New Cairo British International School in Egypt won the Pastoral Initiative at the 2020 International School Awards this January. Deputy Head Tracy Connor explainsthe initiative whichimplementeda daily student check-inٴڴǰto make emotional wellness an everyday practice atthe school.
New Cairo British International School (NCBIS) is anIB world schoolfor725 studentsof 65 nationalitiesaged from 3 to 18.Our initiative all began when weintroduceda mentor teamto support children with their emotional wellness. Wevery quickly noticeda higherlevel of teacher referrals tothementor teamthan we had anticipated. We realised there was a need for student self-referral and early interventions to ensure that our students’social and emotional needs were being met.
We started with ‘I want you to know’ boxes. These werephysical boxes where students were able to post notes about their feelings and needs. We discovered that students were using these boxes daily to tell an adult in school how they felt.
Thisled us to consider more effective ways tocollect andtrack students’emotions and feelings,andtorecord their responses and our reach-outs.Having this datawould mean wecouldidentify students with social and emotional needs, andplan and deliver personalised mentoring programmes forthem.Trackingand monitoringstudent wellbeing,in the same way that academic progress and attainment is tracked,enables us toplan appropriateacademic intervention.
From paper toٴڴǰ
Our initiative developedintoone in whichstudents who were receiving mentoringwereasked to track their feelings against asliding scale of emojis. Thissimple solution provedso effective that weturned the idea into anonlineٴڴǰ.
We selected a developercalled who werealready developinga platform for students. Workingcloselywith thedevelopmentteam at YouHue, we pilotedabasicsolution with ourYear 3students. The children were asked touse theٴڴǰfor a daily check-in,selectingfrom a range ofemojis; from anxious to excited,that reflected how they felt,and adding a comment if they wished.
The pilot gave usachance todiscoverseveral ways in which theٴڴǰcould beimproved. Weworked with the YouHue team, proposingideas and highlighting needs that emerged as we used it.Theٴڴǰenabled us to analyse the data collected andwe found we were able to identify patterns of emotionsfor particularstudentswhich meant we couldaddress social and emotional needs before they had chance to manifestinto more challengingissues. We wereable tolearnabout thechildrenon a more personal level, as well as identify commonstudentneedswhich gave us evidenceto tailoranddevelopour mentoringprogrammes.
Full implementation
The pilot was crucial for the success of the platform that we rolled out to the wider school. We introduced it oneyear group at a time andit is nowan effective initiative useddailythroughout theentireprimary school and into secondary.Alongside the platform, lessons and assembliesteach children how to recognise their ownemotionsand those of others,and howemotionsmanifest themselves in our words and actions.
Everystudenthasat least onechance–and often,more than one chance–to check into the platformeach day.The students feel free and confident to express themselves. They are so familiar with emojis from their mobile phonesthey find iteasy to use themas reliable reflections of their feelings.Cruciallyfor any international school, emojis are a universal language, accessible to all learners regardless of their level of English.At NCBIS we have over 60 different nationalities of students and language is a barrier for some of them. The focus on emojis takes away the language barrier ensuring all our children are free to express themselves.
Tracking and responding
The daily check-inshelp toflag up,and enablestaffto address,theindividualneeds of studentsas they arise.Teachers and TAs are able to see check-ins as they are posted, allowing them to open channels of communication when necessary, helping to remove the barriers to learning that a child may be experiencing.Certain words and emojis, such as ‘bully’ or sad faces, generate immediate alerts to class teachers and the pastoral team, to ensureachild can be supported appropriately on the same day.
Thisis proving to be a positive and safe channel for our students with complex psychological problems. They are able to express and let us know how they feel every day without theconstantpressure of face-to-face conversation,which can be daunting or too invasive for some. Behaviour trends and anomalies help to identify when a one-to-one conversation might be beneficial to help a child feel supported and to give them time andaplace to talk openly.
The system is secure and it’s sustainable. Each child has a passcode that remains with them throughout their time in primary and as they move into secondary school, gathering a longer-term picture of every child’s social and emotional needs, as well as immediate needs. It also lets staff know when a child is feeling happy, helping us to get to know the things that make the child content, helping us to understand our children and their home lives on a deeper level.
Developing an emotional toolkit
The YouHue student check-in has enabled our primary students to develop their emotional literacyandemotional resilience, and is helping them to develop their own toolkits for dealing with the stresses, disappointments and excitements of everyday life. It has helped us tospot patterns and trends in individuals and in groups of students, allowing us to tailor our mentoring programmes to provide individual support or plan for group intervention to children with similar needs.It has helped us to identify social, emotional and behavioural barriers to learning more effectively.It has enabled us to pick up serious safeguarding cases which may have otherwise not have been flagged, as well as enabling us to identify students who would benefit from mentoring programmes and SEL intervention.
Students at NCBIS now know it is OK to not be OK. They feel confident to let us know how they are feeling whether it is positive or negative. The check-in opens up the doors for children to talk.Our recent ISI (BSO) inspection report judged NCBIS as Excellent in pastoral provision and our student check-in has played a fundamental part inthat progress.
I passionately believe that if we each fulfil our role in developing our students’emotional literacy and their individual toolkits for dealing with the ups and downs of everyday life,we will be educating the next generation of global citizens in the most powerful way possible.
Tracy Connor is the former Deputy Head at New Cairo British International School Connect on LinkedIn .
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