A radical experiment to identify scopes to place well-being at the center of education system

Does our overall education system properly address the connection between mental and physical health? 1.5 years of Prolonged school closure due to COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of students. This scenario has largely been reflected in recent research conducted by BIGD and PPRC Livelihood survey, which states that top two concerns among parents and guardians are motivation loss (59%) and learning loss (48%) of their children. The need for mainstreaming wellbeing into improving the school outcomes has never been so largely felt during this pandemic.

The Experiment:

A two-month long rapid prototype has been designed and experimented at 3 BRAC operating schools in Mymensingh, Gazipur and Cumilla with a core objective of understanding the right approaches and activities to integrate well-being into the overall school system. The interventions were largely focused on raising awareness about the need for mental, physical and environmental well-being among two key stakeholders: students and teachers. Almost 100 students and 30 teachers participated in this experiment for 2 months. BRAC Social Innovation Lab, in association with BRAC Education Programme and BRAC Institute of Educational Development, carried out this intervention as part of RewirED emerging sandbox experiments.A s part of RewirED global education summit, Radicle has co-designed six “RewirEd Provocations” that are ideas to address some of the complex and structural challenges in education. One of these provocations is “wellbeing in education” in which the BRAC SIL team participated as the experiment lead. These experiments have 2 components: Amar Golpo(My Story) and Online Teacher Training.

Amar Golpo(My Story)- An Activity-based Journal:

An activity-based journal book was designed, called “Amar Golpo,” (My story) for Grade-4 students that aims to help students reflect on their emotional state and understand the nuances of taking care of mental, physical, and environmental wellbeing. We introduced this journal to 100 students from 3 schools. This well being journal has been divided into 3 core segments:

1. Activity-based lessons were included to teach students about 3 dimensions of well-being, namely mental well-being, physical well-being and environmental well-being. Students were taught about the connection between mind and body. Students were also given tools to apply different self-care strategies to regulate their emotional and behavioral outcomes during the time of stress and emotional breakdown.

2.The importance of maintaining healthy food habits, hygiene, sleep, exercise and water intake were taught in class through storytelling and small group discussions. The journal contains a habit tracker to help them track their daily water and nutritious food intake, along with emotion, sleep and exercise trackers.

3.Creative segment in the journal also consists of blank pages to be kept for personal diary. Also, there were creative writing spaces along with mandala and free hand drawing pages.

With this experiment, we tried to closely observe what should be the ideal curriculum of the journal and exact areas of intervention to ensure the well-being of the students in school and family environment. This journal has been shared with 100 students and we have conducted weekly activities separately on mental, physical and environmental well-being to understand how students are responding to such activities. A revised journal book will be designed with a digital user manual guide to help teachers and students to do the activities at their own pace.

Teacher Training:

For teachers, we designed psychosocial training sessions in collaboration with BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BIED). Almost 30 teachers virtually attended 4 training sessions on how to maintain their personal well-being. Oftentimes the wellbeing of teachers’ gets less importance in such training, as the core focus remains on teaching techniques. We took a different approach by trying to create a trusted space for the teachers to open up their inner feelings, and receive counseling support from experts and their peers. This experiment helped us to learn many key ingredients to design a comprehensive teacher module on well-being, and also understanding the role of teachers in experimenting with the journal book.

The Need for Holistic Approach:

One of the unique features of this experiment was taking a holistic approach of addressing well-being from the perspective of students, teachers and school infrastructure. Through this prototyping experience, we have identified some key insights in designing what works and what doesn’t in designing the appropriate tools, journals, and finding the right mediums for training students and teachers. Building on the granular insights gained from this experiment, we aim to design a holistic intervention to create a safe space for delivering well being-centric education. Another key aspect of this intervention was to test this model in rural and peri-urban context where there is a big gap in understanding the concept of well-being and mental health.

Key Observations:

-There is lack of awareness about the connection between body and mind and also seeking psychosocial support among teachers and students in low-resource settings

-Teachers are bogged down with administrative tasks. Their approaches are largely focused on ensuring academic progress and improving students performance.

-School infrastructure needs reform such as wellness corners, play area, creative zones, indoor and outdoor gardens, digital connectivity, and proper washroom facilities

Key Insights and Recommendations:

-Well-being interventions should not be designed with a one-size-fits-all approach rather it has to be contextually relevant for schools with a different range of resources and designed considering the diverse persona of the students.

-Teacher training curriculum needs to be designed with teachers, taking into consideration their local context and everyday challenges. A bottom approach is key to make the training module effective and user-friendly.

-A range of tools for teacher training curriculum needs to be developed. Teachers should not be imposed to follow specific activities in school- rather they should offer many relevant and practical tools so that they can apply it based on their interest and convenience.

-A nurturing environment in schools needs to be created for students to understand resilience, practice gratitude, and self-care activities. Such an environment will also help them identify emotions triggered from traumas or emotions as a coping mechanism.

-Measuring the outcomes of well-being interventions is an integral part of mainstreaming well-being in our education system. An integrated approach of combining proper teacher training, relevant tools and techniques, and school infrastructure design is key to defining core outcome indicators from the perspective of students. A well-being index can be designed to generate more evidence on the best practices of well-being.

The existing education system needs a systemic shift to place well-being at the center of our education system- investing in tools and infrastructures for individual and collective care.