Category: Wellbeing

Perceptual Learning: Sensory Strategies for Classroom Regulation

By Jennifer Colechin, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model 

Why do kids love green slime? You may have wondered this to yourself on more than one occasion when you have had little sticky fingers shoved into your face as you pick bits of slime off your shirt. The reason is simple-the brains of our little people crave it.

The human brain is an amazing thing, capable of learning and retaining so much information. But, in order to learn, our brains must feel safe.

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Linking Unconditional Positive Regard and Teacher Wellbeing

By Jack Greig, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model

How can Unconditional Positive Regard support student healing as well as enhance teacher wellbeing?

There is evidence to suggest that Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) not only supports students’ healing and learning at school, but also leads to enhanced teacher wellbeing.

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Why language matters: wellbeing is everyone’s business

Professor Lindsay Oades is the Director of the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Graduate School of Education. In this interview with Berry Street he provides a fascinating insight into why wellbeing literacy matters and how schools can help students learn it.

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Wellbeing is at the centre at Parkmore Primary

By Brendan Bailey, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model

Saraid Doherty is, to put it simply, the kind of person who gets things done.

In 2016 she was announced as one of Educator Magazine’s ‘Hot List’ teachers. Parkmore Primary School – the school Saraid leads – was also the only Victorian government school to be awarded an Innovative Schools Award that year, for integrating social and emotional learning into its literacy and numeracy program.

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School suspensions down by 70 percent in just 12 months

By Brendan Bailey, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model

There are industrial estates to the east and west, and the suburb is ringed by the M7 freeway. In the western suburbs of Sydney – wedged between Blacktown and Rooty Hill – sits Doonside Technology High School. Put simply, it’s in a tough part of town.

But it’s at Doonside that the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM) has led to some incredible outcomes. In conversation with Brendan Bailey from the Berry Street team, Doonside’s Principal Donna Loughran and Head of Wellbeing, Paul Karbon explain how.
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Where red dirt runways, crocs and positive education meet

By Leonie Abbott, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model

As the red dirt kicked up behind us, our sense of anticipation grew at the same rate as our anxiety subsided.

With relief, our little Cessna 310 landed just prior to the arrival of the oncoming tropical storm looming large through the Cessna’s windscreen.

And so began our first two days of Berry Street Education Model training in the Tiwi Islands, between Darwin and East Timor in the Arafura Sea.
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Active Constructive Responding in the classroom

For the most part, people are good at responding to the bad news of others. When someone comes to us and tells us they have lost a loved one, or didn’t get the job they wanted, or broke up with their partner, we commiserate, listen, and empathise well. But what about when something good happens?
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