WE Well-being helps local students develop resilience, altruism and empathy
New mental wellness resources now offered free to educators across Canada
More than ever before, Canadian classrooms are challenging and stressful places for both students and their teachers—and that’s altering not only how young people learn, but also the tools they need to build everything from compassion and resilience to coping skills and mental wellness.
This is why WE Charity has expanded its educational resources to include WE Well-being, which is beginning its second year of implementation in schools across Canada and the U.S.
“Mental health has never been more critical to the educators we work with,” says Carrie Patterson, chief operations director with WE Charity and the head of WE Schools, which works with educators in 7,000 schools nationwide.
She says WE Well-being provides educators with easy-to-implement resources, including a toolkit with lesson plans that are deeply rooted in evidence-based practice and neuroscience. At the program’s core is social and emotional learning, which encourages students to focus on nurturing five key qualities: gratitude, empathy, compassion, altruism and resilience.
“We create a safe space for students to talk about mental well-being, encouraging social and emotional learning, mindfulness and simple daily actions,” says Patterson.
The program was made possible through the generous support of founding partner, The Erika Legacy Foundation. Created in honour of Erika Elkington, a young woman who died by suicide one month before her 30th birthday, the foundation is dedicated to promoting mental health and providing support for suicide prevention programs. “Erika was always there to help others,” says her father, Bill Elkington. “We can’t change what happened, but we can help make sure it doesn’t happen to others.”
WE Charity’s main focus in schools has been on academic achievement, primarily through “service-learning”— getting youth involved in volunteering or community work that provides a valuable service and has an educational component. But in recent years more of the teachers in the WE network have identified mental-health concerns.
The WE Well-being pilot was initiated in 2018 with students in Grades 4 to 6 at 150 schools across the United States and Canada, including the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. This pilot was a preamble to expanding to young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years, a group who has a higher risk of experiencing mental health issues, according to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Programming will expand to include students in Kindergarten to Grade 12 and will focus on developing students’ social and emotional learning through service-learning approaches to creating a caring school environment, and provide support for high school students to understand mental health language and strategies to optimize their mental well-being through nutrition, sleep, movement, healthy relationships and helping others.
A recent study by Ontario’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) found that 34 per cent of students in Grades 7 through 12 in that province reported psychological distress in 2015, up from 24 per cent just two years prior. CAMH says of the one in five people who experience mental health or addiction issues, 70 per cent will have their onset during childhood or adolescence. Yet the demand for child and youth mental health support far exceeds the ability of current clinical, community-based and school district response systems.
The teachers who brought the pilot program into their classroom say the need for such resources has never been greater.
Tobey Daniels, a Grade 5 teacher at Crossfield Elementary School, located 43 kilometres north of Calgary, is a strong believer in the importance of building compassion, empathy and mindfulness into the school curriculum. This is why she was so excited to have the opportunity to participate in WE Well-being’s pilot program.
With over 20 years teaching experience, Daniels says the need for integrating resources to support students’ mental well-being has never been greater. “Everything in their lives seems to be going so quickly. They’re having to grow up faster than they’re supposed to,” says Daniels.
She says what’s so great about the WE Well-being program is that “it’s related to stuff that we do and talk about on a daily basis—community, empathy, compassion and being grateful—so it isn’t hard to weave it into the regular school curriculum.”
Daniels and other educators who participated in the WE Well-being pilot program reported that increased empathy, self-awareness, leadership and improved self-image and confidence were the top areas of growth they saw in their students. The majority also said they’ve used the strategies they learned to manage their own stress and/ or promote their own well-being.
Students at Uniacke District School in Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia, are learning lessons that go beyond the standard academic curriculum. They’re being taught techniques that can help support their mental wellness.
Says teacher Judy MacDonald, “There’s a lot of pressure on kids today—what with new technology and what they see in the media—to grow old before their time. As teachers, we want to provide them with something that can help alleviate some of their stress.”
MacDonald values the WE Well-being lesson plans on resiliency. “If we can get kids to shift their thinking so they can see resiliency as a gift that comes out of struggle, that can be a huge benefit for them,” she says. “Plus, it can help them view others who may be struggling in a more positive way.”
To learn more about WE Well-being and how to sign up for educational resources and lesson plans, visit WE.org/wellbeing.