services team. We also facilitate a number of opportunities for parents to implement GEM principles in the home, through our close association with parenting expert Maggie Dent.

Through our website and parent information evenings, we will continue to engage parents in working with us on the program. Research demonstrates that if parents work with schools on  GEM their children will flourish and everyone in the home will benefit.

Ways for families to work together to develop optimal happiness, resilience and positive mindsets:

• Look up “The Resilience Project” on Facebook and explore the various tools available.
• The whole family can take the free Values In Action Character survey. You can complete the free survey using the link: http://www.viacharacter.org
• Use as many opportunities as you can to discuss your child’s character strengths and how they can easily access them to build resilience, solve problems and thrive on a daily level.
• Construct a family tree and identify character strengths from the survey.
• When your child comes home from school ask them what went well today or share your own ‘what went well’ experiences.
• Encourage your child to keep a gratitude journal or make time in the day as a family to express what you feel grateful for every day.
• Attend the many Positive Education workshops offered after school hours for families to work together on building positive emotions.
• Identify character strengths in characters from movies you watch as a family or favourite books.
• Set short term, medium and long term realistic goals for students and for all members of the family.
• Focus on the idea of working hard, not being ‘good at’ something or ‘bad at’ something and praise your child on their skills and effort not their looks.
• Spend time together on a family activity.
• Provide clear boundaries regarding access to social media and screen time. Emphasise clear and genuine face to face communication at home.
• Encourage students to be part of the wider community—join a sports team, club or activity or get part time work or better still be a volunteer in our important In-School Community Service program.
• Encourage your child to criticise less and empathise more.
• Encourage meditation in your family. The neuro science on brains shows that meditation actively improves your brain, de-stresses your brain and is vital for health.
• Learn new things, this will fire up brain neurons.

By involving your family in these sorts of activities, you can increase their knowledge and skills to increase well-being.

Resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ after something negative—like a tough situation or difficult time—and then get back to feeling just about as good as you felt before. It’s also the ability to adapt to difficult circumstances that you can’t change, and keep on thriving. When you’re resilient, you can learn from difficult or challenging situations and get stronger.

Your child needs the personal skills and attitudes to help them bounce back from everyday challenges such as making mistakes, falling out with friends, moving to a new school or losing an important sporting match. Your child might also face more serious challenges such as family breakdown, adapting to a step-family, the illness or death of a family member or bullying.

How resilient you act and feel can go up and down at different times. You might be better at bouncing back from some challenges and not others. Some young people face more challenges than others because of learning difficulties or disabilities, or because they have more anxious personalities. The more challenges young people have, the harder it is for them to be resilient. All young people can build the personal skills for resilience. As a parent, you have a big role to play in helping.

Self-respect is a great building block for resilience. Self-respect grows out of setting standards for behaviour. If your child has self-respect, they believe that they matter and should be treated respectfully by others. They are also more likely to protect themselves by avoiding risky behaviour and situations. A strong sense of self-respect will also help your child be less vulnerable to bullies and bullying.

Empathy, respect for others, kindness, fairness, honesty and cooperation are also linked to resilience. This includes showing care and concern to people who need support, accepting people’s differences, being friendly and not mistreating or bullying others. If your child shows these attitudes and behaviour towards others, they are more likely to get a positive response in return. This helps them feel good about themselves.