WellAhead is a philanthropic initiative that aims to improve child and youth mental health by integrating social and emotional wellbeing into K-12 education. They are focused on long-term change — shifting culture, structures, priorities, and practices of schools and the education system at-large to better incorporate social and emotional wellbeing as a key role.
With the renewed physical health and education (PHE) K-9 curriculum, there has been limited support for teachers in particular. WellAhead heard from teachers that they struggle to find resources, though teaching new and uncomfortable subjects may also be a factor. The seven new content PHE areas are: healthy relationships, mental wellbeing, healthy behaviour, healthy eating, media awareness and personal safety, physical literacy, and sexual health.
CHALLENGE
The WellAhead team and DashBC saw the value in applying a user-centred design approach and team to work with BC’s top PHE teachers. Harmonesse was chosen to facilitate this approach, working to train the teachers in a series of co-design workshops. They created a brief around co-creating a set of insights and ideas to inform the design of quality, free PHE resources that meet teachers’ diverse needs, along with easy ways to access and share them.
INSIGHTS
Harmonesse facilitated 6 days of workshops to get to the bottom of how students could benefit from quality PHE resources, providing the teachers with easy access and sharing them. Using a variety of system change, design thinking, and design research techniques, teachers were empowered to draw insight and generate ideas from interviewing and working with their peers.
From the interviews, a few insights such as PHE teachers needing simple and accessible resources, how they were uncomfortable leading mental and sexual health curricula, and how like-minded organizations had limited awareness of each other’s work arose, inspiring discussions around possible solutions.
SOLUTION
Ten quality resource principles were created including principles such as: aligning with curriculum core competencies, being evidence-based and teacher-vetted, up-to-date, and having age-appropriate content. Three teams of PHE teachers from K-12 developed concepts to address the pain points across all BC teachers. The developed concepts included online resources, free courses, and a mentor network where each team took on a concept to create a ‘concept ecosystem’.
The diversity of stakeholders from across the ecosystem including government, not-for-profit, school boards, and teachers came together to listen to the final presentation, taking part in bringing the concepts to life through new collaborations and alignment.
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