Anna: The first talking point we’re going to use is this one. Boys shouldn’t wear pink or play with dolls. Off you go.

Student: I disagree. Boys can wear pink and boys can play with dollies. It’s their choice, if they–

Lucy: The wellbeing curriculum has a big impact on their social skills and their behavior. It gives them a language to resolve problems or explain emotions that are very complex, and that then does facilitate learning in the classroom, which is really key.

Student: What’s the difference? We’re all human.

Peter: Wellbeing is incredibly important to this school, and I think the center of what we do. Students are exploring in a really sophisticated way their emotions, their qualities, what’s getting in the way of their learning and getting on. So it’s building up their confidence.

Lucy: Wellbeing is really a focus on the emotional, social, and behavior of children. We have a curriculum. It’s around areas like identity, growth, confidence, kindness, and we have these big themes.

Aaishah: I think wellbeing is not judging people by the outside, but judging them from the inside instead. It teaches you loads of things, and it’s about being respectful to others.

Lucy: We focus on how we can help children understand the things they feel, the things that happen around them, and give a voice to it.

Student: If I say that, “Oh, I don’t like your skin color,” you can’t say that.

Anna: Does skin color tell you much about a person on the inside?

Students: No.

Student: If someone was rude to somebody, and that rude person judged that person, it won’t be nice, so it has to be a fair world.

Lucy: We primarily deliver our wellbeing through our assembly structure.

Amy: Each week, we’ll begin with a kind of larger assembly, and we’ll introduce the wellbeing topic for the week. This term, we’re thinking about diversity.

Teacher: We investigated how we were each unique, and how that wonderful mix of people made up this diversity in our society. And today, we’re going to look at another piece of that, culture.

Alexia: So sometimes in assembly, we talk about our culture, like how we are from different countries, how we eat, and celebrations.

Student: You can see culture by the way people dress.

Student: Some Muslim people, they have to wear certain clothes for their culture.

Amy: In class that week, children continue discussing that theme to get a little bit deeper into that topic.

Lucy: We are very responsive and very fluid to the needs of our children. So for example, issues that come up in the playground, or in their lives that we want to tackle and give them a voice for.

Anna: I had some occasions in my class where there were some real misconceptions with race. And so we’re talking about culture this week, but let’s talk about the judgements that people make, and how that can be a positive thing, how that could be very damaging. We would start with a stimulus: pictures, or a short film, or a piece of music.

I’m going to show you a picture of a man, and I want you to think what word pops into your head when you look at that photo, ready?

Student: Bad.

Student: Tough.

Student: Robber.

Student: Rude.

Student: Cruel.

Anna: I’m going to show a picture of another man, and I want you to do the same thing. Off you go.

Student: Life saving.

Student: Gentle.

Student: Peaceful.

Student: Smart.

Student: Helpful.

Student: Kind.

Anna: They are the same person.

Student: I thought so.

Student: I knew it.

Anna: So this is our topic for today. You can’t judge a book by its cover.

Lucy: So the teacher might start with an image or a poem, and then she will ask the children, what questions come out from this? And they have to be really big philosophical questions. It’s like, is it okay to leave someone out? What would happen if everyone in the world was the same? We then write them down and then the children vote on which one they’d like to discuss.

Anna: We’re going to vote with our feet. It looks like this one has the majority, so everybody could take their seat again, please.

Lucy: Sometimes there’s a question that really grabs their imagination. They start to discuss it, build on each other’s ideas.

Student: Sometimes when you judge someone, it could make them sad. For example, if I said to someone, “Look at that person. They have weird tattoos and all of that, so maybe I should run away,” it could maybe hurt their feelings inside. You never know.

Anna: True, okay, yes, Kaden.

Student: If no one was judging people, no problems would happen, but I also think that everyone has a little bit of judge in them.

Anna: Interesting, mm.

Amy: Through the different wellbeing topics that we cover and having the opportunity to discuss those ideas, they’re able to understand other people’s viewpoints, and that’s what helps you form your own ideas about the world.

Student: It doesn’t mean because peoples have a skin color, it doesn’t mean that you’re not the same. Everybody’s people, because–

Anna: It’s developing their grit and their ability to persevere when something’s challenging. The progress that the children I’m teaching now is phenomenal, but it’s not just about that. It’s about how best you can equip them to deal with the world.

Schools That Work

School 21