Teachers told to influence wellbeing

SCHOOLS around the country have been encouraged to work together to address issues surrounding student wellbeing.
“Schools have to come together and come up with new ways to help our students,” Port Moresby Grammar School social service director Victor Piniau said during the second day of the Festival of Learning Conference in Port Moresby.
Piniau said schools could not continue to punish or suspend students but help them in ways that would influence them to change.
He said the session “establishing a whole school approach to student well-being” with international education officer Mike Thomason showed teachers could work corroboratively in creating a behavioural influence framework for students with behavioural issues.
Thomason’s session was based around the integration of wellbeing into schools looking at physical health, emotional health and mental health to support young people to be more successful.
They also looked at ways on how schools could start by taking small steps in improvement of what happened in the classrooms, across schools and between teachers and principals working together to help students in that regard.
“The teachers will be able to take away some ideas to take small achievable steps where they can say we have this issue that we’d like to do something about,” Thomason said.
“Hopefully, this session will give them an idea on how they can start.”
Participants in the session were able to discuss some areas of concerns in their schools and the country as a whole.
Technology was also noted as an area of concern which affected many students in schools today.