Growing with Gratitude

CHAPTER 3Allocate wellbeing time and routines

Not that long ago, I visited a primary school situated in the mid-north of South Australia. The acting principal seemed quite stressed. She explained that her principal was on leave due to a serious knee injury he suffered during a social basketball game. She was doing her best to cover the role of principal as well as her usual role as wellbeing leader.

I asked, ‘How are you fitting in wellbeing at the moment?’ I found her response interesting, yet alarming at the same time.

She explained, ‘Well we are in the process of making wellbeing part of our health lessons. When our principal returns, I will take a lesson a week for each class’.

I then asked, ‘How have you allocated the time for wellbeing in the past?’ She said they usually ‘leave it up to the teachers to include in class time, but those teachers are busier and overloaded like we've never seen before’.

When prompted as to why she thought this was, she responded immediately:

Data collection. Everyone wants data. The government want data, particularly around literacy and numeracy, and this is taking up a lot of teacher time. Our most experienced teachers, who have been teaching for 25-plus years, say they haven't been this busy in all their time.

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of emphasis on literacy and numeracy skills (which, of course, are absolutely important) and wellbeing is then forgotten. And as we know, wellbeing can be hard to measure. Yet, the skills of wellbeing ...