For a service or school that is new to Be You, moving forward can be potentially daunting. Here are some tips to make it happen:
Learn more
The first step is to learn more about Be You. What is Be You? Why register Be You? How can Be You work for you?
The Educator Handbooks provide a great overview of how educators can get the most out of Be You, what resources are available, and how to get started.
Introduce
Now you are ready to share what you know about Be You with your team. You may like to start by attending a virtual Be You event (as an individual or in a group). These events explore key topics in mental health and wellbeing and how they relate to a whole learning community approach to implementing change. Alternatively, encourage educators to explore resources such as Be You Fact Sheets or Wellbeing Toolkits.
Commit
Once everyone has looked at Be You, reflect as a team how you can develop awareness of and promote the importance of mental health and wellbeing in your learning community. Our Implementation Tools can help you along the way.
The Be You Statement of Commitment (which your Action Team Leader can access) can help Action Teams raise awareness about the importance of taking a whole learning community approach to promoting positive mental health. The Statement is also a great way to introduce Be You to families in your learning community.
Access
This step addresses how and where to access Be You. You can encourage colleagues to sign up as individuals, or your team can register as a Be You learning community to consider a whole setting approach. This facilitates an increase in collective knowledge and overall educator expertise.
Familiarise
Familiarising educators with the Be You website, dashboard and their contents is a useful step. It helps to generate motivation to actively engage in the Be You. Action Team leaders can pin professional learning modules and individual resources to their learning community member dashboards to guide group learning.
Lead
Leadership is one of the fundamental foundations for success in a Be You community. As the Action Team leader, identify other educators to help in implementing the whole learning community approach.
Use the existing expertise among staff. This can be as simple as asking an educator who is passionate about mental health and wellbeing in their community.
Think Solutions
Thinking through the potential risks and challenges helps maximise your ability to launch, commit and sustain the Be You learning and develop professional resilience.
You can use reflective questions to inform this process such as:
- How will we make time?
- What supports will we need?
- How will we grow and nurture a culture of collective responsibility?
And remember, you can always contact us if you need further support.
Correct at time of publishing.
