Measuring and reporting on student wellbeing and building positive relationships
SNIPPET:
We realised that we needed to be able to build out software to not only be able to allow every child to be seen, but to make sure that we were teaching valuable curriculum-aligned, evidence-based, trauma-informed skills.
JULIA:
Nikki Bonus is the founder and CEO of Life Skills Group and has over 20 years of deeply personal and professional experience in the development and delivery of social emotional literacy programs for individuals, organisations and most importantly, teachers and students.
Nikki’s work has helped give voice to more than 850 schools, connecting with 20,000 teachers and 500,000 students nationally, building a continuing evidence base of what works to measure, report and implement real improvements in social, emotional and physical literacy for school communities.
Nikki's intrinsic motivation is to show that no matter where you were born, no matter what family you were born into, anything is possible with the right education.
Join us as we explore student belonging and well-being for creating cohesive school communities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY:
Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and airways in which we are meeting and broadcasting today as we share our learning, we also pay respect to elders both past and present, as it is their knowledge and experiences that holds the key to the success of our future generations.
JULIA:
As you were saying, you you're feeling quite inspired to be here today in terms of opening up the conversation.
NIKKI:
Yeah, I think that you know what a wonderful opportunity to look at our youth and have conversations around areas that we don't get to have conversations very often, one of the things I feel incredibly inspired is, you know, we are now; we know that without a sense of belonging, we have big problems, big problems with our youth and you know.
Before it was academics, it was, you know, all of this; and now we're starting to really granularly look at the individuals and the things of influence on our young people. And as someone who's been in the industry for a really, really long time flying the flag for how do we really know how our young people are and what do they need?
I think it's a really interesting time in history right now. We've just come out of a massive rupture and there is a huge opportunity for repair now and I think that's what is inspiring me this morning to be sitting here with you two. That we get to not only have a conversation about it, but having a look at how we can all begin to; and you were talking before Kate around using our voices, we need everyone's voice to be at the table for this conversation. We need partnerships. We need to be working hand in hand. No one person, no one organisation can tackle the largeness of what's in front of us for our youth today.
KATE:
What are some of your biggest concerns when it comes to our youth and their well-being and their resilience at the moment?
NIKKI:
That's a really big question.
KATE:
Yes, it is.
NIKKI:
That's OK. I think you know. I'm probably gonna chunk that down a little bit. I think one of the largest concerns and one of the biggest areas of concern is how do we really know how our young people are.
Our traditional methods of measuring well-being or even measuring their own social emotional learning has been predominantly through attendance, behaviour incidents and academics. We use ad hoc anonymous surveys, occasionally through the systems to know how our young people are. And yet we have not had a definitive how can we be preventative rather than reactive?
So we're seeing a massive increase in school refusal anxiety, social skills, young people not feeling like they have no sense of belonging. They're not going to school and feeling part of. They haven't got their friendship groups anyway, and we don't need to unpack the why, because we've had such a disruption, you know, disrupted period of time.
But that ability to know what they need rather than building out a scope and sequence of a tick, tick, tick and I think that's probably the largest thing that we you know particularly here in Australia and New Zealand and even I've just got back from overseas. How are we responding to the needs of individual schools, cohorts, students? And then across the board and how are we measuring that and what data are we actually using to inform what they need?
And I think that's a shift that we've been working on, and we've really noticed that there is a shift. And it's very new and then also what are those core competencies that really need to be taught like how do we come back to the development of a young person and what they really need?
KATE:
You mentioned some of these life skills. What are some of these life skills that you think are really important for schools to focus on or to consider even?
NIKKI:
I probably lean back into the social and emotional learning framework and I think. You know, first and foremost, we need to start with self-awareness. And that's not only for our students, but also for our educators and our families as well. I think if we look at the development of a young, a young person coming say, start writing foundation, kindergarten. Really getting that right, being able to teach the emotional literacy, self regulation, those base skills so that we're giving them the confidence, the ability to be able to communicate and the language to be able to communicate.
And then you know within that, there's this very large piece around co-regulation. So it's a two way street. We've got you know our young people needing those foundational skills and they might not be getting them at home also you know I'm a mother too, being able to teach emotional literacy that wasn't taught to me at home. It wasn't taught to me at school when I was growing up.
We didn't know the science behind it, we didn't know the neuroscience behind it. It's not that we as families are letting our children down. It's just that we didn't know. You don't know what you don't know.
But I think getting the ability to be able to teach a young person. To identify their emotions, to have the confidence to be able to speak about them. To be able to also work within a system of co-regulation to be able to learn how to self soothe because all of these things and coming back to your question, if we can build healthy, connected, trusting relationships. And I always say that everything about schools is about relationships, relationships and if we can get that piece right. And you ask me what I think. I’m standing on a soapbox right now.
I love the Dan Siegel model of his four Ss. You know, every young person is safe, safe, they feel safe and not just in physical safety, but they've got that emotional, psychological safety. If we can really bring that into the room. Not only do they feel secure. They're also being able to self-soothe themselves and there's this ability for when we have safety and we have security and we can self soothe. The ability for that young person to have the scaffolding to know when to speak up when something's not going right, and I think that is an amazing opportunity.
Schools and stability are not working hand in hand at the moment. There's a lot of teacher shortage and I think having processes that are wrapped around schools that give visibility in real time of how our young people are and what they need, we need to lean on processes to also reduce teacher workload and also support schools so that they've got rich valuable data that's actionable. And one of the things that I suppose that we hear really strongly is we don't want more data for data's sake. We want something that is going to inform how we create safety and security within our schools rather than another thing we just have to survive.
JULIA:
So going back to the very beginning. For those that don't know about your amazing organisation, can you just give us a little bit of history behind the Life Skills Group and how that came about?
NIKKI:
Yeah, sure.
I think I might just share a story if that's OK.
You know, we're all in education and I'm. Sure, we've all had this. But when I was younger I knew this incredible young boy and he loved animals. He loved playing with his tennis ball against the wall and he was really, really, really, really quiet. And he was one of those students in primary school that was never in trouble. Never kind of been pulled into a principal's office. And yet he came from an unsafe home, and he was parentified. And there was a lot happening, but no one noticed.
He didn't feel that he fitted in and he found a way to self soothe himself through unhealthy behaviour in high school, which led him into finding a group of people and running with a group of people and ended up using drugs and alcohol to self soothe his discomfort, and unfortunately, by the time he was in his 20s, he had taken his life. The really tragic part of that story is that was my brother.
And to me, when I look at that, I was sort of the opposite. I was the really academic child, yet same environment, just different ways of dealing with my fracturing of how I fitted in within the school environment, which I didn’t. And yet, by high school, what ended up happening was I was consistently suspended and expelled, and yet no one really stopped and asked me what was going on. And no one really got underneath the behaviour of.
And by no means my saying that I was easy. It's incredibly complex, but I came from a really complex environment. And where this led me was, I looked down the barrel of my life and I looked down the barrel of my family and the intergenerational trauma, and I could see the path that was ahead of me unless I did something differently and for me, there was this initially this very, very selfish part of me that I needed to prove that I wasn't going to follow the same path. I wanted to really prove out that no matter where you were born, no matter what happened to you, anything was possible.
So starting that into my career was really around, how do I bring what was perceived as soft skills into mainstream education? And it was really back then, it was very much peace, love and mung beans, you know, but like in like in all seriousness, it was. People were kind of, they would giggle at me. You know, I'd present at principles conferences or I'd be presenting, you know, bits of places and people would sort of ‘There, there me dear.’ And yet, you know, I stuck to it because I looked at. I look at my life today and I've had to work really, really hard. And I've had. To work hard on my own skills and tools. And it's you. Know it's hasn't just been a tap me on the head and I've got this amazing self-awareness and you know it's been an ongoing process and it's been a lot of work.
But the thing. That I really, really loved is probably,12 to 13 years ago, the evolution of neuroscience and neuroplasticity and what we now know about brain science has solidified that well-being is a trainable skill, and that has led to initially when we were rolling out programs in schools to teach positive relationships, communication, self-regulation, emotional literacy.
It led to this ability to from working hand in hand with schools, to look at schools often and not.
There's no judgment here, but schools often grasp at programs in a reactive measure to what they're seeing in front of them. And yet they'll quickly get rid of a program as well if there's another issue that pops up.
And what we noticed was over sort of 12 years, 13 years of working with schools and we were working about 850 schools at the time. So we're getting really a lot of valuable feedback and data was no one was measuring the efficacy of what they were bringing in and the other part that we realized is there was no. Apart from, say, you know, some schools might be doing PBL, some schools and looking at their attendance and behaviour incidences, they were still staying in that reactive, reactive, reactive.
And working hand in hand with our communities, we realised that we needed to be able to build out software to not only be able to allow every child to be seen, but to make sure that we were teaching valuable curriculum, aligned evidence-based, trauma-informed skills that were removing teacher workload but giving visibility to the teachers and helping them to identify. What are we seeing? How are we using this longitudinal data to be able to understand what's happening in our community of schools or individual schools or classrooms? It's a very long answer to the evolution of where we are, but that's sort of what motivated me.
JULIA:
My goodness. Thank you. That was a really powerful story. And as we know that storytelling is the most effective way to support that learning journey for people and to form those connections. So thank you so much.
JULIA:
In terms of that journey and collecting that data. Can you unpack for us an example of a of a school that's actually used that data and we've seen some incredible growth that's happened in terms of building a beautiful resilience, respectful school community, not only for the teachers but for the students as well.
NIKKI:
Yeah, absolutely. I've got quite a few that jumped to mind, but one of the ones that jumped out for me and we did a case study and we've been working quite closely. With them for the last five years is they've had a decrease of disruption, suspension and behaviour incidences of 78%.
And to me, that's like that's a large. That's huge. This is not real. I know it's full and this is not just. You know there what I would like to say to that point is it's not just us, you know well-being the ability to see a young person, that's, you know. How we measure them along all these things? There's, it's multifaceted.
But the big thing that leads school that I'm thinking of right now is first and foremost was their leadership commitment to what they were doing and they committed for a minimum of three years. You know that. And I think that's the big part. When we look at. Often it's a scattergun approach because. So much is happening in schools and it's colour. How do we prioritise needs and they went right back to what is our baseline well-being here.
And so they started using our platform not only to begin to teach those based skills of emotional literacy, self-regulation , but beyond that using the data not only in their stage meetings every single week, but also identifying. Students of concern in the state meetings every week and the beautiful thing about our software is it does the heavy lifting for executives and principals and teachers, so they have to go sort of delving and diving into the data. It lifts it up.
But they created a habit that it was a non-negotiable and I love their leadership style. They explained why they were doing it. They knew they had a very colourful community.
And then they were using instead of setting a scope and sequence of oh, we're going to do this for, well-being, or we're going to do this, character streams or whatever term by term that evaluate stage by stage what they were seeing and also triangulating the data with their behavioral attendance. All the things that you know the other valuable data as well.
But they were in that triangulation. They were able to move from reactive to proactive. And they were also able to then be able to measure the success of programs or what they were implementing right down to even their young people at your own behavior management plans and things. So individual students, cohort stage, and the whole school.
The big thing that I'd say is it takes time, you know, in terms of that commitment. And I always say it's a minimum of three years. But when we look at changing and you know we're having a culture change here, a culture shift. That takes 6 years really. You know, and that's kind. Of six to seven years.
But it needs a leadership decision and it needs it needs a school to have that ability to go every day matters and how our young people are everyday matters as well.
And just, I suppose, one story that. When you asked me, I just, I think it's not touching on an individual student had this beautiful he now come through from a deputy principal who said. We had this young person. Who you know normally. Would do our there were zones of regulation. School. And they do. Their little graphs and all the. Rest of it. But they didn't have. They weren't able to sort. Of look at data and be able to. Have a look across a week or two weeks or three weeks.
And they said they had this young person who was checking in sad and lonely, sad and lonely and sad and lonely constantly. And his teacher was really kind of because they were able to see this young child was a child that might have needed some extra assistance. This deputy principal went Oh my. Gosh this. Is a new. This is a child that actually would probably wouldn't have thought of that well, we wouldn't have thought of because they looked well adjusted.
They were doing all the things, we had these programs, but we weren't actually able to lift up and actually see that individual student who was really struggling. And they were able to wrap not only a really important conversation and be able to engage with that young person, but they were also able to do something really quickly to support and within three weeks that young child was happy and calm and functioning. And I think I just. Used that just as one little.
JULIA:
And it just circles back to the voice. It actually provided a voice and a platform for potentially someone, a student, that was voiceless in a way, not, not by design. And to actually prop that up and within moments. You know the journey shifted quite profoundly. That's huge.
JULIA:
In terms of you mentioning the student and saying sad and lonely, can you just unpack that a bit more in terms of the interface of the actual software. What does that look like? How does that kind of practically speaking, you know for a student or a school?
NIKKI:
I think that's a really good question. And I think I just kind of wanna dovetail it back into a comment that you made. Everything is student led and it's all about empowering student voice and this is the really, you know, particularly from our background as I mentioned.
Before working deeply, hand in hand with schools, the last thing we wanted was teachers to have to input something or to have to fill something out.
So the actual interface looks like. The accessibility to access it can be through an iPad. It can be through a laptop, it can be on an Interactive Whiteboard and it takes seconds. It literally is the young. People walk up.
It's age appropriate and the platform is actually scaffolded through a child's development of their emotional literacy and their social emotional learning. So a kindergartens interface will look really, really different to, say, year eight or a learning support interface will look really different to a mainstream. So the young people will come up, they'll register how they're feeling and why they're feeling that way. There's different digital or visual assets that schools can also customise and it is fully customisable as well.
Particularly in a class of 2630 students, we can have different visuals as well. So they're less complex for the young people, so we have more facial expressions so that they're. Actually able to look at them. Rather than read words or use emojis and. What we found was also involving them in. The the diversity and the different. The different ways that they wanted to interact.
Part of that was also providing it's not just there's all these words around having check-in tools like I think. It's it needs to teach something and it needs to. It's not just checking in, it's actually about really deeply, explicitly continuous. Really teaching. How do we identify emotions and also how do we begin to self-regulate it? And I think with that interface in that instance, it's one thing to know how a young person is. But what we've also made sure we do is we have responsive or adaptive lessons that can be there.
And to your question. We've used a whole lot of different learning designs to be able to make sure that we encapsulate not only yeah, new arrivals, but also learning support within a mainstream class, which is a really big piece for me, particularly as a mother of a child with very high needs, we've had a very big learning support part and also to be able to allow the teacher to also be able to customise and adapt the classes as well.
KATE:
Amazing. Excellent. Love it.
JULIA:
I really love how that process opens the conversation, and it's not about the US and them, it's actually let's work on this together. We have to. It's the only way, you know, true collaboration and partnership.
KATE:
I love that it's. A safe way that young people are self-identifying. They're sharing with you what they're ready to, and then it opens a safe way to have, your capacity to have a safe conversation and then from there all sorts of initiatives and programs can bloom from this and it's and then having some of the students involved in the design of someof them, I think. That would be amazing. So there's a. Lot of possibility with this.
But I also. Love the fact that we're talking in our project a lot about vulnerable young people who might be vulnerable to particular narratives or ideologies, and often from research.
People who don't identify that young person was engaging in a party or feeling a particular way until much later, and it's often. We've heard you know that it is. This is the last child I would have. The last student that I would have expected.
So being able to safeguard and catch young people are feeling isolated or feeling lonely or that they're not part of a peer group that's so important in terms of safeguarding young people from harmful types of grooming or types of.
JULIA:
And maladaptive coping mechanisms.
KATE:
You know correct. Yeah, catching them out because that's often, you know, if we could ever go back and you know, you know it's you. Know this is.
What a great tool to help support catching and safeguarding those young people.
NIKKI:
And I think the word safeguarding is really, you know, that's a critical word here. But the majority and I think about family units. So you talked on research. If there's a young person who's struggling in a family unit or they're unwell, all energy goes to that one and the other one is kind of too along. When you take that model into a score model, it's that top percent that you know that top tier, that's getting a lot of energy, it's squeaky wheel. It's so much resources. Are wrapped around them. And more, you know, I think if I had a dollar for every time we're here. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea what was happening in our school. Because we just didn't know because we were dealing with exactly like what you were saying. The beautiful, colourful, resilient, adaptive little people who found a really interesting way to get their needs met.
Speaker
Yes, yes.
NIKKI:
I was one of them so, but in a very maladaptive, not very great way. But they take so much of our energy. And then it's like. What about the other 93 percent? 95% of our school and? That's where this model shifts it.
You know, as we all know, we might be travelling really, really, really, really well and then something happens and we're not coping so well and we need extra support, but we're able to keep an eye on every single child.
I keep saying, you know, let's ensure that no child falls through the gap. So you've got the quiet. You know, and often you know. If there is large trauma as well suppression, and also that you know, as I mentioned right at the beginning, often the overachieving looking great, never wanting to get, you know, not wanting to be seen or in the sight of anyone's compliance.
But often underneath complaints so much so overtime, when they've got safety and they've got that security and they feel that they can use their voice and they've got agency, then they will be able to express and that's where you know again time happens.
JULIA:
Can I kind of flip it around? Sorry, this might not be.
I'm just thinking that. School cultures, you know, it impacts on not only the students and families. The teachers in particular and is, you know, if we play at our teachers, if they're not feeling culturally safe and and their well beings impacted. How does that influence the dynamics in the classroom, and is there something through this process, a bit of tandem learning opportunities? Because once again it is an ecosystem, yeah.
NIKKI:
And I. Think you know? To your question. And going right back to the beginning, it is that Co regulation piece and. I was actually just presenting last night and I was saying, you know, a lot of people look at me when we start teaching, you know, how do we help, you know, how do we support teaching, you know, emotional literacy and self-regulation, all these skills.
And they're often looking at me the same way that I looked at this at the beginning of like. We didn't get this when we were younger. So how are we going to start doing this it is. You're working together. You're both growing together and the really, really beautiful part is it gives. You know teachers well-being is critical to student well-being, but when there's a partnership between hey, we're learning this together, we're learning how to do this together and when that modeling of doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't, you know, emotions are just data. It's being able to identify it.
And when we can bring that level to our, you know, of transparency and also vulnerability to our young people, they can navigate together, but I think they're really, really big thing. Around teachers well-being as well.
How do we support the education around? Like how do I? How do I am? How can I develop my own presence? You know, my own ability. For focused attention to be in the classroom and this work really brings that about anyway, because suddenly we're engaging, we're watching, we're looking at young people.
And it is a reflective practice as. Well, so we do take each other along on a journey and our young people are our greatest teachers. You know, when I think about. I think about. This was back when I was teaching, and I remember asking. Saying, you know, emotions are they're biologically based. Reactions and they. Were like, what's that? And like in our bodies? Was like, how are you feeling?
This beautiful young boy, he said, I feel like a freshly cut orange and like this like 12 years ago. But what I loved about that was, he reminded me of sensation and being able to locate that in my body and that joy and. It is that that partnership.
JULIA:
Thank you so.
KATE:
Well, I wanted to ask one question. I actually have done your online webinars. I know you do and as a as both a teacher and a mother, I found them really useful with this really practical skills. So if some of the teachers here listening today. Wanna get in touch? With you and they wanna kind of. Find out more. What's the best way for them to do that?
NIKKI:
Thanks, Kate. Pop over. So every webinar that we run is actually on replay. So they're all free. There's lots of resources there. You can rewatch them, you can share them, you can use them in your staff meetings if you choose to, and just head over to our website lifeskillsgroup.com.au.
There's also free trials as well. So if your school is interested, we also have the ability to work with you and your leadership team to come in and do some consulting and to do an implementation plan. And a trial. But we are continuously always running webinars as well. So we run them generally every two to three weeks.
What we recognise too with those and thank you so much for that feedback, what we recognised is often schools, they're busy places, but they're so busy that we don't have learnings from one school to another. So our commitment to the space is. What are you doing? Because there's some incredible work that's happening over here. How can we share that? And we'll often have different schools sharing what they're doing from very different. Areas and different demographics of what they're doing so that we can build community and sharing and learning and knowledge sharing. And we've had an amazing community that just continues to keep growing through those webinars of really practical things that they can bring in. And there's a huge amount of resources. And blogs that are regularly updated as well.
JULIA:
Sounds like a fabulous community of practice. That's amazing. Well done. You’re really inspiring.
KATE:
It's always reassuring to know that we're not alone, we're all going through this and you can find someone who's got a similar experience to you, and then it's. And it's also great. Sometimes, you know, for teachers on this journey who are looking f or more information or, you know, considering. What's out there? I think it's. Really, it's a great that.
Those resources are great. So thank you. So. Much for providing them, you know, for for our communities.
JULIA:
Exactly. And making it so tangible and accessible as well, I think it's just amazing and we really hope that this journey can continue for many, many schools, students, teachers, families and the broader community. Yeah, thank you.
NIKKI:
And thank you for the work that you two general your team does.
JULIA:
Thank you. Thanks so much.
Thank you for listening to this episode. For further information on the AIS NSW Community Cohesion Podcast series and project or any of our guests, please see our show notes.
