Supporting Well-Being in Education

Can you please introduce yourself?

Hi, I’m Susannah Fowler, the principal at The Gardens School in South Auckland, New Zealand. We’re a school of around 640 learners from year 1 to year 8. It’s a fully collaborative, highly digital public school that provides an innovative learning environment.

Well‑being is a big topic these days. Can you please share your ideas about the need for well‑being in education?

Prior to the COVID‑19 pandemic, we noticed our year 7 and 8 students had an increasing number of mental health issues: online bullying, depression, self injury, and parents coming to see us about kids in crisis mode. I realized that our school hadn’t given these students strategies to deal with challenges they were facing.

That’s when I knew we had to make well‑being a central focus for the whole school, rather than leaving it all to the classroom teachers. Kids can’t focus on learning if they’re feeling anxious or worried. So in 2019, I established our P.E. teacher at the time, Lisa Cosford, as our well‑being educator. She was already an adult that students trusted, so she was a great fit. She quickly proposed and designed a new dedicated well‑being program, which she now runs.

What is the well‑being program and how is it integrated in your school?

It’s really hard to give a classroom teacher a well‑being pack and tell them, “Do well‑being with your kids.”

Now, we’ve created communication channels and trained teachers and students on how to use them. Students can walk up to dedicated iPads in the classroom to message Lisa if they need to talk with her; the teachers and I are notified too. Teachers can immediately send Lisa or me a message on their device if they need support and then they can quickly get back to the business of teaching their kids. With well‑being at the center of the school, it becomes an ethos, a cultural thing, more than just a program.

Lisa takes the students to a space we designated for student well‑being called the Zen Den. They can also drop in to the space anytime if they’re feeling anxious during school. It’s located at the center of our school so it’s visible to all students.

How is the Zen Den set up to support well‑being?

The Zen Den is a calm space that has crafts, games, a piano, and places where kids can rest if they feel overwhelmed. Lisa facilitates activities to help students express themselves, like through art or other hobbies. The space is enhanced by the technology the kids have available to them, like being able to make music on GarageBand. In fact, a 9‑year old student recently performed a GarageBand song at our school talent show that she created in the Zen Den about needing to be herself. It was really cool.

In particular since the pandemic lockdowns, kids are able to forge connections using technology — making videos on iPad or making content they’ll share with a teacher or each other. By having Lisa as a dedicated teacher and these well‑being resources available to students of all grade levels, we’ve made sure that well‑being is as important as any other curriculum area in the school. We hope these skills are something the students will remember later if they’re in a crisis situation.

What impact have you seen as a result of your well‑being initiatives?

The biggest measure of success is that the number of issues kids have on the playground at lunchtime has dropped off markedly. Students are occasionally still sent to the office, but the reasons are much milder than before implementing the Zen Den.

When parents come to meet about their children’s well‑being, I’m able to share clear next steps at school. Usually the next steps are simple — like check‑ins and formal meetings with the well‑being team — but for a parent, it’s comforting to know that their children have built‑in support. Having a well‑being team and space is really empowering for our school and community. To maintain this focus on well‑being has required a lot of energy, and for our entire staff to be on the same page. But it’s easier for teachers to feel connected if they know our team has their back. Despite the effort this takes, I think it’s something any school could replicate because we’re doing it here.

What advice would you give to leaders who want to take the first step in prioritizing well‑being?

It’s helpful to remember that kids are more than just silos you pour education into. There’s a New Zealand Maori educational concept which is, “Know me before you teach me.” A teacher needs to understand the whole child first before understanding how to teach them. Our school philosophy is to wrap around each child by actually knowing them and acknowledging their culture and family.

If I could give leaders advice, I would say: Make a start. Even if your start has to be adjusted along the way, waiting won’t help anyone. We have such a short time with these kids and we can do something today that might support them later on in their life. So, do something.

Can you please introduce yourself?

Hello, I’m Marie Marino, Dean of Thomas Jefferson College of Nursing. In my career I’ve maintained a parallel clinical and academic track. In my clinical career, I was in forensic nursing evaluating cases of child abuse and neglect. As an academic, I began my career at Stony Brook University. I left there 4 and a half years ago to come to Philadelphia to assume the Deanship of the Jefferson College of Nursing.

Thomas Jefferson University runs Jefferson Health, a health system of 18 hospitals, which include some world‑renowned rehabilitation centers. Our faculty and staff of 100 serves our 1,500 undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students.

How do you think about the need to support student well‑being in education? What is the role of technology in solving this need?

Well‑being is essential to thriving in an academic environment, and the need to support student well‑being has never been higher. Student well‑being transcends every strata of academic life including academic achievement, peer relationships, mental and emotional health, and important life decisions. I have worked in child advocacy for the entirety of my career, so the well‑being of children and young adults has always been a priority of mine. But it wasn’t until the COVID‑19 pandemic I witnessed firsthand the impact of deteriorating well‑being on a student’s academic performance and ability to thrive.

To me, technology is part of the big picture of student well‑being because well‑being is tied to their proficiency with technological devices and tools. And this is the first time where the educator is not as technologically skilled as the student. In order to have your students be prepared upon graduation, they have to be tech‑proficient, and that can be difficult for faculty to keep up with. So when I introduced 1‑1 iPad, we were trying to teach students while also teaching faculty how to use the device and how to access student resources with their devices.

How did you approach supporting student well‑being through technology?

First we just identified students with early warning signs, like students who weren’t showing up consistently. We were keeping the faculty abreast about available student resources and instigated some wellness checks.

But since then, we have been fortunate to implement multiple technological solutions that support student well‑being. One of them is Jefferson College of Nursing’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, TJae, co‑developed with our vendor‑partner, AI Collaborator.

Students no longer need to wait for humans to answer questions. We built a resource to fit right into their daily lives — students can use their phones to ask TJae questions and receive instantaneous responses. For example, TJae can tell students how to access an academic resource or how to connect with university services like the counseling center. Students have developed a shared camaraderie with TJae and enjoy casual chatting as they would with a classmate. They make jokes, share compliments, and get excited when they receive positive feedback from TJae. If TJae doesn’t know an answer, students have the option of connecting with a human.

Administration and faculty can also push questions and surveys out to students through TJae, like exam prep questions or surveys assessing burnout or daily feelings. Sometimes students can only do what’s right in front of them, and they’re not thinking about down the road, so TJae is a tool for us to help them alleviate stress and give them the right resources at the right time. TJae doesn’t replace human connection; it empowers students to connect to any resource, including humans.

In addition to supporting students’ day‑to‑day well‑being, we also train students on handling the trauma informed environments that a nurse might face. We use virtual reality (VR) to simulate situations like workplace violence or deteriorating patients via iPad and VR headsets. On the horizon, we are awaiting a virtual reality room, which will expose groups of students to traumatic scenarios, driven through iPad‑supported technologies. This provides opportunities to work through potential challenges they may face in the real environment of patient care. And by simulating these events through technology, we enable faculty to debrief and support students’ emotional well‑being in a safe space.

Not all of the processes we’ve implemented to support student well‑being are high‑tech. We also provide support through our Chief Compassion Officer, Maggie, who is a trained Labrador Retriever service dog!

What impact have you seen as a result of your well‑being initiatives?

In terms of impact, our students have an opt‑in rate of 86% with TJae, and 52% of the active user population messaged TJae throughout the fall semester. It’s great using TJae on an iPhone to engage students directly because, with this channel, we can also do things like send out positive affirmations. It keeps students on a motivated and positive pathway, and for some students these can be the only words of affirmation they hear each day.

The impact is also broader. It’s important to have our students be aware of where well‑being resources are and take ownership of their own well‑being because we want them to translate this habit to their patients. That’s why we say, “Don’t smoke if you’re a nurse, because you want to discourage patients from smoking.” With emphasizing the importance of well‑being and repeating positive affirmations, it’s the same — you’re teaching them the knowledge, skills, and behaviors of the profession that you’re preparing them for and that they will pass to their patients. And you’re also teaching them to be a lifelong learner and hopefully to have the wellness skills to be a productive and healthy citizen.

What advice would you give to leaders who want to take the first step in prioritizing well‑being?

We often hear that we need to unplug to increase wellness. I would challenge that. I believe that technology plays a pivotal role in improving well‑being among students. By using technology, we can assess mental and emotional health and highlight well‑being resources. Decreased student engagement alone, tracked digitally or in person, can indicate mental or physical stress and can serve as stimulus to increase efforts.

So the first step in protecting, preserving, and enhancing student well‑being is to understand its current state. By inquiring about the well‑being of your students, you are already demonstrating the high priority you are placing on their ability to thrive, perform, and succeed.