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I joined Global Jaya School as the first ever GJS Dean of Students in July 2020. Although I had worked in the areas of inclusion, behaviour, counselling and pastoral support before, it was my first time being a Dean of Students.
As I began to prepare for my new role at Global Jaya, the entire world ground to a halt and life as we knew it was irrevocably changed; families were separated, shops were closing and schools shifted to online learning.
By the time I began my role at Global Jaya, the school was transitioning from online learning to home-based learning. As the school leadership realised that face to face school was not going to make an appearance any time soon, decisions were made about what our version of home-based learning could look like.
These pandemic times entailed a lot of reviewing, adjusting, reflecting and creating, in order to respond to the evolving situation, the changing local and global rules and guidelines, and the student needs at the time.
Internationally, the significant role that wellbeing plays in education suddenly took centre stage. As the Dean of Students, I was responsible for collaborating with the team to try to find various ways in which we could support the wellbeing of our students and teachers.
Together, we created weekly wellbeing vlogs where teachers filmed mini videos that shared their favourite, practical wellbeing strategy.
We attempted to bring our community together with a community dance video to BTS’ ‘Permission to Dance (you can watch the video here, in case you are interested).
We set up weekly wellbeing thermometer surveys in order to help us to be able to identify students who needed help. This also provided students with an accessible way to self-identify, for those students who knew that they were struggling but found asking for help directly to be too challenging.
We tried to find new and creative ways to socially connect students with one another as part of their school day. For example, we had an entire week of competitions for students to enter, with a Halloween theme.
The Counsellors in the Student Success Services department were particularly busy and inventive during this period of time. One of their initiatives was to create SSS ‘Chatterbox’ events where students could sign up and connect with other students around student requested themes.
Once we moved to Blended Learning and began the partial transition back to campus, the pastoral team looked for ways in which we could begin to reconnect our students and rebuild our community spirit.
One example of an initiative that tried to meet this objective was a campus-wide scavenger hunt that students completed in multi-year level teams.
Once fully back on campus, we continued to try to enhance wellbeing and the relationships between our students with events such as the community Bazaars, the dress up parades, Hawksfest and orientation day challenges.
Our journey together into how we can best support the wellbeing of our Global Jaya students, has been brought to a fitting conclusion that will coincide with my departure from this school.
Throughout this year, the counsellors and I have been involved in an action research project which has been a joint collaboration with the IB, RSI and the Harvard Flourishing Project. Throughout the year we have been learning about what the research says is best practice with regards to supporting wellbeing in schools.
Our participation in the action research project has resulted in Global Jaya’s very first Wellbeing Policy. The policy outlines; how we proactively support wellbeing, how we measure wellbeing, what wellbeing means to us, how wellbeing and inclusion are connected and how we intervene when we know that a student’s wellbeing is suffering.
Some of the ideas for how to support wellbeing that originated in our HBL wellbeing-explorations, have been incorporated into our policy. We know that teaching wellbeing strategies and looking for ways to build relationships in our community are both examples of approaches to supporting wellbeing that are backed up by research.
Whilst my time at Global Jaya is now over, the Wellbeing Policy provides a clear and documented pathway forward for how Global Jaya will continue to be a place of learning where all educators understand the role that wellbeing plays in education and where all community members take explicit and purposeful action in support of the realisation of our Wellbeing Policy.
The Wellbeing Policy is now available on our school’s website.
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