HUNTER teachers have been selected to share their expertise at the International Visible Wellbeing Summit, to be held online on Friday.
St James' Primary School Muswellbrook primary coordinator and lead teacher of positive education Eloise Hand said she was "really excited" to present with Scone High student support officer Samantha Cockerill a session on how attendees can deliver a strength based parenting course at their schools.
"COVID has been a prime example of why wellbeing is so important and why kids need resilience and those types of character strengths and understand when to use them and draw on them," she said.
"If they don't like going to school or they don't know how to deal with certain things then they're not going to perform academically.
"It's about the holistic approach to learning and creating that whole child and giving them the skills they're going to need for life."
Ms Hand said Pauline Carrigan's Where There's a Will charity supported every Upper Hunter school to do training in positive education expert Lea Waters AM's Visible Wellbeing program.
Ms Hand said she and Ms Cockerill also put their hands up to do additional training to be able to deliver the Strength Switch Family Facilitation course.
Despite teaching in different sectors and to different age groups, Ms Hand and Ms Cockerill teamed up to deliver two six-week programs to families, with a mix of face-to-face and online sessions.
They delivered one program in Muswellbrook in term three in 2019 and another program in Scone in term four 2019.
"It provides the same knowledge to parents that we're teaching in schools, so that it just doesn't stop in schools it actually gets home to the parents and the parents are using the same kind of language with the children, they understand what character strengths are and how their kids are showing them and when they might be not using them and how they can build on them."
St Mary's Primary at Scone will today receive the Top VWB School Award for the early years learning/primary category.
Other speakers include Newcastle Grammar School's Marnie Thomas and Scone Grammar School's preschool director Kirsty Hails.
