Self Care > Stress

This year I am excited to have a Senior class again. I really enjoy teaching Seniors for a variety of reasons. Majority of the time they have chosen to be in that class and I like being able to have 'real' conversations with the students. I have a Year 12 SACE Health class - which is the equivalent of a Year 13 NCEA class. My biggest challenge for this class is learning about SACE and the Health course on the go, especially because Health as a SACE course is new in general, not just to Marryatville.

The first unit of the year is based around stress and stress management. Over the last few weeks the students have been involved in an Australian online learning platform called This Way Up. This website has been developed by a myriad of medical professionals, with the aim to help support people and their mental health. There are several programs people from anywhere and of any age can access for support, resources, strategies and tools for several areas of mental health. The creators of the website intentionally designed This Way Up to be accessible, to help reduce the barriers some people may face for self help.

My class have been individually completing the 4 lesson Coping with Stress program. I completed the program before the students, so that I could determine what the in-class activities and tasks were going to be. The program is scenario based and throughout there are several strategies taught and 'implemented' to help the character to identify, prevent and reduce stress. 

To encourage students to apply their knowledge of the tools and strategies they learnt from the program, I gave students tasks to do after each of the 4 lessons, as can be accessed here. These lessons are screenshots of One Note pages students received. One Note gives me real time information about what the student is working on (like Google Docs), which I have really missed! This has helped me to give more feedback to students and to track their progress. These tasks gave students the time to reflect individually on their stress levels, created opportunities for peer conversation and provided a foundation for class discussions, so were a great addition to the Coping with Stress Program. (Sidenote: I am finding it really challenging to ignite full class discussions with this group of students, but they are great chatting within their tables... watch this space!).

There are several great learnings from the program, but I did find there could have been some adaptations to make it more accessible and engaging. For example, the program could be available in multiple languages, there could be a variety of audio and video added and/or there could be interactive tasks throughout (it was mostly a story to click through). I did like that the students were able to access and complete the program at their own pace, which directly impacted on how much they 'got out' of the program. Students commented that the program itself 'wasn't very memorable' and that it was 'too long', but overall the stress unit (combination of the program and the additional tasks) was 'beneficial towards helping [them] to reduce [their] personal stress factors'. If you would like to learn a little more about stress and stress management in general, I blogged about this a few years ago.

I would recommend any teacher to complete this program to determine whether it may be beneficial for your students to also complete. If not, you will still learn/reflect/create/ponder some key thoughts/ideas/tools that you may be able to embed within your teaching. Irrespective of teaching though, these programs have been created with a great intent and will be helpful for anyone who would like further support for their mental health.

Remember, if you need help, don't hesitate to ask for it.

Australia: 1300 22 4636 (Beyond Blue)

New Zealand: 1737 (Need to Talk)