"Tell them from me"

From Claire Melloy – Assistant Principal, Students

Students from Years 7–11 recently participated in the Tell Them From Me survey. Designed by the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, this survey focuses on student engagement and wellbeing. The survey covers all areas of the student experience from the classroom to curriculum, co-curricular involvement and relationships (peers, staff and other supports). One of the highlights of the survey findings was that the vast majority of our students feel a sense of having positive relationships, and feel they have someone they can go to for help if they need it.

The survey allows us to design interventions based on quantifiable evidence, such as pinpoint opportunities, to improve equity by evaluating the experiences of vulnerable students. It provides insights to help inform and guide our school planning and identify school improvement initiatives.

We consider student engagement an important focus for improving outcomes for our students.

Student engagement is “… a disposition towards learning, working with others, and functioning in a social institution.” (Willms, 2003). It includes students’ sense of belonging at school, the extent to which they value school outcomes, and their psychological investment in learning. Measures of these aspects of engagement can be classified as social engagement, institutional engagement, and intellectual engagement.

For each aspect of engagement, students were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements, such as "I get along well with others at school." The diagram above shows the range of indicators for student engagement. Every day we see examples of these in various contexts across the college, from the playground, to performing arts, homework hub, sport, and the classroom.

In the survey, we gave students a range of workshop/presentation topics that may be useful to them. Improving concentration was the most requested workshop, for the second year in a row.

It may be useful for carers to know that we will be talking to students about the following points, and you may like to reinforce them at home.

It is important to remember that:

• our attention is a limited cognitive resource
• our emotion and cognition are inseparable
• our emotions can have significant impacts on our cognition.
  

Here is a helpful video that explains how the brain works under stress and anxiety, it is from the site:
https://kidshelpline.com.au/teens/issues/why-cant-i-focus-school

Steps to improve attention and concentration

1. Take time to ensure the basics are being taken care of, such as sleep, healthy eating and exercise. Meaningful connection to others and balancing screen time is also important.
2. Goal setting – having a realistic plan or schedule provides a way of staying on task when our brain starts to drift.
3. Take breaks – it is believed that fatigue can be mental rather than physical, and that doing the same thing for long periods can have diminishing returns. Removing our mind from the work for a brief period can counter this effect, particularly when we engage with nature or other people.
   
4. Try to be in the present – mindfulness works for many people and can help reset the brain. It is a form of brain training that can increase attention and concentration. Smiling Mind is a not-for-profit web and app-based meditation program developed by psychologists and educators to help bring mindfulness into your life: https://www.smilingmind.com.au/
   
5. Do one thing at a time – our brain finds it hard to multi-task and we are usually less effective at these times. So, it might be time to put down the mobile phone and turn off the TV at times when high levels of focus are needed.
   
6. Adjust schedules – productivity can fluctuate and sometimes one hour of focussed work can be the same as two hours of distracted work. If we know we do our best work in the morning, we could choose activities that require a higher cognitive load to be done earlier in the day. It is not ideal to start intensive work at a time when we have low cognitive resources e.g. leading up to bedtime.

Screen time
We get a lot of requests from carers about helping their young person manage screen time. This recent edition of SchoolTV may help:
https://radford.act.schooltv.me/newsletter/managing-screen-time

Discussing traumatic world events
Several families have also asked about how to talk to their young person about recent world events. The following may help:

Reach Out:
Dealing with bad world news
https://au.reachout.com/articles/dealing-with-bad-world-news

Beyond Blue:
Talking about traumatic events

https://healthyfamilies.beyondblue.org.au/healthy-homes/loss-and-grief/talking-about-traumatic-news-events

References:
Willms, J. D. (2003). Student engagement at school: A sense of belonging and participation. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.