During the lockdown period, I felt at a bit of a loss in my role as a school counsellor.

I was able to find ways to check in with the students that I was working with but felt that I needed to be more creative in my thinking about how I could maximise the support available to students while not able to work with them in person.

I also knew that there were many more students than the small number I usually worked with who were struggling because of the effects of lockdown: the loss of routine, the uncertainty of the situation, being cooped up and glued to a computer all day and the loss of contact with friends and teachers.

Protecting pupil wellbeing in lockdown

So to try and figure out how to best help students I organised a small number of online focus groups with students in key stages 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

The aim was to try and ascertain how students were finding the online learning experience, and if they had any ideas on how the counselling department could support them during this time.

Surprisingly, the older students, in particular, responded really positively to the idea of group support sessions to discuss how they were finding lockdown, and to enable them to find support amongst their peer group.

Buoyed by this, I created a survey that was sent to all secondary students that was designed to get their views and opinions on how they had been finding lockdown specifically in terms of their wellbeing, and how they felt the counselling department could best support them, which included ideas that had emanated from the focus groups.

Support sessions

Interestingly, quite a number of students engaged with the idea of group support sessions, and this got me thinking that perhaps more students would engage in counselling and wellbeing support if we broadened the scope of what we offered and how we offered it.

Could we remove the stigma that sometimes is associated with seeing the school counsellor and make wellbeing more empowering to students?

To build on this sense of potential, one of the first things I did was to create a wellbeing newsletter that included articles from both students and teachers on how they were managing their wellbeing during lockdown.

This newsletter was shared within the whole school community and was received really well by students and parents.

We were on to something.

Wellbeing coordinators

Over the summer I started to think more about how wellbeing could be embedded within our school culture, and not just as an add-on or afterthought in reaction to a stressful event.

I also wanted wellbeing to not just be driven by the counselling department and teachers; I wanted to see if wellbeing could be driven by the students.

As a result, this year our student council for the first time has included a “wellbeing coordinator” as a recognised and voted-for position.

We weren’t sure how it was going to be received, but we ended up with four students across the whole school being interested in being a wellbeing coordinator (more students than were interested in any other student council position).

Because of this, we decided to create a small team of wellbeing coordinators that would work with the staff support team in helping to make wellbeing more of an embedded part of our school culture.

What the role entails

With an increased emphasis on wellbeing this year because of the concern over the impact of the lockdown period and the social distancing measures in place now that we are back at school, the goals that we have for our wellbeing coordinators are threefold (for now at least):

1. To be involved in contributing articles related to student wellbeing in our school wellbeing newsletter.
2. To help us coordinate, plan and promote our first ever wellbeing week - a week of curricular and extracurricular events focused on developing the physical, mental and social wellbeing of our student body.
3. To collate student ideas around wellbeing and work with the counselling department to plan, promote and deliver wellbeing-inspired initiatives.

The hope is to make student voice a bigger part of the wellbeing direction of the school and to create a culture of wellbeing moving from something taught to students, to something driven and facilitated by students.

Sadie Hollins is head of sixth form at a British-curriculum school in Thailand and has been teaching internationally for two years. She tweets @_WISEducation