At the end of this article, you’ll learn how to promote student well-being in your school with useful resources and examples of effective student well-being programs.
What Does Student Well-being Mean?
Well-being means quality in a person’s physical, emotional, social, and spiritual areas of life.
Teachers and parents must include the follokwing aspects in the students’ academic activity to improve student well-being in 2022:
- Meaningful activities participation
- Control and self-esteem
- Achievement recognition
- Positive connection
- Community belonging
Do Schools Need a Well-being Policy?
Yes, schools need well-being policies to enhance the student learning and life experience. Why should all schools have it?
Student well-being translates into how students perceive themselves; their lives, their enjoyment, satisfaction, and happiness with life overall; then a student well-being policy should be included in the academic journey.
The Student Wellbeing Framework has been recently introduced in schools in different countries around the world, including the US and Australia. A student’s well-being needs to be addressed in order to prevent or cope with the physical and mental problems of individual students in today’s high-stress student environment.
By reading this document from the Australian “Student Learning and Support Services Taskforce”, you understand the vision and principles acquired through positive learning environments.
Parents and teachers recognize the importance of providing support services to drastically improve long-term happiness and performance.
Good education is not only academics, but also lifestyle-related topics such as health, nutrition, and illness prevention in order to provide a well-balanced and more stable future.
How to Promote Students’ Well-being: Teaching Well-being in Schools
There are many clear advantages of promoting and teaching students’ well-being in your school ranging from developing individual purpose, to improving one’s perceived value and productivity.
How can your educational institution promote student well-being with its own set of policies? Here you have some ideas:
- Use opinion surveys, representatives, parliaments, in-class feedback, and consultations or focus groups to provide opportunities to every student inside the class.
- Form clubs, interest groups, and associations to stimulate an open, welcoming environment for everyone to support and feel supported by each other.
- Do formative and peer assessments to reduce the anxiety of students caused by tests and tight deadlines.
- Contribute to a positive classroom climate through cooperative, student-centered, self-organized, or even outdoor learning.
- Find many opportunities to talk about well-being with your students (nutrition, exercise, among other similar themes).
- Integrate intercultural understanding into different extra-curricular activities and help everyone become more open and emphatic about human rights and religious differences.
- Teach student-led conflict management like peer mediation and restorative justice.
- Improve the classroom’s physical environment to make it more student-friendly.
- Encourage healthier eating options in the school canteen, with reduced levels of sugar, fats, and sodium.
- Enhance students’ achievement and sense of purpose with the help of parents.
Initiatives like the ones mentioned above can help any school move forward.
That’s why KlassApps created the best software to help educational institutions of all sizes improve the connection they have with students and enable staff to provide better services while reducing costs.
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We’re always here to help. We compiled a set of programs and resources available around the web to help support students who are struggling with physical or emotional issues.
Student Wellbeing Programs & Resources
1) Kids Helpline
Children and young people aged 5 to 25 years can benefit from their support and counseling about a range of topics, including bullying, cyber safety, and family relationships.
All the guides on their website are for kids, parents, and teachers who want to learn about how to deal with emotions.
2) Headspace
Teens and adults aged 12 to 25 years with either mental or physical health issues can get support through face-to-face (eHeadspace), online, or telephone support.
In case you don’t get what you were looking for in Headspace, they can also guide you on where to go for help. Anyone can access their platform.
* Do not confuse with the popular meditation app.
3) Reachout.com
Young people can learn about their well-being issues and challenges through guides and personal stories from other young people.
4) Youth BeyondBlue
They offer information, as well as online and phone counseling to people aged 12 to 25 years who suffer from mental health issues.
