After The Fires

Focusing on emotional wellbeing after region wide stress

Simon Adkins and Bron Harding, Wairakei School, Christchurch, NZ

This presentation is a summary of our school’s focus on emotional wellbeing in children following a series of serious earthquakes and, more recently, a violent mosque attack.

Expert advice at the time warned of emotional pressures over many years following traumatic events such as these. This became evident in what was then observed in the children.

As well as thoughts and anxiety as a result of the events, there were also familial pressures. Travel times, displacement, work changes and income stress all influenced emotional and childhood development. This could be seen in achievement data, attendance data, behaviour data and hauora/wellbeing data.

In many cases these observations could be understood as gaps in Maslow’s Hierarchy. We are endeavoring to address the children’s needs, prioritised from the bottom of the hierarchy.

Our solution-based approaches included a breakfast club, an Enviro teacher, wellbeing, a localized behaviour curriculum, connections to other agencies, culturally strengthening actions, community activities and a holistic view of individuals and their families.

The approaches have been focused on promoting school readiness through emotional regulation, participating and attending to the learning. A further challenge underlying our work was the role that the changing pace of technology, learning environments and pedagogy has. Children do not come to school to just learn curriculum subjects anymore.

See Simon Adkins and Bron Harding from Wairakei School, Christchurch, NZ at this years Positive Schools Conferences www.PositiveSchools.com.au

WA (13),14,15 May

QLD (20),21, 22 May

VIC (27), 28, 29 May

NSW (3) 4, 5 June