Hauora/Wellbeing for Students & Whānau

Why is Hauora important at Macleans Primary School?

Well-being is important at school because schools have an essential role to play in supporting students to make healthy lifestyle choices and understand the effects of their choices on their health and well-being. Childhood and adolescence is a critical period in the development of long-term attitudes towards personal well-being and lifestyle choices. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom help them build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their physical and mental health throughout their lives.

Macleans Primary endeavours to provide students with reliable information and deepen their understanding of the choices they face. There is a direct link between well-being and academic achievement and vice versa.

Macleans Primary: Resilience and GEM in 2022

In 2022, all children from Y1 to Y6 worked through a Resilience Journal’. The journal is a component of the resilient project, which you can read more about HERE.

Developing a Culture of Hauora

One of the challenges of trying to promote young people’s well-being at Macleans Primary school is the multi-faceted nature of well-being. There are a number of different types of well-being, all of which need to be promoted to some extent to create an overall sense of well-being in a person. So, it is not possible to improve students’ well-being at school through single interventions or activities. Rather it requires the development of a ‘culture’ of well-being throughout the whole school and the active involvement of the whole staff, teaching and non-teaching, which can be difficult to achieve. We work hard at Macleans Primary to develop a culture of Hauora.

What We Do and Aim For at Macleans Primary to Develop Hauora

• Weekly school values programme.
• School-wide daily mindful activities.
• Promotion of ‘pause, breath smile’ programme.
• Dedicated SENCO (Special Education Needs Coordinator) that focus on student well-being.
• Teachers Professional Learning and Development to recognise and support anxiety in children.
• Strong home-school partnership: we communicate early and as needed to parents if we feel there are concerns.
• Teacher(s) and senior leadership team leading ‘hauora’ programme.
• Budgets and resources to support student well-being.
• Open days - connecting with the community.
• Cool schools programme.
• Home-School partnership: meet the teacher, community events.
• PTA support for the school.
• House point system to promote values.
• Peer mediators programme.
• Staff wellbeing survey - follow through by incorporating more ‘NZ Citizen and History’ into our Curriculum which leads to a stronger sense of identification to who we are as NZ citizens.
• Identified children with anxiety in syndicates - teachers were given slideshow with techniques shared by Dr Miller on how to help anxious children.
• Staff meeting - RTLB lead discussion on how to help children with anxiety, interactive activity where we identified things we can do to improve teacher well being and we looked at how teachers need to fill their resilience tank to cope with the pressured environment we find ourselves.
• Resilience Project - Team leaders were introduced to the teacher and student books that we will be implementing next year, Ant, from the Resilience Project will contact the school once we are out of lockdown to start the introduction process.
• Team leaders - always start their meetings touching base with their teams about their wellbeing. Creating fun ways to lighten the pressure that remote learning can create. Hazel, Angelique and Team leaders are constantly checking on their teams to see if they need any support.
• Staff attended the wellbeing workshop in lockdown - they came back with great ideas that we have implemented to improve visibility of staff during these times: video notices to parents.
• Wellbeing programme for staff: awards, collaborative activities.
• All teams are connected.
• SLT focus on wellbeing of teams, support staff and teacher aides.
• Teachers have been encouraged to create work schedules during lockdown that include a balance of work, play and mindfulness activities.
• Magical moment time - teachers collect soft data by looking at emotional needs of children.

Cool Schools & Peer Mediators

We have peer mediators at Macleans. This is a role for Y5/Y6 students. Peer mediations a structured process that uses a neutral person, the mediator, to help those in conflict to come up with their own solutions for a win/win outcome. Mediation is a voluntary and confidential process to constructively manage conflict.

The Benefits of Cool Schools and Peer Mediation:

• Students act as third party between peers in conflict (disputants).
• Creates opportunities for disputants to do their own problem solving.
• Encourages empathetic listening.
• Uses effective questioning techniques to assist disputants to come to their own win/win solutions.
• Gets to the core of the problem quickly.
• Empowers students without teacher intervention.
• Develop a whole school-wide approach to dealing with conflict.
• Provide opportunities for students to demonstrate and apply positive behaviours.
• Reduce negative behaviours such as aggression, bullying or violence.
• Build student resilience.
• Empower students to co-create a friendly, respectful, and safe school climate.

Mindfulness Helping children to be mindful can have positive effects.

Being mindful can help to:

• Decrease stress and anxiety.
• Decrease over-thinking and aimless thinking.
• Encourage impulse control Improve memory, focus and attention.
• Improve overall well-being.
• Promote happiness and mental clarity.
• Improve sleep.
• Improve executive function.
• Increase compassion, acceptance and kindness.

At Macleans Primary we focus on being mindful throughout the week, at different times of the day. There are various mindful activities that teachers may use in their classrooms. For example, teachers may lead an activity whereby students are encouraged to ‘breathe in and breathe out as you reflect on your learning’.

Please click here for more information on support and resources available. This will give access to links of pages and the different agencies that will guide you through lockdown and any crisis you should encounter. 

Kia Kaha,

MPS