Amazing People Schools Actively Engaged With Experts And Students To Support Children’s Mental Health Week
Amazing People Schools is proud to support one of the most important weeks in the calendar – Children’s Mental Health Week. This year’s theme, ‘My Voice Matters’, is one close to our heart. Our approach is person-centric, and we believe that each young person should be nurtured and heard.
We participated in two amazing webinars; the first featured a panel of wellbeing researchers and experts discussing how to promote wellbeing in young people; the second was another exciting collaboration with Virtual Soccer Schools, which enabled students to engage directly with two Premier League/US team players, where we discussed the importance of using our voice and supporting our own mental health.
Generally, whilst the understanding of some of the mental health issues our young people face has grown enormously over the past few years, there is still more work to be done to equip them with the skills, language and knowledge they need to enable them to define and talk openly about what is troubling them.
Cambridge CEM Wellbeing Webinar
To help schools navigate the landscape of wellbeing, Cambridge Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring organised a webinar, Promoting positive student wellbeing: A panel discussion. Our Education Team Manager, Selena Whitehead, joined three other eminent speakers for this engaging session, ably facilitated by Luke Parker. The discussion was packed with useful insights and practical takeaways.
We would encourage you to watch it all but here are our highlights:
Alicia Drummond is the founder of Teen Tips, and their mission is to provide mental health support for pupils, parents, carers and staff. She was asked how schools can enhance support for staff and teachers, particularly those without formal training in children’s mental health. The aim of this is to boost their confidence in addressing and teaching mental health and wellbeing within the classroom. She acknowledged the ever-growing need and the expectations on school staff, as well as the lack of mental health training in the PGCE course. Her solutions included suggesting online training so that all staff understood the basics of attachment theory. She also emphasised the need to start with staff wellbeing, and the need to tend to themselves so that they can adequately support pupil wellbeing.
Getting Started – Reliable & Trustworthy Mental Health Information
Luke asked Dr Hope Christie if she could offer any advice on where to start and how parents/schools/teachers can feel assured that the information they are getting is reliable and accurate. Dr Christie cautioned about the dangers of getting mental health advice online where articles are often not evidence-based. Her organisation, Tooled Up Education, turns evidence-based research into real-life impactful tools that help children to thrive.
Professor Ros McLellan gave a fascinating insight into definitions of wellbeing, describing it as a means of flourishing and fulfilling one’s potential. From a psychological perspective, Professor McLellan argued that wellbeing needs to be holistic, encompassing hedonic wellbeing (through pleasure and enjoyment) and eudemonic (through finding meaning and purpose). There are different tools and models of eudemonic wellbeing practices; however, measuring it can be challenging. Professor McLellan’s research has contributed to The Cambridge Wellbeing Check.
Building A Strengths-Based Bank Of Wellbeing
Our Education Manager, Selena Whitehead, took a strengths-based approach, acknowledging that much of the conversation around wellbeing stems from a position of deficit or labelling something that is perceived as wrong. Instead, Selena said that we can’t avoid setbacks and difficult challenges in life, but we can work our way through them by taking a strengths-based approach. She described building up a bank of wellbeing based on understanding individual strengths and being able to draw down on this bank in tough times.
VSS x APS Webinar
Our second webinar was very special, as we had invited not one, but two, premier league footballers (Fulham FC and the US Men’s team) to our special online studio courtesy of Jugo, which made the experience even more immersive.
We were joined by around 80 schools and over a thousand pupils. Selena kicked things off by reminding all the young people that we all have strengths that can be explored through the Amazing People Schools strengths-based framework, which is easy to follow in this short video.
Students Using Their Voice To Discuss Mental Health
Then it was over to the children, who posed fantastic questions, firstly to Tim Ream. One boy asked why Children’s Mental Health Week was important to Tim, who replied that he related it to his own family and how it was essential to talk to children about their mental health to enable them to grow up understanding their feelings – recognising that it is okay to not always feel okay and knowing how to deal with that.
He also gave an insightful answer to a question about dealing with failure in football – how he tries to turn a failure into a success by learning from what didn’t work, trying something different next time, and not getting too down about it.
Our next guest, Antonee Robinson, known as Jedi, entered the conversation with students. He talked about dealing with the pressures both on and off the pitch. Antonee explained that as a pro footballer, there was a lot of pressure on getting good results, but that he could relax with his hobbies, such as golf and spending time with his family. He also mentioned how children could find a lot of stress relief by playing football, as he did as a child. He answered student questions about how he deals with negativity and stressed the importance of not taking criticism about poor form to heart but rather, to focus on constructive advice from mentors and coaches.
You can watch the whole event here or use this Wellbeing Workout to encourage character strength activities for your students.
Wellbeing Workouts – A Resource To Support Mental Health
These are fun, daily activities that focus on developing and practising character strengths that can support student wellbeing in a really powerful way. Teamwork, kindness and wisdom are positive strengths that can be nurtured and practised on a daily basis. These activities include reflective tasks, such as encouraging students to create a one-page profile about someone who has helped them.
An example of a kindness activity would be listing seven kind acts students can aim to perform over the week. Performing acts of kindness each day enables students to build upon the healthy habit of helping others.
Embedding character education on a daily basis to support children’s mental health and wellbeing will provide students with the language and knowledge to discuss and develop their strengths. Amazing People Schools is here to help your school embed character education during Children’s Mental Health Week and beyond. Did you know that you can get free access to all our wonderful resources for your school? Contact us to try it for free at your school. Our team is ready to show you just how amazing Amazing People Schools really is!