Visible Well-being at ISB
A whole school approach that combines the science of wellbeing and the science of learning to help students, teachers and staff to reach their full potential, supported by the SEARCH framework.
Aléxia Matos, Senior Content Coordinator
What is Visible Well-Being?
Over the course of the 2021-22 school year, ISB piloted a program called Visible Wellbeing. Also known as VWB, this whole school approach combines the science of well-being with the science of learning to help teachers, students, and staff to achieve three core goals:
- Clearly see their own and others’ well-being using VWB Practices.
- Systematically build wellbeing using the SEARCH framework.
- Facilitate learning using the VWB Classroom Process.
The Discovery Team at ISB consisted of 30 faculty & staff members who were trained in the SEARCH Framework to bring practical strategies that can enhance well-being across the campus. They attended different courses and had group meetings at the end of each module.
According to Kylie Dazel, ECC Teacher at ISB, these meetings helped the group to "develop more self-awareness and uncover their own definitions of well-being."
" Visible Well-being not only supports a person’s well-being but also their ability to learn, build resilience, and build capacity."
Erin Marsh, Physical Education and Health / Assistant Activities Director
How Does Visible Wellbeing support student learning?
In a period following the consequences of a pandemic and many other challenging events such as climate change and a series of conflicts worldwide, people have been experiencing a series of stressful situations. Even if not witnessing these events in person, children are often faced with remote exposure trauma.
Erin explains that VWB's highly scientific approach provides evidence-based strategies supported by the SEARCH framework. The 6 pathways allow teachers and students to build the capacity to face personal challenges when they appear, which directly contributes to better learning.
" VWB will provide some of the strategies, interaction, guidance, and coaching abilities that allow you to build capacity. We cannot remove life stresses or random changes that happen, whether that is a relationship breakup, financial issues, health scares, climate change, or pandemics. We can’t control any of that, but what the visible well-being framework does is provide you with some personal strategies that will allow you to navigate some of those stresses. People sometimes feel powerless in the face of adversity, but what we will hopefully do is create a common language, with common strategies."
Erin Marsh P.E and Health Teacher
Assistant Director of Activities
6 Pathways to Well-being
The SEARCH framework is an acronym that describes six pathways to help students reach their full potential not only with their mental health, but also socially, physically, and academically.
Strengths
Individuals who recognize their strengths experience less stress and have more energy and happiness in their lives.
Emotional management
This pathway highlights the importance to acknowledge our feelings, whether positive or negative, in order to identify triggers and possible ways to cope with stressful situations.
attention and awareness
Helping students stay present, focusing on themselves and the environment around them. The ability to maintain awareness of where the attention lies is essential to improve both learning and well-being.
Relationships
The sense of belonging strongly contributes to a student's resilience, ability to focus, and happiness. This pathway helps them to develop more positive and strong relationships, work on their self-expression, and also helps them to understand and manage different social aspects of learning.
Coping
This pathway helps students to learn a set of skills that help them to cope with adversity, which is a crucial life skill.
Habits and goals
Helping students to set and work towards their goals by showing them how to break bad habits and replace them with good ones.
"The topic we discussed in our last meeting in small groups was Strengths. Looking at how to highlight the strengths of the people within our community, whether colleagues or our students. Also, taking time to figure out what are our strengths - a task that we do personally at first, and then also with people."
Kylie Dazel, ECC Teacher at ISB
At the end of the school year, the Discovery team worked on a project based on these pathways. The objective is to bring them into the school culture, to their daily practices, and share that as a community at the upcoming Professional Development Days in September. The hope is that more people get trained and that VWB becomes part of the language while demystifying the communication around well-being strategies.
The International School of Brussels is a private school founded in 1951 in Brussels for students grades Pre-K to 12. With over 1350 students from 70 countries, it is this diversity that sets us apart and makes ISB a wonderful home for our families.