Case Study: Wyoming Public School’s Trial Experience with Life Skills GO

Introduction

One question that a lot of Australian schools are asking at the moment is ‘How do I gather critical data on how my students are feeling without putting additional work on my teachers?’ This was the challenge that Assistant Principal Michelle Francis from Wyoming Public School faced when she first came across Life Skills GO. Through a 14 day trial of the emotion check-in tool, Wyoming Public School was able to gather this critical data and perhaps even more importantly, highlight students that were flying under the radar so that the school could take proactive and preventative action. The best part of this experience was the discovery that it was not going to add to teachers workload due to an intuitive system that leverages a student led approach.

The Story of Wyoming Public School

In 2023, Wyoming Public School was seeing an escalation in their students' mental health needs. The problem: how could they collect data on student wellbeing to inform what actions they could take. This is when Michelle was forwarded a webinar recording from her principal. This webinar piqued her interest because it featured a school very similar in size and socio-economic status to Wyoming Public School. Later, Michelle saw the panellists - Nikki Bonus; CEO, Founder of Life Skills GO and Candice Taylor, Assistant Principal at Killarney Vale Public School present at a conference which confirmed that; “This is exactly what we need to be able to collect that data to see what other supports can we put in place that we don't already have?”

Watch Nikki discuss Life Skills GO with Candice

Knowing If Students Are Ready to Learn

Before Life Skills GO, Wyoming Public School was having trouble pinpointing why students were struggling to settle into learning. “Our need was why is it so hard to have a class that is settled and ready to learn and what can we do about it? The first step of that for us was needing a way to collect the data and see what's happening with kids when they are at school.” In order to determine what action to take, their team had to gather the baseline data.

The executive team was behind the decision to trial from the start, recognising that what they were doing wasn’t working and the need to do something differently. From here, it was just a matter of when they were going to start and who was going to trial the check-in tool.

How Wyoming Public School Evaluated Life Skills GO

At the start of the trial, Michelle selected a teacher to start checking in with her class. Michelle chose this teacher carefully, deciding to trial with a diversified group of learners to see how different students would respond to the tool. The teacher, Jessica was able to successfully implement the check-in tool into her classroom quickly, recognising straight away that the tool not only tracked learner readiness, but identified students in need of support that the school may not have picked up on:

“The one thing that she said she got out of it was being able to see those kids who are really struggling that she would not have picked up. We all know the kid that walks in with a big black cloud over their head, you can see it written all over their face, honestly, they're not the kids we're targeting. It's those kids who are flying under the radar who we don't know that this is happening with them.... And that's been a real eye opener.”

One concern that Michelle had was; would the students be honest when selecting how they are feeling? This was overcome by Jessica, who set up an iPad that the students could use to check-in, without it being on display for the rest of the class. Jessica concluded that this yielded more accurate responses from her class.

Decision Time

After the trial, Jessica presented to the whole school her experience on the platform, speaking from a classroom teacher's perspective. During the meeting it was discovered that, even though the trial only targeted Jessica’s class, other teachers had jumped on and given the check-ins a go with no training. “People who had just had a bit of a dabble in it without any training whatsoever were able to go, ‘Oh, it's intuitive.’ ‘We knew immediately how to use it’. And that, that really helped promote it with the staff.”

In the end, what solidified the executive team’s decision was discovering that not only did the platform inform them that only 30% of students were ready to learn yet it had the adaptive content to help teachers respond to the need in the classroom.

“Automatically it comes up; you've got 70% of your kids who are operating at some level that's not optimum and I think that's what it was, being able to go, okay, I need to take some time. We need to do something else… That, I think, was the thing where the executive went, this is useful and this is what we need.”

Wyoming Public School is looking to roll out Life Skills GO across their cohorts in term 4,ensuring that all classes are checking in during the morning period. This will allow the executive team to gather the data they need to make informed decisions about their current and future wellbeing initiatives, based on student driven data.

Michelle’s Advice

We asked Michelle what she would say to someone who is thinking about starting a trial. Here’s what she said:

“Make sure you connect with a classroom teacher who has the ability to integrate something new into their classroom. That's the biggest hurdle because, Jessica, as a full time classroom teacher, was able to say to all of our other full time class teachers who are already up to here with workload, this is not going to add to workload. This is going to make it better.

We can go ‘they're not going to tell me anything I don't already know.’ And I think a lot of teachers will think that, you know, they know their kids really well. ‘This isn't going to help me.’ ‘It's not going to tell me anything I don't already know.’ And I think that's the thing that stood out for us, that it did tell us stuff we didn't know. It did highlight those kids who you think are travelling okay and they're not.”

Conclusion

Wyoming Public School’s journey has only just begun. Backed by evidence of the platform’s success at a school similar to their own, the executive team was able to assess whether Life Skills Go would suit their setting before selecting a classroom teacher. From their trial of Life Skills GO, Michelle and her team discovered that they were able to assess learner readiness across their school as well as see specific students that need support for the day all through a simple check-in that actually saved time.

The next stepping stone in the implementation path for Wyoming Public School is making the check-in mandatory across all classrooms so that their executive team can make informed decisions about their wellbeing plans.

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