Scarborough Public School is a small school of 56 students on the south coast of NSW where Living Ripples has become ‘very much the everyday’. With the importance of wellbeing for firmly embedded in the School’s Strategic Improvement Plan, the Living Ripples process has specific success criteria and two years on, the impact is growing.
Scarborough Public have just completed their second year of data gathering through the Living Ripples process from their students, staff and parents. They have also completed Stage 2 of the four-stage process, having participated in their SWAP, the Student Wellbeing Action Plan meeting. Working with the University of Adelaide’s WiLDlab, the School reviewed and prioritised the survey findings and nominated two key wellbeing areas to focus on for 2024.
The two focus areas, now formalised as specific Action Plans, the school is strengthening the learning mindset and supporting students with a more direct connection of an adult that they can talk to and who can support them. Their approach is seeing the School strengthen its peer support provided by Year 6 students and increasing the activities available during lunchtime. Supporting motivation has led to a refocusing on the importance of recognising effort with specific positive praise and sharing these positive affirmations each Monday at assembly
To improve connection between students and their teaching team, student and teacher conferences occur twice each term. All teachers follow a script to ensure the language and focus is constant across the school. Conversations are recorded to gather cumulative data about how students are feeling and progressing which, at the end of the year, will be shared with the students.
Supporting Scarborough Public School’s wellbeing focus is its commitment and use of Living Ripples Plus, a regular student led online student check as part of their regular routines. This is combined with practices from Berry Street Educational Model helping the teaching team provide an inclusive and ordered structure explicitly focusing on wellbeing and allowing them to quickly and uniformly respond changes, opportunities and needs.
One example of how this coordinated approach is leading change is the School’s response from a student, and agreed by all, to have a quiet place at school. Through a whole school workshop ‘and having the space provided to think through our needs’, it was recommended a sensory garden be developed. With a Community Building Partnership grant secured, the plans for a waterplay, tactile pathway and aromatic plants garden for use by the students, and accessible to the community, are now in their final stages. Because for Scarborough Public, wellbeing underpins how they grow success.
