GAINING A POSITIVE OUTLOOK
MENTAL health professionals, including experts in depression from the Black Dog Institute, are expressing growing concern about the wellbeing of students making the transition from primary school to high school.
Benowa State High School meanwhile has taken a proactive approach and is about to begin its fourth year of a transitional wellbeing program for junior students.
The program, created especially for Benowa High by counsellor and wellbeing coach Nancy Grand, was introduced in 2015. Years 7, 8 and 9 students complete individual coaching sessions and attend motivational talks.
Principal Mark Rickard said he hoped the program would help new students ease their way into high school.
“The program has become so popular that it is now an ongoing feature of the junior school,” Mr Rickard said.
“We are all very pleased with this initiative. I have witnessed the difference this coaching has made in helping our younger students settle into high school confidently and happily. Considering our motto at Benowa High is ‘Many Pathways, No Limits’, it fits right in with that philosophy.
Mr Rickard said the program had already become an integral part of the school culture.
“While public schools have always had guidance officers and other support personnel on staff, the wellbeing coach role is an original initiative in that it has the proactive mission of guiding students to explore their individual strengths and confidently employ them at school,” he said.
“It will also help them in their future lives using solution-focused coaching techniques.
“The wellbeing coach works with the students individually and in groups to help them to identify their best hopes and achieve them while providing strategies to minimise stress and directing students with more serious mental health challenges to appropriate support services.”