Positive Education : Mount View High School

Monday 22 October

We met with Desley Pfeffer (Principal), 2 Deputy Principals,
3 Wellbeing leaders-Julie Myers, Graeme and Amy Johnson

and Lincoln Comans, the counsellor with his dog.

We were met at the gate, the school is a large two-storey brick building. Mount View High School is a rural school, about 2 hours out of Sydney.
It is a lower decile school situated next to a correctional facility. 8% of the students parents go to University and employment has decreased in the area.
Employment opportunities exist in the winery and construction areas. The community tend to stay in the area.

We met in the staff common room for morning tea and then were presented with a folder and their resources/books

they utilise in their programme.

Mount View High School are in their fifth year of this programme and Desley is a major driver of the programme.
This year she set aside $50 000 budget for their Positive Education Programme.

Their journey is documented in a booklet they produced using the budget along with visual prompts around the school.

 Positive Wellbeing is one of the 3 focusses for the school and has purposely been placed as the first focus.

The school use the '5 ways to wellbeing' which they have adapted form NEF 2008.

        

Their programme has run through its three year cycle. It operates in the school's roll call that has been renamed check-in.

'Whanau' groups are vertical year 7-12 and are made from their house groups.

Currently one teacher works with a group (number not asked) but there is the possibility of pairing staff to better support explicit wellbeing teaching.

Lessons operate 2-4 times a week during the 15 minute check in. Each element of the wellbeing wheel are explicitly taught over 4 week stint which includes

modelling and discussion of the lessons at a whole school meeting. The lessons do allow flexibility but buy-in is not strong. SLT (Principal and Deputies are roaming

at this time for modelling and pressure for lessons to occur. Executive team are disappointed with the commitment to the lessons,

Alongside this they also run targeted interventions eg ASIST for suicide (5 mentions a day/ a suicide occurred last January.

A catch phrase Desley used was adapted when the school song was created:

Stand up,

Step forward,

Move ahead

Mount View School are looking to:

• embed character strengths into their suspension resolution meeting and process
• embed character strengths into check-in
• one pager lesson plan

Interesting to note that they did not consider increasing the time for the lessons.

My considerations for us:
- Use what we have- dispositions (authentic) and make connections
- Can we trial a lesson plan for our Sexuality lessons linked to consent- then evaluate the process for looking to 2019
-unpack dispositions through character strengths- activity for 2019 (ākonga and kaiako).


Taught Curriculum

1. Advice on how your contextualise the curriculum?,
2. Resources being used?
3. What sequence was used for the rollout?
4. Timeframe for the rollout?
5. What helps with the rollout?
6. Amount of training done?

Caught Curriculum

• Implicit teaching of wellbeing of all teachers
• Modeling - sound wellbeing practices used in everyday classes
• (how manage wellbeing of staff with impact of pastoral care and general practice)

1. How did you go about building wellbeing in everyday classes?  Timeframe taken?
2. Building and maintaining respectful relationships in the classroom?
3. How do they demonstrate care for the students?
4. Amount of training done?

Learnings

1. How do you are a school/group share amongst the staff what’s working both explicit and implicit?
2. Wellbeing Team - What help to turn around the doubters / getting buy in from them?
3. Wellbeing Team - Do you work with other schools to share your progress / discuss ideas or would you be interest in work with Haeata, ie Professional Learning Network
4. Things/Actions to be avoided?
5. What measures (KPIs) do you use to measure wellbeing?

Check out:

-Kurri High ( Graeme commented on its disengagement programme he is hoping to run 2020.)

-The lift project 

-Books: