Greetings from St Bede’s.

During the week I attended a conference in Auckland where the main focus was about leadership and wellbeing of staff, students and families in the wake of the pandemic. It was acknowledged from the outset, that any observations in this time have not got the benefit of hindsight, because the pandemic is still occurring. New Zealanders have a false sense of security compared to the rest of the world, as regards the number of Covid-19 cases here, but as we have seen in Australia, that can quickly change. Also, we should be mindful of ongoing economic challenges that all of us will eventually have.

While the conference was directed at principals, I started thinking about a couple of points for our young men around what they could learn from this time, which I shared at assembly this week....

"Today, for a few minutes, I am going to ask a couple of questions; let's start with food. Many of you talked about missing takeaways. What happened in the lockdown? Has it changed your thinking about what you eat and why? Did you learn to cook / and if you did cook, was it something you did for the first time? Have you continued to cook? Do you eat better as a result of the learning from the lockdown time and are takeaways now only a treat, rather than a go-to?

What about the spiritual food? Many appreciated the time to pray more and that has been a learning. During this time did you not just pray, but did you also reflect about how you are going normally? We had more time to do that. Perhaps you may have reflected about the way you now interact with your family? How grateful are you for them? How supportive are you of them especially if there are stresses and strains as a result of this time?

And what about your mates? I know that for many of you, the time away from your friends was very difficult. What have you learned about that, and what is the lesson going forward? Perhaps it might be something as simple as not taking your friends for granted, and perhaps also it might be a quiet question to yourself about what sort of friend am I? What do you give to the friendship comparing what you take from it?

What are the ongoing lessons about the way you learn? I hope you learned how self-sufficient you could be, and that you also challenged yourself to be a self-starter. One of the speakers at this conference, was talking about the nature of the business he was a part of. In four short years his firm, one that gathered business and iwi groups to help young Maori in the North Island, had changed from one where they had an office in the city with the employees clocking in nine-to-five, to now being one where there was no office, where some of the employees engaged online from overseas, where face-to-face meetings are held in rented offices or a cafe. The point he was making was some of the skills, like being a self-starter and self-manager without your boss looking over your shoulder, are really important in the world you guys may work in the future.

Technology is obviously your friend in this environment. Clever use of it is also your friend, and we all learned that Some of you may be anxious about change; change here, change at home and changes in the world. Some may be anxious about uncertainty; about the future, where the world is going etc. Thirty-five percent of you said you were worried about assessments coming back after lockdown, and I hope we have, and will continue to help you as we go forward this term. Some of you may be worried about Mum or Dad losing their jobs.

During lockdown, pastoral and counselling staff were concerned about student mental health and wellbeing at a time where loneliness, high levels of stress, anxiousness, and a general feeling of overwhelm were common amongst students.

Staff identified a need for a way in which to assess student wellbeing which was simple, quick to complete, and easily accessible to students. They developed the Student Pulse - a simple online survey administered through Microsoft Teams in which students were asked to answer / rate a number of questions that were prepared as a collaboration between pastoral care staff and the Centre of Wellbeing. The questions changed weekly in response to changing student needs and issues identified in previous weeks.

Over this period, the Student Pulse effectively and efficiently gave a holistic overview of the general 'mood' of the cohort, while at the same time identified individual students' particular needs, concerns and vulnerabilities.

Since returning to school, the Student Pulse has proven to be just as successful and has enabled pastoral and counselling staff to be more proactive in their approach to student wellbeing. House tutors and tutor teachers are more informed of what is going on for their students, which has helped create, maintain and build relationships.

The frequency of when the Student Pulse is completed has changed to key dates / pressure points within the term to best meet the students' needs and fit in with the realities of daily school life. This change will also give more time to assess and address issues that have been identified through the survey.

Throughout lockdown, the Pulse was designed to focus on issues such as students' level of connectedness, motivation for work and general activities, extra stresses at home due to COVID-19, the people students would feel most comfortable connecting with and students' experiences of online learning and the pressures involved.

Since returning to school, the Student Pulse has monitored extra pressures at home due to C-19, anxiety/nervousness in returning to school, exam pressure, sleep, careers and wellbeing.

What the initiative has done is identify issues for boys that we may not have otherwise found out about, so what I’d encourage you to do is to use it by answering honestly, so if help is necessary to get, then it can happen.

The lockdown was a time to re-set; what also emerged was other ways, and better ways, to do things. The Pulse was one of those."

Until next week,

J.G. Boyle