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EduMind ANZ – Live blog

Jarrod Brown
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We’re here at the EduMind conference in Melbourne at the Marriot Hotel today, where experts and educators from all corners of the country are sharing their thoughts on some of the biggest questions in the industry.

From tackling emotional distress in the classroom to burnout amongst educators, readers can join me here in the wings of the seminar by following along with live updates shared on EducationDaily as they happen.

Stay tuned!

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 9:17 am

Rethinking testing and homework

Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Student Representative Council (VicSRC) Julia Baron says schools need to rethink the way they do assessments to ease the pressure on modern-day students.

According to Baron, the old-school approach to in-class testing “just isn’t working in the current curriculum”, as students report a rise in struggles with mental health and emotional distress.

“Students find it hard to be hopeful about the future, especially with the pressure to perform at school,” she said.

Bringing student speaker Ivy to the stage, the pair illustrates the benefits of taking a holistic approach to education and encourages teachers to adopt discussions around mental health and create independent student bodies to hear out how the cohort would best handle their assessment structure.

“Atar was made to make the education system more equitable, but what we seeing now is that it just doesn’t work,” added Baron.

“This change will take more time, resources and money, and more data to implement properly in the years ahead.”

“There’s this sort of convenience student voice, where students are participating in decisions that effect them, but not necessarily on the same run on the ladder as their adult counterparts,” said Ivy.

“A lot of what we work on is giving students that equal say in decisions that affect them.

“What we focus on is schools being open to all types of student voice, not necessarily just the decisions from a select few.”

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 9:36 am

Addressing self-harm

Head of Counselling and Student Health Services at MLC School Sydney Anna Michaloulos takes the stage to discuss how schools can reduce self-harming incidents at their schools with targeted interventions and support groups.

“Some of the reasons the students I work with tell me they use self-harm as a coping strategy is that it’s a temporary escape, a sense of gaining control when so many things in their life are out of control,” said Michaloulos.

“In my experience, any time a student self-harmed, they would immediately come running to the councillors in schools…saying they had thoughts of suicide.

“We know that repeated injury over time can result in suicidal behaviour.

“When schools attempt to approach self-harming incidents, we do need to unpack their thoughts around their actions.

“Anyone that does present with self-harming behaviours, we ask if this was an attempt to end their life.

“Sometimes, signs for self-harming behaviours and suicide can be the same.”

Speaking of experiences from her own school, she says educators should create different levels of talking about self-harm and suicide with the students, starting with programs that engage with entire cohorts down to targeted smaller interventions for students deemed a higher risk.

These smaller groups would talk about specific mental health topics that typically present in students displaying self-harm behaviours, such as depression, anxiety and domestic violence.

“We know that mental health (diagnosis) have increased, but the resources in schools around those topics typically haven’t scaled,” added Michaloulos.

“Professionally learning is key. It helps them know exactly what we can and can’t do.

“We have had students take implements out of the food tech classrooms, take them to the bathroom and self-harm.

“If a student is self-harming offsite, they don’t need to go home when we find out about it. But if they are doing it on school grounds, then those processes are different.

“If a student is currently expressing suicide ideation…I would prioritise seeing those students over others who only had similar thoughts a few months prior.

“At MLC, we actually have a deputy for wellbeing that helps students at all levels throughout the schools.”

Michaloulos also encouraged educators to create safety resources for students going into the holidays with helpful apps and QR codes directing them to websites, as well as return-to-school meetings around self-harm and suicide ideation

For those who struggle to communicate, Michaloulos said non-verbal ways of communicating mental health (such as a coloured card system or thermometer) could help visualise how students are feeling.

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 10:09 am

Vaping and addiction

Director of Wellbeing Programs at Padua College Suzi Hyland speaks on how educators can address substance abuse more proactively through education, early intervention and collaboration with health services.

“Addiction is a form of self-harm. Young people are using addition to self-medicate,” said Hyland

“If they are using alcohol and other drugs, the substance can have effects on the developing brain.

“To feel normal, they (students) have to have a hit of whatever they’re addicted to.

“Young people who use substances are also at risk of developing substance abuse problems later in life and mental health problems.”

According to Hyland, nicotine, ketamine and cocaine were running rampant amongst schools in her area, with many students claiming they could get it directly from where it was made.

Despite the countless drug and alcohol prevention programs that have swept through Aussie schools over the last three decades, Hyland claims that schools still aren’t doing enough.

“I thought we were doing the gold star. We’re touching on these topics in grade 7,8,9,” she said.

“But then it turns out we were missing something. We asked a student voice group to come up with the major problems around addiction in their school.

“It turns out kids were hiding away in the bathroom, breaking the smoke alarms and vaping in secret. We weren’t fixing the problem

“One of the students even came up to me at school and said ‘Hyland, we are missing something’.

“His parents had problems with alcoholism, so he had past experience with addiction. He said these programs weren’t impacting the kids who were already addicted. He said we had to utilise counselling skills.”

“I thought, as a previous councillor, he was right. We need to make a change.”

Sitting down with a drug and alcohol counsellor, Hyland came up with a more personal approach to handling addiction that would encourage students to come clean on their own.

“We discovered we weren’t teaching kids what it meant to be addicted,” she said.

“Once we did that, we then needed to identify students that were addicted.

“But you have to teach students like cats. You can’t force a cat to like you.

“A good intervention program needs its students to want to change. It needs to be autonomous. It needs to be their own thing, so the results are their own.

“You need to find discrepancy’s in the goals. You want a good ATAR? Well, you can’t do that if you are always coming down after partying all weekend.”

But schools can’t do everything. Once Hyland identified students who were ready to change their behaviours, she said schools could help students kick the habit by reaching out to external programs that would help tackle influences outside of the classroom.

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 11:01 am

Supporting LGBTQ students

Academic Learning Support Coordinator at UBSS Australia Wilhelmina Marjan Woortman speaks on promoting inclusive policies, staff training and support groups in schools to help protect LGBTQ students from the effects of bullying.

“I’m speaking as mother. I’m a mother of a transgender child,” said Woortman.

“One day, I got a call from the teacher, who asked for me to come to school, and they said, your child wants to be a girl. I felt like I was hit by a truck.

“But In my heart I always knew.”

Now the author of ‘P.R.O.U.D of my Transgender’, a book based on her own experiences with her daughter Emma, an emotional Woortman broke down the core components of creating a welcoming environment for LGBTQ kids both in and outside of the classroom.

Standing for the Process of accepting, Reliable Advice, Objectivity, Unified together, and Dealing with adversity, she believes each step represents a vital piece of the puzzle for changing the often daunting school scene.

“If you’re child is saying to you you are trasngender, your first thought is what the hell do I do?” she said.

“The first step is to accept that, to accept your new reality and move on from there.

“Listen to all signals, and always act, not react to them.

“Listening is just a word, but good listening? Not many people can do that. A good counsellor listens without any judgment.

“How can we be objective, as in seeing people, what do we do? It’s up to you to decide how you see things.

“Everyone should feel free to be themselves and no one should be discriminated on based on their appearance.”

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 1:32 pm

Managing body image

Leader of Learning at Carey Baptist Grammar School, Julio Tao, talks about how schools and educators can help students embrace a positive mentality around body image in the world of social media.

“Imagine a student walks into your classroom, but not just with their books and pencils. In their hands they carry a digital mirror that reflects back a distorted image of themselves,” said Tao.

“How do we help them see past the digital distortions and embrace their authentic selves?”

Backed up by worrying figures that 90 per cent of young Aussies have concerns about their body image, Tao asked the room what we thought the pressures were behind creating the perfect selfie.

“Filters, angles the pose, the ratio it’s all about what goes into the perfect selfie,” said one teacher at my table.

“They are thinking about the response to that selfie,” said another.

According to Tao, it’s these pressures and the standards purported by social media influencers, celebrities and their school peers that leave teenagers having a troubled relationship with their own bodies.

“For nine hours a day, teens are exposed to these images impacting their body image and the self-worth.”

“Children as young as three are turning to thinner figures for their playtime. By age ten, a significant number of girls are already engaging in dieting behaviours.”

“While a selfie might seem simple, its impact on a teen’s body can be infinitely complex and troubling.

With so much of this influence happening after the school bell, Tao said there was no simple answer to fixing negative body images for students. But schools could still help move the needle by incorporating care, respect and acceptance into all subjects throughout the curriculum and promoting body-affirming activities.

“We start as early as grade eight, where we ask students ‘What is a good life in the age of social media?'”.

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 2:08 pm

Preventing burnout

Panellists Blake Reynolds, Sam Wright and Julia Baron and Moderator David Kolpak

Panellists Blake Reynolds, Sam Wright and Julia Baron take the stage to discuss the prevalence of burnout amongst teachers and educators to establish a steady workload.

When asked what burnout looked like at the teaching level, Ms Reynolds said it looked different for every cohort.

“We need to ask the question: What is causing teacher burnout and teacher disengagement,” she said.

“For anyone that’s a school leader, what does that look like? How are you showing up to your classrooms and staff?

“It’s a really interesting challenge and no two schools experience it in the same way.

“We are all on the same page about wanting to give students the best education for them, whatever that may be.”

As a recent father of two young children, Mr Reynolds said he had his own struggles with burnout.

“I think with work-life balance, it’s so important that we acknowledge that we have family obligations, but we also have obligations to the teaching standards, and we have to meet those in the classroom,” he said.

All of the panelist pointed toward the teacher shortages forcing an environment where teachers avoid taking time off, with Mr Wright saying schools needed to set boundaries if they wanted to improve work-life balance.

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind,” he said.

“We need to be really clear from school leadership what is clear and what isn’t. We need to set boundaries.

“Every teacher should at least have a mentor or buddy…someone that is able to notice those small changes in behaviour.

The room full of educators seemed to nod in agreement, calling out a common issue of parents firing off emails and messages to their inboxes when they should be off the clock

“While we wouldn’t tell a mechanic or a doctor what to do, there needs to be some pushback on parents asking to break those boundaries,” said a teacher from the crowd.

Wrapping up, the group said it was important discussions continue over education wellbeing, with moderator David Kolpak from Trinity College calling for teachers to remember why they got into their career in the first place.

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 2:44 pm

Cyberbullying and online risks

Masa Popvac and Mitch Grownewald, from the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, discuss online safety and how schools can protect students from cyberbullying.

Breaking down the online risks into four categories (content-related, contact, conduct and compulsion) the team spoke on how the rise in exposure to pornography at an early age is influencing young Aussies years before they have any sexual experience.

“Invisible problems impact the social climate at school profoundly, impacting performance and relationships across the board,” said Ms Grownewald.

“For young people, online and offline worlds aren’t separate – they’re one space.”

Calling on research by the Foundation, Masa and Mitch said a multilevel approach, starting at the individual and ending at the policy level, was needed to keep Aussie students safe online.

Comparing digital safety to riding a bike, Mr Popvac encouraged educators to take a scaffolded approach when teaching kids how to navigate the online world – removing safeguards and ‘training wheels’ as they progress in age and skill level.

With most of students’ online time happening outside of the classroom, the pair also encouraged teachers to hand out take-home activities and engage parents in educating their children about online dangers

“Working together relational learning is really important,” said Mr Popvac.

“One of our big approaches is going to students in the settings they already exist in… so when we leave, those learnings are still impactful.

“All of our resources are codesigned with teachers and students in mind.”

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 3:31 pm

Breaking the mental health stigma

Deputy Head at Ivanhoe Grammer School, Ben Ernest, breaks down how schools can reduce the stigma surrounding mental health for students and how they can get students talking to counsellors.

“There is no doubt that, looking around the room, mental health is a pervasive issue that has touched almost everyone in society,” said Ernest.

Speaking on his experiences in his own school, Ben told the room how his pupils could identify someone going through a struggle with mental health, but reported a huge amount of shame around coming forward.

“That was a tough thing to hear as a teacher, he said.

“But it helped me understand that students know that people navigating those challenges need help escaping the stigma.

“As long as a society we still have these negative connotations attached to certain groups, we’re not going to make any progress.”

Ernest said students were usually susceptible to a lot of misconceptions around mental illness, courtesy of often misleading information from TikTok and Instagram, leading young Aussies to form an aversion to talking about it and dealing with it themselves.

“Regardless of your ethnicity, special status etc, mental health can touch everyone,” he added.

“Because they have a lack of education on these issues, they see someone on a platform, whoever and whatever that is, and they see that source as the highest level of knowledge that they can attain.”

But when it comes to breaking down the stigma, both in the media and in the schoolyard, Ernest said empathy was the key.

One example he gave was changing how teachers refer to people with mental illness, replacing describing as someone by the illness (like calling someone depressed) and instead put the person first by describing them as having a mental illness.

“Kids are slowly waking up that this is a huge issue in society, but without education, how can they tackle those issues?” Ernest added.

Others included teaching students that mental illness can take many forms by introducing them to real-world examples and guest speakers.

“We can’t take on face value how someone is feeling, how they are thinking.”

Following Ben up on the stage was Dean of Wellbeing & Culture at Braemar College Emma Grant, who talked about the importance of taking a whole school culturally sensitive approach when tackling mental health.

“My ideal role in life is equipping students with all the tools they need to alleviate the pressure on our councillors,” said Grant.

Grant advocated for schools to teach “human skills” like empathy to all of their students, from primary to secondary, and leave the students with three questions: What do I want? Why do I want it? And how do I get there?

“We want our students to leave school as a connected, authentic and agile person,” she said.

6 months agoAugust 1, 2024 4:27 pm

School counseling with AI

The last speaker of the day, Co-founder of check-in app iyarn and council member of Christ Church Grammar School Lockie Cooke kicks off his presentation with a game for the weary crowd of teachers, asking attendees to place a piece of paper behind their back and rip it into the shape of an elephant.

After everyone revealed their artfully torn elephants (surprisingly, most of them aren’t bad), confused teachers were asked to write the “elephant in the room” (get it) at their schools, be it AI, mental health, teacher shortages and throw them towards him in the middle of the room.

But, while acting as a fun distraction as he attempted to fix his faulty slideshow, Cooke then pressed the room why these elephants existed at all if these schools were offering up truly safe spaces for students to express their thoughts.

“What are we doing in these roles to help the kids and students feel comfortable sharing these elephants with us?” said Cooke.

Speaking about his history of being surrounded by people in his life being lost to suicide, Lockie went on to say that Aussies, especially young students, struggle to open up face-to-face and often avoid talking about their problems to counsellors and peers.

His fix? His app iyarn which offers a digital ‘pulse check’ that grades students emotions on a one-to-ten scale. Using AI, the app also conjures up unique advice based on your response and flags students with at-risk abilities for interventions from counsellors.

Offering up a trial run for the teachers in the room, the app had the teachers in the room grade their feelings on stress management, mindfulness, balance and more, with the aggregated end result prompting an AI response for improving your mood in certain areas.

With the ability for personalised responses and support resources for schools, Cooke said his AI tool could help right the scales for schools on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder who have less access to wellbeing resources.

“It’s like anything, you’ve got to strengthen the muscle. If you’re not checking in, you will never check-in,” said Cooke.

“I believe in school, there should be a check-in tool that helps create a third space for students to express their well being.

“I find students, boys in particular really respond to being able to put a number against their thoughts and after that, the words start to flow.”

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With a background in journalism, copywriting and digital marketing, Jarrod Brown draws upon his professional experience when writing about the intersection of technology and culture within the education space. He recently made the move to Melbourne after trading his Sunshine Coast surfboard for knitwear and laneways.