Webinar wrap-up - Reducing behavioural incidents and teacher workload through real-time social and emotional learning and reporting.

Traditional methods of gathering data to measure student wellbeing do so over the long term, taking weeks or even happening annually. This leaves a gap in the understanding of the students' wellbeing and misses the opportunity to respond to those students' needs in a timely and meaningful way. The result is that educators don't know how their students really are and are unable to support them, they don't get the data they need to respond in real-time, track, measure and report on their wellbeing programs or the progress of individual students, classes, or the whole school. This gap puts pressure on educators, means less progress for students and less readiness to learn in the class each day.

Historically, wellbeing was measured through behavioural incidents and attendance, yet research has shown that we need to have a holistic view of a young person's social and emotional wellbeing to begin to move into prevention and timely support.

Through data captured via technology we can gain valuable insights into how students are feeling in real time and why they are feeling the way that they are. This new data, combined with attendance and behaviour, allows for early intervention and prevention of major incidents. Not only does it support the classroom teachers to strengthen relationships with their students, it reduces work loads for the executives in the school by giving visibility as well as strengthening relationships with families. Beyond the data, it addresses the critical need to explicitly teach every student how to identify, manage and communicate their emotions. Ensuring our young people are prepared for the future skills of work while addressing their needs today.

Key takeaways from the webinar

Kristy Jubb - Relieving Deputy Principal at Westmead Public School

• Works with high performance, very compliant students.
• This brings its wellbeing challenges around academic performance as many students use this as a benchmark for self worth.
• Before Life Skills GO, there was no way to measure how students were feeling and its effect on wellbeing and learning. 
• The 'Weather Report' (Emotion Check-in data) was exactly what was needed
• Kristy has implemented GO for five weeks to date and "what is coming out already is amazing".
• The data tells us when we have spikes of students presenting at our school.
• Leadership monitors the data continuously throughout the day - "it's always on".
• "(students) know it (the check-in data) is being checked. They know we care and that we are having those conversations. We care about them as a little person and how they are coming to school. You can be yourself and feel different things and that it's normal."
• "We've had a lot of interest since from the excitement created from talking about kids and the data. They didn't realise that is did what it did or didn't take long to do."
• You can take from the GO platform what you want, it has resources, check-in and more. 

• GO has created opportunities for conversations and to hear from students we wouldn't have otherwise. It's about those opportunities.

• Over time we are getting more honest responses. By acknowledging it you can start to regulate it. And that's what we're seeing happening over time.

• Our stage 3 students do the check-in privately. A PC is set up and they know at some point in the morning they will go and check-in.

Key takeaways 

Kerrie Foord - Deputy Principal at Casula Public School

• We work with a complicated community. A lot of students come from difficult places, coming into school isn't an easy thing for many of them.

• Our students are worried about where they'll be or if they will be getting dinner. We put in more brain breaks and mood breaks to support them before they act out.
• "Last week I made a call to tell a parent how well a student was doing with their wellbeing, and we were able to use GO to measure this."

• The teachers gave us fabulous feedback when GO was introduced.

• It was a snowball effect, now every class uses GO.
• Ishita has been extremely helpful with support we need. A voice on the phone that helps is really useful.
• Through the Emotion Check-in, we found a greater percentage of children who weren't ready to learn.
• Teachers are addressing heightened emotional states before students act out.
• "We look at the data with the executive team, then team leaders. We also tap into different stage groups to see who needs support, etc.
• 4-5 years ago we started the social capabilities framework. It was vitally important we started to develop relationships. This nicely linked with GO, as it makes it a tangible thing we can work with. 
• We are a PBL school and the new dashboards would go hand in hand with our PBL.
• Some students switched to a check-in after recess as they were returning in a heightened state. Sometimes we do multiple check-ins to suit.
• "They are becoming more honest. And they look at the way you respond to the data. It shows them that we value the response that we're asking because we care."