Wellbeing Week Reflections

By Mr A Manley, Head of PSHE
 

 

Mental Health Champions 
As you read this, we are coming to the end of our termly Wellbeing Week in the Prep School. The focus has been on kick-starting our ‘Mental Health Champions’ theme, so that our Year 5s can build upon and lead on this in the Spring Term for the Prep School. There have been two PSHE assemblies, which have focused on normalising Mental Health as something that is a part of everyone. It doesn’t mean that ‘there’s a problem’ and it certainly doesn’t mean it is a ‘bad thing’. In assemblies, the pupils have learned that Mental Health is about experiencing ups and downs, which happen to all of us. The most important thing is to be on the look-out for triggers that may lift and lower our moods. Feelings, friendships, the news, social media, our sleep patterns etc, can all affect how we feel. Thinking and talking about mental health is most definitely not a sign of a weakness. 

The power of listening twice, speaking once cannot be understated. When someone wants to open-up, just saying the words ‘I’m here for you’ can be incredibly powerful, as it can show empathy and builds rapport. Pupils have thought about words and phrases they would use in response to someone confiding in them about mental health, as well as illustrate the activities that they would choose to take part in to look after their own mental health. A couple of their pictures are below. 

Alongside focusing on Mental Health, pupils in Years 2, 4 and 6 can look forward to a visit from the A-Life Healthy Living workshop, where thinking about ways to look after physical health will take centre stage.   

A great job well done by all of the Felsted Team for championing Mental Health. 

PSHE Drop-In 
Wow! A huge thank you to those Felsted families that were able to attend our Drop-in on Wednesday. What a fantastic discussion that we all had and I hope that it provided an opportunity for us to have some really helpful conversations about Online Safety and PSHE in general. I am collating the information that we talked about and I will be in a position to share this in next week’s newsletter for families to read.

In the meantime, I hope that the following contact details are useful to you, should you wish to ask any further questions:

Alex Manley ajlm@felsted.org (Head of Prep School PSHE)
Nicola Sanchez O-Brien prepdsl@felsted.org (Director of Safeguarding) 
Steve Rands and Martin White ictsupport@felsted.org (The ICT Department)
Vikki Machell fpsnurse@felsted.org (Prep Health & Wellbeing Team)