All Wairakei Staff attended a training day at the Ministry of Education offices in the city on Monday.

Thank you to our school community for supporting the staff and ultimately, the whole school, to attend this very important training day.

 The Ministry of Education is supporting schools to develop understanding and an awareness of safe procedures as part of the behaviour management  programme within schools. 

The Ministry sent out new guidelines near the end of last year about restraint and seclusion of children within schools. As part of this, all schools are encouraged to undertake training in UBRS - Understanding Behaviour, Responding Safely. Our Board of Trustees saw this as being very important for both our staff being safe, and understanding the many challenging behaviours that are being presented in schools recently.

Our Board also supports the staff by encouraging and supporting through budget considerations, professional learning in a number of areas around Positive Education and positive psychology. Our teachers are involved in PB4L (Positive Behaviour for Learning), IYT (Incredible Years for Teachers), Positive Education, Mindfulness Education, and other targeted professional learning around Hauora and wellbeing for both staff and our akonga, learners.

To gain more information regarding physiological and psychological effects children bring with them, helps us gain a bigger picture of the whole child. While we bring our professionalism and experience to our job as teachers, it is also invaluable to gain even more understanding at whole staff professional learning sessions. 

The two psychologists, RTLB's and Ministry staff who facilitated the training day were great and helped us to reflect on our great procedures and practices, while giving us some new thoughts and guidelines to bring into the school.