A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Researchers to share findings of major study of student behaviour Results from a major study show that the key challenge for teachers in classrooms today is to find ways to encourage active and engaged learning. A UniSA-led Behaviour at School Study (BASS) surveyed almost 1400 South Australian teachers to assess how they viewed student behaviour [...]
Teachers - is there something missing in how you are connecting with your students - those kids in Years 5 to 9 who sometimes seem to be in a world of their own? Do they appear to be at times fidgety, uninspired, unsure and at other times loud, challenging and emotional? The 'middle years' period [...]
A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture at the Sydney Opera House. Speaking was Professor Martin Seligman, the founding father of what has been termed Positive Psychology. His research has led him to devise a model that he has termed the PERMA model for wellbeing. P = Positive Emotions Seligman cites the [...]
A call for consistency in messaging to girls: Girlfriend February 2013 Many girls and young women look to girl’s magazines for advice on life, relationships, bodies, health and sexuality. But too often they receive conflicting advice and mixed messages and even, sometimes, outright contradiction. Take for example, information provided in the sealed section of Girlfriend [...]
Of late, more and more schools are asking me to work with their students as well as their staff. My most popular workshop at the moment is Learning to Bounce where we explore resilience. Resilience is generally accepted to mean the ability to bounce back after adversity. However, inspired by the words of Dr Sue [...]
Kids are getting fatter. And whilst I certainly do not endorse kids being measured and weighed regularly at school, I do think they should be exercising regularly – every day actually. There were some interesting articles doing the rounds in the UK last week regarding the effectiveness of Physical Education lessons with regard to keeping [...]
You Only Live Once. Why not change the world? Dolly February 2013 As always, I’m confused about teen girls’ magazines approach to airbrushing and photo-shop (see here for a past example of my confusion). This issue contains an explanation of the ‘Retouch Free Zone’. “DOLLY is all about healthy body image – that’s why we [...]
It seems that the Internet is a constant source of stress for parents, particularly in regard to three main things. Telstra released a report last week that stated Aussie kids spent on average, two hours per day online, and this was relatively high when compared to the rest of the world. The amount of time [...]
The emerging youth mental health crisis makes it clear to mental health professionals, educators and researchers that for some reason our young people are having ever-greater difficulty controlling their mental and emotional content, their inner world. The situation reminds me of the iconic book by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.4 This book was published in 1963 and [...]
Of course we all know that relationships are central to teaching, and of course we all know that good relationships are pre-cursor to good teaching. But I wonder if we can clarify what a good Teacher/Student relationship looks like? In my experience good relationships in the classroom don’t depend on likeability as such. By that [...]
