The Learning Curve
The Learning Curve is a podcast from The University of Queensland’s School of Education that bridges the gap between what you learn about teaching and what actually happens in the classroom.
The Learning Curve
Prioritising student wellbeing
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Penny Lee has been teaching for more than 15 years, returning to The University of Queensland to complete a master's degree in guidance counselling. In this episode, Penny helps answer the question, "How does prioritising student wellbeing change what teachers do in classrooms?".
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After listening to this episode, start here
Trauma-informed teaching strategies
https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/trauma-informed-teaching-strategies
Article outlining practical approaches to classroom interactions that support students who have experienced trauma, with a focus on safety, predictability and relationships.
Relationships matter more than rules
https://www.edutopia.org/article/relationships-matter-more-rules/
Article exploring how to establish expectations in ways that prioritise relationships. Includes practical strategies and activities to build rapport and create a safe, supportive classroom environment.
Try this tomorrow
Strategies to support emotional regulation
Downloadable resource with practical, classroom-ready strategies organised into themes to support student regulation. These strategies help improve focus, engagement and readiness to learn.
Grounding exercise for racing minds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgRd1Mzhb_Q
Short Headspace video guiding a simple grounding exercise that can be used with a class or individually to calm the mind and support readiness for learning.
If you want to go deeper
OECD: The importance of social and emotional skills
Analysis of large-scale research demonstrating the long-term impact of social and emotional skills on academic achievement, wellbeing and life outcomes. Includes recommendations for how schools can better support these skills.
Polyvagal Theory overview by Stephen Porges
https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory
Overview of the science of the nervous system and its role in regulation, explaining why students need to feel safe and regulated to learn effectively.
You're listening to the Learning Curve, turning education theory into classroom practice. I'm Anna Sibthorpe. Teachers are constantly told to prioritize well-being. But what does that actually look like in a classroom on a real day? Today we ask: how does focusing on student well-being change what teachers actually do? We unpack the idea that well-being is extra and what shifts when it's embedded into everyday practice for your students and for you. I'm joined by experienced senior teacher and recent UQ Masters in Guidance Counseling graduate Penny Lee.
SPEAKER_01When I'm thinking about spending teaching time on well-being, I worry that I'm not spending enough time on myself as well, because I'm a person too.
SPEAKER_05When I think about spending teaching time on well-being, I worry that I myself won't understand the concepts I'm trying to teach the students. So I try and give myself time to understand what I'm gonna teach before I teach it.
SPEAKER_02When I think about spending teaching time on well-being, I worry that I don't know what to do. I'm afraid I'm not be able to take action immediately.
SPEAKER_04When I think about spending teaching time on well-being, I worry that I won't be able to spend enough time on myself as I will be spending most of my time teaching.
SPEAKER_07Penny, thanks so much for joining me today. Could you tell us a little bit about your teaching journey so far?
SPEAKER_09My name is Penny Lee. I graduated from teaching my teaching undergraduate in 2010, and I uh went straight to Gladstone to do some country service. Then I was headhunted to come back to Brisbane and I was teaching arts and English. And then a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to make a change to move into more of a guidance and well-being space. So I went to UQ to do my masters.
SPEAKER_07You've been teaching for 15 years now, and you decided to go back and do your master's in guidance counseling. What motivated you to focus on well-being?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's a long time to be doing something and then to switch up. I definitely was a victim of teacher burnout because I wanted everything to be perfect and I wanted to show how hard I was working. There are so many things on a teacher's plate, and I wanted to do all of those things really well. But unfortunately, that wasn't sustainable for me for a long time. I knew that I loved my curriculum area and I loved working with kids, but I also found that my curriculum was becoming less and less essential to my work and well-being was becoming a bigger part of that. And, you know, lots of young people at my school were attracted to, you know, come and talk to me and open up to me. And I thought, hey, I actually could have a longer, more sustained career if I stayed with young people but pivoted to well-being. You know, it's a growing, it's a growing world for that. So that was that was an exercise in sustainability for me as a teacher.
SPEAKER_07Were you seeing things that motivated you to say, I'd like to step into a more well-being-based role?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I actually think it wasn't so much about what I was seeing in others as what I was seeing in myself. I had gotten into a very fixed mindset about high standards and high expectations in the classroom. And I started to notice, you know, in sort of the last three, four years of teaching, that that need for high expectations was getting in the way of so much learning. So it was actually a shift in myself where I was taking things home, I was taking kids' emotions home, as well as my stress about are they doing well enough? Are they learning enough? And when I realized that I was exhausting myself trying to carry all of that, that's when I realized that I needed to change the way that I was approaching teaching. I didn't really know how that change was going to happen, but I I definitely noticed it when I moved into that well-being space at UQ during my master's. I saw things from a completely different angle. It was unsettling to change what you've done for so long. But for me, it was about sustainability. I can keep working with young people if I can focus on their well-being.
SPEAKER_07That's really interesting because you and I have known each other for a long time, and you've been talking about moving into well-being and guidance for a long time.
SPEAKER_09What I was expecting of students was at odds with that. Because I was wanting to be a mental health guide as well as a curriculum guide, but I wasn't sacrificing enough to try and get the both of them. So it took me being humble to say, like, you can't do all of this. I couldn't do all of it. That humility has been really helpful for me because it was I felt quite stressed all the time about am I doing enough? Are the kids learning enough? And that stress wasn't helping me be an effective teacher.
SPEAKER_07Aaron Ross Powell So it was your empathy for like you were feeling that way, so you thought, oh gosh, the kids must be feeling that way. And so you wanted to help them with that.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Is that right?
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Was there a time where you saw that, where you were seeing those kids experiencing those same stresses and pressures that you Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_09I'm a neurodivergent person. And as the world opens themselves more to talking about that in public, I found that when I opened up the fact that I needed to change things to suit my neurodivergents, I was noticing how many gaps there were for lots of young people who were neurodivergent as well. I also found that I was putting so much effort into arguments around compliance, because obviously the relationship is so important to well-being and to any kind of teaching. But it felt personal if that relationship wasn't developing well. I think instead of going in and saying, I can solve this problem, a well-being background has given me a bit more curiosity to ask a question about what is going on rather than me saying, I know what it is and I'm going to fix it. A good example might be when you're a teacher, you often get, you know, supervision. So you have to go and teach in other people's classes. And there's always a bunch of kids in any given school, your high flyers, the people that they warn you about, oh, you've got such and such as class. And so there was definitely a time where I had a class with a particular student and taking as a supervision and trying to get them to comply, trying to get them to open a book, trying to get them to, I don't have a pencil, and all of that stuff that I was projecting my expectations and my values on that kid, because I wasn't looking at it from a well-being perspective. Flush, 12 months forward, I've got that same kid in a class, and now suddenly he's saying, Well, I don't do that in this class. And my response instead of saying, Well, everybody else is doing it, you have to do it too is, okay, tell me about that. Tell me more about what you tend to do in the lesson. That more like relaxed and curious attitude has just allowed me to not sweat the small stuff. Taking care and making sure that people are prepared to learn and regulated enough to learn, I feel like is way more important than following the same rules every time. Predictability is important, but flexibility too.
SPEAKER_07And what did you see any change with that student by using different language with them?
SPEAKER_09Absolutely. It was almost like night and day. To the point where I almost felt like, is this fake? Like a student who would cuss me out in the playground before is now like, oh, hey, miss, or like walking, you know, to and from school and they'll wave at me at my car. That just would never have happened. But because I was like, I have to treat this young person like a human first rather than a student. And look, I didn't necessarily get that kid to do their whole worksheet that lesson, but that rapport that I got to build with them and focusing on that rapport got me a few sentences on a sheet that I might not have gotten. You know, I've also managed to get teachers are away and their assessment is due, and I can get something out of a student that they maybe wouldn't be willing to do for their teacher, because, like I said, I lead with curiosity and I think, oh, well, why don't we just get something down now? Because you know, your teacher's got all of this baggage associated with them. But I'm here today and I don't have any baggage. So just write what you can do.
SPEAKER_07Is it like the language you're using, the lower pressure, the pacing?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_09Or a combination. It's the it's the it's the relationship, first of all, because if I don't have an ongoing relationship with you as a student in my class, I've got to think really fast. Building rapport is easier when you're long-term with a class. But I also come in with not no expectations, but come in with expectations of every kid in this class has the potential to learn something today, to be great today. I try not to be bogged down on the things that have happened in the past. You know, try and have a fresh, a fresh approach every time you walk into a classroom. And that was something I really struggled to do.
SPEAKER_07If you were starting with a new class, a brand new class that was yours, how would you start building those relationships in the beginning, do you think?
SPEAKER_09I like to get young people to tell me about themselves in their own words. I think a lot of people will do that at the beginning of the year. They'll get students to write them a letter. I like to probe into beyond the basics of who's your mom, who's your dad, where do you live? I like to ask students about are they neurodivergent? Do they have any different needs? What pronouns would they prefer to have used in the classroom? Things that some teachers might think, oh, well, that's not my responsibility to ask. If you as a teacher are asking that question, then that's making a safe space in your classroom for certain kids. And it might be the only classroom in which these questions are being asked. So that can create a real sense of safety for some kids that may be struggling or are outside of the norm. I think that one of the really big things is fun and joy because our nervous systems aren't going to take in anything when we're not regulated. And so you've got kids coming in from break and there's been a fight, or you know, it's the first session of the day and they're all tired. You can't always follow the plan. So make sure that you've got in your back pocket some ways to just stop and have some fun. And it's not about getting the students to like you because you're having fun. It's literally about regulating them.
SPEAKER_07Aaron Powell What's one way you do that?
SPEAKER_09You would be surprised. So I work in mostly with high school students. You'd be surprised how many high school students, when they're dysregulated, love Silent Ball or Heads Down, Thumbs Up, or celebrity heads, just little things that you might think are complete waste of time or not. That's where the rapport building happens.
SPEAKER_07I've done things like stop in the middle of a lesson and do a quick hangman. Are you thinking brain break type?
SPEAKER_09Absolutely. Yep. Lots of different brain break things. But you also have to have something up your sleeve where you go, this lesson isn't going to work today. And how am I going to get something useful out of them? Last week, in the first two weeks of school, I was doing some supply work and I walked into the very, very first class for the grade sevens, and they were, you know, nervous but excited. But I was placed in an art classroom. There was no projector connection. I had all of these kids that were silent because they were, well, what's this teacher going to be like? What's it going to be? What's the tone? And I couldn't spend the whole lesson being like, well, can't get the projector to work. So I had to find a way to flip the tone. I was like, okay, what we're going to do is we we can't access civics right now. So let's everybody just make a folder and let's make a Word document to put it all in. And the entire class went, How do I make a folder? That was the teachable moment of that lesson. We didn't get to Civics, but I was able to laugh along with this group of kids and be like, you don't know how to make a folder, you don't know how to make a document. All right, let's all learn together. How good. And I went back after that lesson and went, I developed rapport with kids because I helped them with problems. I helped them to troubleshoot their own problems. I taught them a new skill. I just pivoted.
SPEAKER_07I love that. I feel like though, sometimes, even if it's like not a situation where things have gone awry, but you want to develop those relationships and you want to make things fun and you want to use well-being-based teaching strategies. There are ways to do that. Do you know any teaching strategies that you would use that are like aligned with student well-being?
SPEAKER_09It's not necessarily from a teaching strategy per se, but I think everybody needs to know how to help a child or a young person to breathe through some stress or to count five things that you can see and four things that you can hear. Learning can only happen when the nervous system is grounded. So understanding the science behind how to regulate, I think is really important. And I think it gets touched on. But it's like all of those things that you have to learn it, you need to become a teacher.
SPEAKER_07I wonder too if you could use a lot of those sort of self-regulation activities within the context of curriculum. Like maybe if you were in English, you could, if you are doing a novel study, could you do like if you were the character in this book, what were five things you could see be? What would five things here? Wouldn't that be I feel like that would also be something that pre-service teachers might feel more comfortable starting with?
SPEAKER_09Absolutely. And I agree that it's it should be more embedded. There are going to be opportunities for you in pastoral care contexts, you are going to have to explicitly teach those things. But a lot of kids will switch off. You go, all right, we're going to learn mindfulness now, they'll switch off. And it doesn't work for everybody. So doing it through your curriculum and through your pedagogy, I would say, is the best way to go.
SPEAKER_07Actually, I've heard that for both neurodivergent kids and for neurotypical kids, explaining the purpose before you say what and how is supposed to increase feelings of well-being.
SPEAKER_09You know, why are we doing this is such a common question. Yeah. What's this got to do with my future? Why do I need this? I mean, why should I care? It's the question every day. And that's why I think embedding stuff in your practice is so important because everybody needs to know how to regulate themselves.
SPEAKER_07And once you've got these kinds of practices embedded, what kinds of changes should we expect to see with students if we feel if we are leading with well-being?
SPEAKER_09In my experience, I've seen improvement with engagement, even improvement in grades, which I personally don't think is the main point, but also an improvement and more openness to learning. I think everybody loves to learn something, although a lot of young people will say they don't like learning. And I think that's really key, is that if you can create a classroom that's really safe and that caters to the well-being, not always the happiness of everyone, but the well-being of everyone, then you're gonna get kids that are more likely to engage because they like you or they feel safe with you.
SPEAKER_01I think students feel most safe and supported in my class when they feel like they're being heard as people as well.
SPEAKER_06I think students feel most safe and supported in my class when I treat them like humans instead of children. And we build a really good relationship from the very start.
SPEAKER_00I think students feel most safe and supported in my class when both their social and their learning needs are met with an equal amount of like effort.
SPEAKER_08I think students feel most safe and supported in my class when provided opportunities to explore their creativity and their confidence.
SPEAKER_03I think students feel most safe and supported in my class when they have the space to talk freely because their thoughts and opinions are valued by me and the other students in the class.
SPEAKER_09I would start with a compassionate response and say, I know. I agree. I think we all would agree that there's a lot on our plates. But I think a really important distinction is that, and forgive the cliche, but we're not here to teach a subject. We're here to teach a person. It doesn't matter whether you have the greatest subject knowledge in the world and you have the most to impart. If you can't get a group of kids to be comfortable and to be able to regulate and engage with learning, then it's all just abstract. So I think no matter what area you're gonna teach in, you are gonna have to be teaching well-being. You if you want your kids to do their homework, then you also have to talk to them about are you getting enough sleep? You know, what what's your routines like?
SPEAKER_07Sounds like it takes a lot of selflessness as a teacher.
SPEAKER_09I mean, I feel like everything takes selflessness as a teacher, but I think you have to be a little selfish, but I think it's a self-awareness. You know, you have to know what your limits are and you have to know like what's gonna trigger you and what's gonna make you feel uncomfortable, and try and plan ahead for it. Or if not, go, okay, I really need to look into this. I think everybody should do a little bit of therapy. I think everybody should do a little journaling, examine their biases. All of this stuff is what is gonna help you to build your own resilience as well.
SPEAKER_07That's so kind though, because I feel like in teaching we're supposed to always be these perfect people. When I was saying, well, you know, have to you have to have all this selflessness, I was almost saying you you just have to, but you're saying like you have to forgive yourself because you can't always be selfless.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. I mean, that's where I started, you know, talking about my transition from teaching into well-being, I started in that space of me doesn't matter. It's all about them. Or actually, that's not that's not true. It's that that I matter so much and I have to be so perfect. You can't be perfect. So I think, yeah, just being able to say, well, that was a bit curly. Yeah. Or heck, I I lost my temper with that kid and I shouldn't have earned that kid, you know, whatever. Like those things are what are gonna make you a great teacher. Your mistakes is what's gonna make you a great teacher, as long as you reflect on them and, you know, work through them.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And maybe not having that sort of grace for yourself is what would contribute to your burnout as well. Absolutely. 100%. What are some common traps that new teachers might fall into when they're trying to account for student needs?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I mean, even the most well-meaning teachers are gonna make plenty of mistakes and little things do add up. I would think about your capacity. Don't over-accommodate to the point of your own resentment or burnout. Remember when you need to refer things on and where things are no longer your responsibility. Don't get stuck being everybody's safe person and everybody's saviour. It will burn you out far too quickly. I would also say be really mindful of not allowing things to feel personal. Don't take things too personally. Some things might be unresolved and you can't resolve everything. I would also really encourage teachers to look at using more private discipline practices rather than public ones, especially if we're coming from a trauma-informed background. You just do not know what that kind of uh public attention is going to do for a young person. So I would really recommend looking at ways to privately and one-on-one deal with discipline where possible.
SPEAKER_07What kinds of changes have you seen in students in classrooms now that you are knowledgeable and more confident with embedding well-being in the classroom?
SPEAKER_09So I think a really big difference in what I see when I approach a classroom environment from more of a well-being lens is instead of seeing a class, a collective, you are more attuned to the individual.
SPEAKER_07I I read a blog by an Australian high school teacher, and she was saying that she decided to embed well-being through an assessment change. So she was a junior high school teacher and she decided she was going to do sort of project-based assessment, and the changes she would make would be to use more flexibility with drafting so kids could have more time to hand it in in different ways. She was going to use rolling feedback instead of just that feedback once you you hand in a draft and you get feedback. So she would use continuous feedback as she went along. And the third thing she did was she built reflections into the task. You wouldn't have to explicitly put it on a task sheet to do something like that.
SPEAKER_09No, and I think another thing that teachers when it comes to reflection, a lot of teachers really want to share lots of beautiful, valuable insight. But a lot of young people are very nervous to share what's inside their mind. You know, they want it to be perfect and right before they'll share it. So when I get students to reflect, I will often reassure them I am not going to make you read this aloud. I am not going to look over your shoulder and say it because I want them to actually reflect for their own sake, not performatively.
SPEAKER_07And that teacher, she said that she did see improvements in academics from those practices. She saw reduced assessment anxiety that the students reported feeling seen and accounted for.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I mean the science does tell us that if we use those inclusive practices and we cater to the nervous system of young people, that they do get better outcomes. They not only get better outcomes at school, but they get better outcomes in life. You know, they bet get better health outcomes, they live longer. Taking care of mental health and well-being in in little small ways has a really, really massive effect.
SPEAKER_07Okay. One thing you would say to teachers that are torn between curriculum pressures and student needs.
SPEAKER_09Those pressures aren't always coming from you. Those pressures are often coming from people above you, and you have expectations that you have to meet. They're not mutually exclusive. And it's not wrong for you to occasionally sort of name that. Say, look, you know, we've got a lot on our plates right now. This is a really stressful time. And in an ideal world, I'd really like to stop and go over that again for everybody because you all missed it. But you know, we're not in a position to do that. You know, I think naming and being honest about the things that are happening.
SPEAKER_07No, I totally agree because I think if you if you bring them in on that, if you're saying, I would love to stop and play that game that we did last week, but we have to get like sort of respectful to the students.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah. And and you've got to have professional boundaries, obviously.
SPEAKER_07But I think if if that's saying I care about what you need. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Yes. And sometimes when you care about what they need, it's not about, again, it's not about making them happy. It's not about making them entertained, which is something I certainly got caught up in in my early years of practice, that being fun and all of that was what was most important. Yeah, sometimes that isn't key, but I think, yeah, acknowledging it is important. All right.
SPEAKER_07The last thing is that we do five quick, rapid-fire one thing questions. So one. What is one thing you stopped doing that made you a better teacher?
SPEAKER_09Worrying about earrings and what kind of socks are being worn. Whether their belt is on.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. What is one thing you heard about at uni, but didn't really understand until you were a practicing teacher?
SPEAKER_09Oh, all the learning that you do about the nervous system is something that I thought was a box ticking exercise in. Understanding developmental stages. And that was completely wrong. Knowing how the brain works is not just for science teachers. Once you know how your body reacts to feelings and being unregulated, you can start to address them much better.
SPEAKER_07Understanding the development of the prefrontal cortex. And then when you're interacting with a teenager actually in real life, and you're like, I can see how you're struggling to self-regulate because your prefrontal cortex.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? And and and you know that you're in flight, fright, flight or freeze right now. Yep. And you need to calm that ventral vagal system with things like breathing, grounding yourself, humming, tapping. It sounds so weird, but though that's what your body and your brain really does.
SPEAKER_07So strange where you hear that all at uni and then all of a sudden you're seeing it right in front of you. Yeah, so so agree. What's one thing in your teaching that you've become more confident about over time?
SPEAKER_09Sitting with students' discomfort because you do have that feeling that you want to make everyone happy and comfortable and help them, and being able to, even if it's just in your mind, to go, I don't I don't know what to do here, or I'm stuck, or this sucks, and to be able to go, I don't have to fix everything.
SPEAKER_07Aaron Powell What is one part of teaching you still find challenging even now?
SPEAKER_09A little bit of the ego element. Because you know students will learn better if they like you. And I think I often have to check myself and say, Am I trying to be fun? And am I trying to be nice? Is that coming at the expense of what's needed? Well-being isn't all about being soft and fluffy. Sometimes it's about having hard boundaries and saying difficult things kindly. I still struggle a bit with that. I still want to be liked and make everybody comfortable, and but that's not always possible.
SPEAKER_07And last one, what is one thing that keeps you in the classroom?
SPEAKER_09Even when teaching got very difficult for me for my own load and during burnout, I know that I am meant to work with young people. And I know I have a lot to offer. Even when I'm messy or disorganized or whatever, I know that it doesn't come down to being perfect. It's being that person in the room. Every single kid needs that one teacher that's their their person that makes them feel like everything's going to be okay. And so that keeps bringing me back, is that I want to be an example. I want to say, hey, look, I'm neurodivergent and look what I've managed to do with my life. Hey, I've struggled with my mental health. Look how I'm managing to work through that now. And you know, I want to pass that on.
SPEAKER_07Well, thank you so much for being with me here at The Learning Curve. Penny, I really appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_09It's been really fun, really cool. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07You've been listening to The Learning Curve, turning education theory into classroom practice. If this episode was useful, follow the podcast and share it with someone else heading into the classroom. You'll find links and resources in the show notes. The Learning Curve is produced by the University of Queensland's School of Education.