Well-being, PSHE and Kindness

At CDL we aim to foster resilience, tolerance and cooperation. These are outlooks on life that promote understanding and provide frameworks for students to respond to difficult situations as they arise. To facilitate this, we nurture an inclusive school environment where students feel safe, happy, valued, understood and they have a voice.

The current situation has highlighted our collective responsibility to support one another within the community, and therefore now is the ideal time to teach students the importance of community and the positive role they can play within it.

Through our Wellbeing programme & PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education) we are working on creating a common understanding of behaviour towards one another that will reinforce our community and drive positive change.

The primary school Ambassadors have been busy working alongside our Primary teacher Suzanne Campbell to promote our kindness initiative: Just Be Kind!

The Ambassadors have been assigned a class to look after for the remainder of the year. They will be delivering presentations, holding discussions, workshops and encouraging the practice of being kind with 'A random act of Kindness'. Our school counsellor, the classroom assistants and Playbuddies will be helping too!

All of the classes will have read the book ‘Have You Filled A Bucket Today? - A Guide To Daily Happiness For Kids’ by C. McCloud and D. Messing with their teacher and we will be using the ideas and vocabulary from this book as our stimulus for the remainder of the year with all teachers. We will be asking the children to make sure that they are ‘Bucket Fillers’ and not ‘Bucket Dippers’. We will also be making sure that we include the rest of our community e.g our logistics team, bus service, extracurricular, canteen and of course parents!

We have chosen Circle Times as our way of expressing our ideas. Circle Time or The Talking Circle traces its origins back to indigenous Americans and is a teaching strategy we use that allows the teacher and class to explore ideas or issues of concern together. Traditionally a talking stick/or object is held and passed around the circle. The person holding the object speaks whilst everyone else listens. As the object moves around the circle, everyone has an opportunity to talk without the risk of being interrupted. The aim is to communicate with each other about ways to promote self-esteem, positive behaviour, kindness and foster active listening and reflection.

Please feel free to read/listen to the story with your children and contact us if you have any ideas or would like more information.