Educator wellbeing for pre-service educators

Hi everyone, I'm Kathryn Hopps and I'm a consultant working on the Be You Mental Health and Well Being in Education initiative and I work for Early Childhood Australia. 

 
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In this recording we're going to be talking about your own mental health and wellbeing, both now as pre service educators and in the future as graduate education professionals. 

 
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In education we spend a lot of time learning about and planning for the wellbeing of children and young people. 

 
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But equally your own mental health and wellbeing matters as a person and as a professional and it's really important for the children and young people that you will care for and educate. 

 
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Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional lands across Australia which were never seeded. 

 
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I'm making this recording here on Ngunnawal in Canberra and I pay my respects to the Ngunnawal Elders and the Elders of the many lands that you're all watching this recording on. 

 
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I'd also like to extend my respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are listening to this recording. 

 
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Reconciliation is a vital part of supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of First Nations people. 

 
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Being proud of who you are and where you come from is key for positive wellbeing, as is belonging, connection to land and family and living a life free from racism. 

 
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Your own emotional safety is really important whilst watching this recording and in discussing and learning about mental health at any time. 

 
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So if anything we talk about today raises uncomfortable feelings or triggers thoughts about past or present experiences, please do what you need to do for your wellbeing, which can include stopping the video and taking a break, or identifying A trusted person you can talk to about this later on. 

 
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Help seeking is a healthy coping strategy and there's always someone you can talk to. 

 
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If you're distressed. 

 
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No matter what time of the day or night, there's someone you can talk to. 

 
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On the screen are a range of helpline numbers. 

 
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If you're already working, you might also have access to an Employee Assistance programme, which is a programme of free counselling. 

 
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And when you graduate, you're likely to be employed in a position as many early childhood schools have EAPs in place. 

 
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They're an excellent free counselling resource. 

 
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Here's a little bit of an outline of where we're going today. 

 
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We're going to discuss some of the foundations of mental health and wellbeing, some really key core concepts. 

 
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We're going to talk about educated wellbeing both at the individual and the workplace level, and how specifically the BU initiative can support educators. 

 
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During or after this recording, you could reflect on what being wellbeing means for you. 

 
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Consider how your wellbeing might influence your work as an educator as well. 

 
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So what is Be You? 

 
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It is the National Mental Health and Education initiative, which is delivered by Beyond Blue in collaboration with Early Child in Australia and Headspace. 

 
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It is a national initiative that's funded by the Australian government. 

 
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So that means it's free for every educator from early learning, primary and secondary school, and including future educators like yourselves. 

 
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Be You supports mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention and critical incident responses. 

 
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The initiative develops educates mental health literacy, providing the knowledge, confidence and skills to promote mental health of children and young people within the boundaries of your roles. 

 
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Our vision is that for every early learning service or school to be a positive, inclusive and a responsive place where every child, young person, educator and family is empowered to achieve their best possible mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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We've got a website with lots of online tools and resources. 

 
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We've also got a team of consultants behind the scenes like me, who can help educators, early learning services in schools implement a whole learning community approach to mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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And because we're funded, both our online resources and tools, as well as the consultant supports are free of cost. 

 
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At the heart of Be You is our content framework, which you can see on the slide. 

 
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I really quite like it, almost looks like a lens. 

 
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It's like having a mental health lens on everything that you do. 

 
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Our framework is organised into 5 domains that are shown on the slide. 

 
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So we've got family partnerships, learning resilience, early support, mentally healthy communities and responding together. 

 
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Within each of those domains, we have free accredited professional learning modules, 16 of those in total, which is worth keeping in mind both for now but also in future to support you to, for example, help you maintain teacher registration or show evidence of professional learning, ongoing continuous professional learning. 

 
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Our modules, as well as our other resources like our events and fact sheets, can help you to build your mental health literacy, to help you support children and young people wherever you're working in the future, and also to care for your own wellbeing. 

 
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If you're starting a teaching qualification, you can check out things like our document where we map Be You to the Professional Learning standards for graduate teachers. 

 
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We're also really well mapped and connected to the National Quality Standard, the Early Years Learning Framework and My Time our place. 

 
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So Be You's not another thing to do, it's actually building your knowledge, skills and confidence to be able to meet these requirements and guiding documents. 

 
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So what is mental health and wellbeing? 

 
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There's lots of different ways that we can define mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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On the slide are just two ways. 

 
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The first one there for wellbeing is around the satisfaction of basic physical, social, emotional and mental health needs to thrive and reach your full potential. 

 
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I sometimes define wellbeing as how you feel about yourself and your life. 

 
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The second definition there of mental health, which is from the World Health Organisation, is the state of mental wellbeing that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn and work well and contribute to community. 

 
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How do you define mental health? 

 
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What are the first few words that spring to mind when you hear the words mental health and wellbeing? 

 
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This is our first really key fundamental concept around mental health that is very much a part of what we try to do is be use initiative for everyone in the community to understand that mental health exists on a continuum. 

 
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So just like physical health, we all have mental health from birth and throughout the life course. 

 
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We go up and down on a continuum through days, weeks, months and years. 

 
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Mental health continuum is on the screen here. 

 
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So at one end we have when you're flourishing, then we've got going, OK, struggling. 

 
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And then at the dark orange, red end. 

 
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This is where your mental health and well being may be severely impacting on your everyday activities. 

 
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It's important to understand that mental health can fluctuate in response to different stressors and experiences throughout life. 

 
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And it's really important to understand that when we're talking about mental health, we're not just talking about mental health issues and conditions. 

 
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We're talking about the holistic concept, just like physical health. 

 
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And the continuum helps us to understand also, even when there are mental health issues and conditions, we can still be flourishing in our mental health, going OK as well as struggling or severely impacting. 

 
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This is a really key concept for your understanding as educators in relation to our own mental health and well being and that of children and young people. 

 
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And it can really help to break stigma around what we're talking about when we're talking about mental health and that it's normal to need support at various times throughout our life, just like we do for physical health. 

 
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Another really fundamental mental health concept that it's important to understand is that of risk and protective factors. 

 
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We have represented risk and protective factors on the screen in like a seesaw or a balance. 

 
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So risk factors are things that lie within us as individuals, our communities, and our broader context, including our workplace, that present risks to our mental health. 

 
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The presence of any one of those risk factors does not necessarily mean that you'll have a mental health issue or condition or that it will negatively impact your mental health. 

 
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However, the idea of risk factors is it's a really good idea to monitor them because as they build up, there's a greater likelihood that we may experience impacts on our mental health. 

 
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And if they're building up, what we can do is enact protective factors in BU will help educators understand their role in supporting children's protective factors and what we can do about risk factors that may be in our control. 

 
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And also having an awareness of those that are outside of our control, thinking about ourselves, some of the risk factors that we might have as preservice educators and or educators when we graduate. 

 
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There are some things about workplaces, education workplaces that can be risk factors such as really high job demands and emotional labour. 

 
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We are supporting children's mental health and wellbeing in our jobs and that can be stressful at times. 

 
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But we can also look at other things like protective factors that we might have. 

 
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So our own social and emotional skills can be protective factors. 

 
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Looking after our physical health absolutely supports our mental health. 

 
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And there may be things to do in the environment that can be protective factors as well, such as if you have a really supportive relationship with your colleagues or your supervisor and manager, that can really help buffer or counterweigh the risk factors that we have as individuals or also in our work. 

 
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This is a really important concept to understand and be able to recognise when risk, what a risk factor is and when they're building up and also what protective factors are and how we might use them to support our mental health and to balance or counter away risk factors. 

 
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So it can be hard at times, but prioritising your wellbeing as a pre-service educator and a graduate educator can actually really help you better care for and educate and support children. 

 
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The number one thing that children need to support their mental health is to have regulated adults around, including their educators. 

 
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You are also a really powerful role model for looking after your wellbeing. 

 
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Children are watching and listening and learning for you about how you take care of yourself and also role model social and emotional skills and resilience. 

 
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And not just when those are on the programme officially, but in your everyday interactions with children and how you talk to yourself as well. 

 
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They can also your mental health and wellbeing can help you build and sustain positive relationships with children, families and educators. 

 
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And those relationships can also form really important protective factors for you. 

 
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We know that educators who have positive relationships with the children and young people, families and colleagues, that's a real protective factor. 

 
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And taking care of your own wellbeing, both outside of work hours or placement hours and whilst you're on the job can really help you manage the challenges of the role of an educator and continue to find joy in working with children and young people. 

 
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Which is why what's drawn probably what's drawn you to studying education in the 1st place. 

 
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There are a lot of challenges, and our mind naturally will focus on the negative things, but supporting our own mental health, we can still notice the joy and the positives every day. 

 
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As it says here on the slide, well supported educators are critical to quality education and care outcomes for children. 

 
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When employers improve providers, service leaders prioritise the wellbeing of their team, they can positively inspire the confidence of all involved. 

 
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And the wellbeing of educators is absolutely key to high quality teaching and learning programmes. 

 
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We can't do that unless we are mentally happy and healthy and well ourselves and it does absolutely. 

 
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Your mental health and wellbeing impacts on, for example, respective and responsive, warm and supportive relationships with children. 

 
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It's very hard to do that if we are not looking after our own wellbeing and having our wellbeing looked after by our colleagues and our employer. 

 
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We actually, we know a lot about educator mental health and wellbeing from research. 

 
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And one of the things that BU did a few years ago was Commission Monash University could conduct a research study on educated wellbeing and they interviewed lots of educators, early learning, primary and secondary education. 

 
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And on the slide here, some of the themes that really came out of the things that contribute to educated wellbeing. 

 
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And we've represented it here like a nested system. 

 
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And there that there are six factors that contribute to educated wellbeing. 

 
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And you'll notice here that most of them are outside of you, the individual. 

 
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So there's some individual factors, you know, such as our characteristics, our traits, our own coping skills, our own dispositions, and the way that we look after our own mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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But there are other things too. 

 
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So our collegial relationships can support our wellbeing, the workplace, culture, leadership, the broader community and also governance and policy. 

 
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So this helps kind of understand that your wellbeing is both an individual responsibility and a collective responsibility as well. 

 
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And that there's these layers that support or on the flip side may present as risk factors to our wellbeing. 

 
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In this next little part, we're going to talk about individual strategies for caring for your own wellbeing. 

 
16:46 
So focusing on that middle circle, I'm going to talk through some individual wellbeing strategies and you can actually see those in the slide. 

 
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But I'd first like to talk to you about stress because stress can actually be a small amount of stress can actually help us perform in our roles. 

 
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There's a little bit of pressure, I suppose in in being an educator or being a teacher in that role and can actually be a positive influence. 

 
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So not all stress is necessarily bad, but some things can start to cause some signs and symptoms in our bodies. 

 
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It's a bit more negative amount of stress and being self-aware of what the signs and symptoms are in ourself is really important. 

 
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There are lots of things that you could do for your wellbeing and we've got some, This comes from one of our posters that we have in BU. 

 
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So taking care of your mental health and wellbeing with Be You. 

 
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So learning how to manage stress in positive ways is really important. 

 
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We'll have a little look at an educated wellbeing plan later on where you can list those things. 

 
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One of the things that you can do as a proactive strategy to support your wellbeing is having an upholding boundaries and we'll go into that a little bit later. 

 
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Building your own mental health literacy, which is what BU does, is really important thing too. 

 
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So know what mental health is, what risk and protective factors are, what's within the realm of your control, what sort of strategies you can use is really supportive of your wellbeing. 

 
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Nurturing those positive collegial relationships and connections is a support for your wellbeing. 

 
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And asking for feedback and debriefing together is also a support. 

 
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And we've got there like there will be times where asking for help is really important. 

 
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So knowing when, how and who to ask for help. 

 
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That might be with ordinary things of the job, but it also can be when you're not feeling OK or feeling very stressed in your role. 

 
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On the slide there we've got things like scheduling time for yourself. 

 
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This can be hard to do to prioritise your wellbeing, but as I said earlier on, the children and young people are depending on us to do that, so making it a priority is important. 

 
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We've also got in the slide there a couple of things there such as challenging negative or unhelpful thoughts. 

 
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So being self aware when they come up and having ways to manage those. 

 
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A very practical strategy which may not immediately spring to mind as a wellbeing strategy that you can use is actually around self-compassion. 

 
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We've got some excellent resources on our website about this. 

 
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We won't have time to go into a lot of depth, but I will provide some general information here. 

 
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So when we're self aware, we can actually pick up in ourselves when we're not being kind to ourselves. 

 
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So self compassion, Dr Kristin Neff actually defines it really well. 

 
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It's treating yourself as kindly as you would a really good friend or in education, I'd really like to think about it, is treating yourself as kindly as you would a child in your class or your group when they're finding things really hard. 

 
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So there are three elements of self compassion that doctor Kristin Neff. 

 
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Talks about, they are like I've just said, about being kind to yourself rather than really the self judgement and self harsh criticism. 

 
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You know when you make a mistake, something doesn't go quite right. 

 
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For example, in the classroom, rather than lots of negative thoughts going around in your mind, you're really kind to yourself. 

 
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Another part of that is called common humanity. 

 
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So as a teacher or educator, you could remind yourself of like everyone feels like this sometimes. 

 
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So if you're new out, then say I'm, you know, lots of new teachers experience this too. 

 
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It's not just me. 

 
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Everyone feels like this sometimes. 

 
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Another part of self compassion is being mindful of the thoughts and feelings that come up in the 1st place and actually acknowledging them. 

 
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There's that thought again of around. 

 
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I should have done that better, but not hooking on to that thought and letting it pass and being mindful, giving it a little bit of space. 

 
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Yes, I am feeling really disappointed that that lesson or that learning experience didn't go the way that I planned, but that's OK. 

 
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And I'm going to take a couple of positive points away and move on. 

 
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So not over identifying with the negative thoughts and feelings about them, but acknowledging them. 

 
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And yeah, being really kind to yourself. 

 
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It can really support your wellbeing to put a light on your thoughts and feelings and be aware, particularly when something doesn't quite go right and the harsh self-criticism thoughts start coming into your mind. 

 
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I should have done that, but I should have been more prepared. 

 
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I should have known that that was going to happen and replacing it. 

 
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That's OK. 

 
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Didn't quite go right. 

 
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I'm going to learn from it and I'll be able to make some changes for next time. 

 
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This can really help you, as it says on the slide, to be positive and optimistic, particularly about being a beginning educator or teacher, and also can help you to set boundaries and make good decisions. 

 
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Including boundaries around how much time you think you spend thinking over and going over the things that didn't quite go right, and perhaps even spending an equal amount of time of what went really well today. 

 
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So in practise, self-compassion can involve those three elements that I talked about. 

 
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It's also about knowing your strengths and limitations and having reasonable expectations on yourself, recognising early signs of stress and actioning them, acknowledging your limits and being kind to yourself about those limits. 

 
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Reflecting on how you process and learning from challenges and mistakes and recognising how you respond to stress and regulating your emotions. 

 
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So having positive coping strategies to address those things. 

 
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Learning about mental health and your own mental health and well being can be really helpful to take some time to think about what are your stress behaviours and triggers. 

 
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So on the slide here, we're utilising a process that we use in BU for a number of things, but this for this one, we're using it to recognise stress. 

 
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So stop, reflect and act. 

 
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So when you notice that you're feeling stressed, you can just stop for a moment and think about those stress behaviours or signs and symptoms and these can be physical, emotional, behavioural manifestations of stress and acknowledge them. 

 
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I'm noticing that I've got a stress rash on my neck or I'm noticing that my tummy feels a bit grumbly. 

 
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I'm noticing that I'm a little bit irritable and short with the people around me. 

 
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And then the reflect part of this process help you recognise well what's triggered that behaviour. 

 
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Well, it's been a really busy day. 

 
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We've had a lot on. 

 
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I've had to change things last minute, things didn't go to plan. 

 
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So actually recognising those triggers, perhaps also didn't have a great sleep last night, actually didn't get time to eat my lunch. 

 
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So recognising the stress ores that have led to feeling these triggers and also the act, you know, what can I do now? 

 
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What are some protective factors and some proactive and reactive strategies that I can use for this? 

 
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So they might be asking for help for a colleague, they might be scheduling that time for some physical activity or some art and creativity or something that helps you to feel good. 

 
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And it could be being self-compassionate, having some really good empowered boundaries or other stress management strategies. 

 
25:12 
So stop, reflect and act. 

 
25:21 
I mentioned a couple of times about healthy boundaries. 

 
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Now boundaries are really, really important for educators because we have very, very demanding jobs and we can find ourselves even thinking about work a lot when we're not at work. 

 
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So there are boundaries around ourselves and there are also boundaries about what we give to others, boundaries ourselves about how much we give to work, and boundaries ourselves in terms of our personal resources that we give to the job or other people. 

 
25:54 
We have a brilliant recording on our website by Doctor Rebecca Ray, and this quote is from Doctor Ray. 

 
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Around boundaries are the kindest things that we can offer each other to thrive, both personally and professionally. 

 
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Boundaries are your circles of self-preservation, empowerment. 

 
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They are how you can keep doing what you do for the humans whose worlds you help define. 

 
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So for the children and young people that we work with. 

 
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And Doctor Ray talks about a giving tank. 

 
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This is about a tank of where your personal resources are stored. 

 
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They're your time, they're your energy, they're your creativity, your emotional availability, mental energy, all those kinds of things. 

 
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And considering first how much you have in that tank before you say yes or give more to your job or to other people. 

 
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And Doctor Ray talks about that. 

 
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That given tank is finite. 

 
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It's not never ending. 

 
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It does need replenishing by the things that we do for our mental health and well being. 

 
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But what we can do is give a mindful yes to things and a protective no is what a Rebecca Ray talks about. 

 
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And that can be with other people. 

 
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And that's quite challenging when you're new graduate educator or a pre-service educator when people ask you to do things and you feel like actually, I've got a lot on at the moment and I can't do that right now. 

 
27:26 
But it is really important skill to develop. 

 
27:30 
It's also important to develop to have boundaries with yourself, for example, thinking about work and children and families when you're not at work and allowing yourself time to rest and rejuvenate and putting even boundaries around how much time you spend doing that. 

 
27:50 
So boundaries are one of the resources that we can use to develop professional resilience. 

 
27:58 
And professional resilience doesn't mean that you're invincible, as it says on the slide. 

 
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It means that you have a tank of strengths to draw on that can help you manage stress and challenges. 

 
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It doesn't mean always coping, OK. 

 
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There's lots of skills and things that you can do to build your professional resilience. 

 
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And we really want teachers and educators to be sustained in this profession. 

 
28:20 
So taking some time, for example, to intentionally plan, have a wellbeing plan is a really great thing to do. 

 
28:28 
It can help to accept that work has its challenges and be able to navigate and recover from those stressors and setbacks, particularly early in your career. 

 
28:40 
Another important source of professional resilience is that adaptability. 

 
28:44 
Being able to adapt to change. 

 
28:46 
There's lots of changes in education and being able to be flexible and adaptable is really a helpful skill. 

 
28:54 
Being optimistic and having a positive outlook is a source of resilience as well and your approach to solving problems, just like we will when we're working with children, actually for our own mental health and wellbeing. 

 
29:08 
It's a really great skill for resilience. 

 
29:11 
You know, being able to accept constructive feedback and having a growth mindset towards change and transitions and learning new things is a great resource. 

 
29:22 
We've touched on self-compassion as a resource for resilience, also being very aware of how the things that help you to regulate emotions and also role modelling that for children is a source of professional resilience. 

 
29:38 
And the last stop points there is really important. 

 
29:40 
So particularly with problem solving, if you're using problem solving coping strategies, those ones are best to address things that were in the realm of your control, things you can actually do something about. 

 
29:53 
There's also lots of things in our jobs, in our lives that are out of our control. 

 
29:58 
So they might need other coping strategies such as accessing to counselling or talking to someone you know, acknowledging the feelings, using self-compassion. 

 
30:16 
So this is a little bit of a summary slide you can build on your problem-solving skills to utilise them for your own resilience. 

 
30:23 
Teachers and educators are great problem solvers. 

 
30:26 
You can create wellbeing goals and walk towards them. 

 
30:29 
It can be. 

 
30:29 
I am going to prioritise some dedicated time for my well being every week. 

 
30:37 
You can practise a positive mindset and focus on things you control. 

 
30:40 
And that doesn't mean to discount the challenges and have toxic positivity, but it can be OK. 

 
30:47 
This thing is really difficult right now. 

 
30:50 
I'm going to talk to someone about it, but I'm also going to have a look at the and continue to look at the joy and the positives in my job as well. 

 
31:00 
And a huge source of resilience is seeking support from colleagues or also other trusted individuals, asking for help and reaching out to trusted people when things are stressful, and it could benefit you from talking about them. 

 
31:20 
So we've talked about individual strategies for your own wellbeing and we're just going to switch gears now and explore a holistic approach to educated wellbeing that we mentioned a little bit earlier with the Monash research around the different contributors. 

 
31:39 
That research from Monash found that things like leadership, positive workplace culture, respectful and collegial relationships have a big influence on individual educator wellbeing. 

 
31:52 
And it's really important to understand that your own mental health and wellbeing is a shared responsibility. 

 
32:00 
It is both an individual educator's responsibility to care for their mental health and wellbeing, but it's also your colleagues and your employer's responsibility to care for your mental health and wellbeing as well. 

 
32:13 
The National Mental Health Commission says that there are three pillars to mentally healthy workplaces, so they are protect, promote and respond. 

 
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And Protect is around protecting workers from mental health risks, Promote is around promoting the positive aspects of the work and Respond is responding to people experiencing distress or mental health difficulties in the workplace. 

 
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So we workplaces need all three of those to best support the mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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When you're coming to the near the end of your course and you're looking for employment, or perhaps you're already employed, you can actually make some informed choices about where you work based on how that place approaches and focuses on mental health and wellbeing. 

 
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This may not be something that you've thought about or an angle that you've thought about before, but before before applying for jobs, you might like to research the early learning service or school. 

 
33:23 
You might like to ask people that already work there. 

 
33:26 
You can gather information from your network, and you can find out what you can about the organisation culture and approach to wellbeing. 

 
33:34 
There's some prompts on the slides here around. 

 
33:38 
So what do you know about their approach to mental health being wellbeing? 

 
33:41 
What does that information tell you about the organisation culture and does the organisation and your values align? 

 
33:52 
That's a really important one because often where there are values conflict it can be really stressful and impact on your wellbeing. 

 
33:59 
So trying to find out what the values are of an organisation is a really good idea. 

 
34:10 
When you're preparing for interviews, I wonder if you've ever thought about taking in questions of your own. 

 
34:17 
You could ask how the organisation prioritise wellbeing, are there wellbeing policies or practises or initiatives and how do they support the whole learning community. 

 
34:30 
Quite a good question to ask about how you would describe the workplace culture and also asking about leadership styles as well. 

 
34:39 
So these kind of questions give you really great indications about what kind of workplace it is in relation to the focus on mental health and wellbeing. 

 
34:47 
And in terms of research that we that we have already about things that support educators, mental health and wellbeing workplaces that do have policies and processes and initiatives and resources and allocate time to, for example, building mental health literacy, supporting wellbeing planning have a focus on mental health and wellbeing we do know are supportive of mental health outcomes. 

 
35:21 
Here are some other questions you might think about asking. 

 
35:26 
How are professional relationships and collaborations nurtured? 

 
35:30 
How is well being promoted? 

 
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Is there mentoring and coaching available, especially for new educators? 

 
35:38 
And what does your induction process look like? 

 
35:42 
We know that educators and teachers who feel supported experience much better mental health and well-being in their professional roles, so asking these questions can give you really important clues about whether the organisation is a mentally healthy workplace. 

 
36:05 
A little bit of a recap here of some fundamental concepts and also some areas that we've covered. 

 
36:12 
Mental health exists on the continuum, and it's influenced by both personal and environmental risk and protective factors. 

 
36:20 
The wellbeing of educators and children and young people are interrelated. 

 
36:28 
Educated wellbeing is both about individual self-care and organisational support. 

 
36:35 
It's a collective responsibility. 

 
36:39 
You can practise effective wellbeing strategies that can work for you. 

 
36:44 
You can also make some informed choices when implying and interviewing for roles to make value based decisions. 

 
36:53 
And you can also use BU, the National Mental Health and Education Initiative, to support you. 

 
37:06 
We're now going to have a little look at the BU website and some specific resources like our BU Well Being Plan and our Preservice Educator's Handbook. 

 
37:19 
Our website is located at beyou.edu dot AU. 

 
37:24 
We're going to hop over here to the Get Started menu and you'll see that we have a dedicated page for preservice educators. 

 
37:37 
On this page, you'll find a link to the Preservice Educator Handbook, which you can download and even print off as a PDF. 

 
37:48 
Here's what the handbook looks like. 

 
37:50 
I'm just going to Scroll down to show you some links to some key guiding documents which I mentioned earlier on this page. 

 
38:05 
Page 5. 

 
38:06 
What are the ways I can get involved? 

 
38:09 
You'll find 4 documents where with map BU framework and domains to the National Quality Standard, the Early Years Learning Framework, My Time, Our Place and the Australian Professional Standards for Graduate teachers. 

 
38:26 
Going to have a look at a couple of these documents now. 

 
38:33 
We've taken the time to map BU to the National Quality Standard and one of my favourite ones is our Learning Resilience domain, which is mapped to a range of quality areas, but in particular Quality Area 5 relationships with children. 

 
38:51 
And one of my ones that I really like to focus on a lot is 5.2 point two, children's self-regulation. 

 
39:00 
So this is around supporting children to learn how to regulate their emotions and behaviours. 

 
39:05 
And at BU we've got lots of really fabulous resources, including a webinar on that topic, which can help you support children's learning resilience. 

 
39:19 
Here's our document where we have mapped BU to the Australian Professional Standards for Graduate Teachers and you can see that BU is really well connected to Standard 1234 and 7. 

 
39:36 
Can hop back over to the website now and I'm going to show you some resources we have specifically to support your wellbeing. 

 
39:44 
Under the resources menu, you can see that we have a dedicated page. 

 
39:52 
On this page I'm just going to Scroll down to show you some links off to some really useful tools. 

 
39:58 
We're going to go into here, the Wellbeing tools for educators. 

 
40:02 
This page has got a bunch of really useful things including fact sheets, evidence based strategies like mindfulness, and down the bottom here we've got self care tools and articles. 

 
40:20 
You'll actually find where you can access and even print out the support helplines graphic that we showed earlier in this recording. 

 
40:27 
And we've got a pair of wellbeing planning templates for educators and for preservice educators. 

 
40:35 
I'm going to have a look at this one now. 

 
40:46 
Here's the Be You wellbeing plan for preservice educators, and I'm actually going to show you that this resource is editable. 

 
40:56 
So I've gone ahead in here and started to fill it out for myself. 

 
40:59 
So the first part's around focusing on your strengths and encouraging you to utilise these strengths to address challenges. 

 
41:07 
I put some of my strength here such as being optimistic, persistent and determined, good problem solver, self-compassion and a growth mindset. 

 
41:20 
And you'll see down here on our next page, Page 3, we're encouraging you to think about how you can leverage those strengths to address challenges. 

 
41:29 
If I've listed 2 strategies, kindness to self, you know when things are hard, I speak to myself like I would a child in my class with encouraging words rather than harsh criticism and optimism. 

 
41:41 
I know that things won't always be this hard. 

 
41:44 
This will pass and will be different and better in a few days, weeks or months. 

 
41:50 
We've got a section here for you to note the warning signs of stress and burnout for yourself. 

 
41:54 
This is really important so that you can intervene really early with some proactive strategies. 

 
41:59 
I've listed some of my signs here, including irritability and fatigue. 

 
42:03 
We've got room here to list actions you can take to support yourself. 

 
42:12 
So I've got some exercise based ones, some talking ones, some art, creativity and also accessing counselling through my EAP. 

 
42:24 
And on the last page we actually help you to think about one of the things you can do that support your own wellbeing and that of your colleagues. 

 
42:32 
So I've popped in here. 

 
42:34 
One particular strategy is walk in the yard to Daybreak with a colleague. 

 
42:38 
Walking is very regulating and also Co regulating to be with someone else and do that and talk about something that you might have found challenging that day or week. 

 
42:47 
And you can see the support services at the bottom of this page. 

 
42:51 
You can also write in there. 

 
42:53 
If you have access to an employee assistance programme, you can put the details in there. 

 
42:57 
I'm going to hop back over to the website and I'm just going to show you the types of things that you can access if you do have a website login. 

 
43:08 
And as I said, it's easy to register. 

 
43:10 
Just create your free account by following the register button and when you're logged in, registration is of course free. 

 
43:20 
This is what it looks like in your dashboard, and this is where you'll find our 16 professional learning modules. 

 
43:27 
You'll receive certificates for completion, and the website will monitor your progress in terms of it will remember where you finished off in your last session and bring you back to that spot and all know which ones that you've completed and which ones that you can do next. 

 
43:44 
Those modules take anywhere between an hour and a couple of hours to complete. 

 
43:48 
But if you have a little bit shorter time than that to engage in professional learning about mental health, we've got micro learning topics and these are between 10 and 15 minutes. 

 
44:00 
They have short, very short video, some summaries of key information, some quizzes. 

 
44:06 
And yeah, they're a very popular resource on our website right now. 

 
44:12 
So that ends our little website tool. 

 
44:15 
Hop on our website, have a little plane, explore for yourself, create a login and you'll find that we've got lots and lots of mental health literacy building resources for you both as a pre-service educator as well as when you graduate. 

 
44:38 
So coming to the end of our recording today and I really encourage you to learn a little bit more about BU, the National Mental Health and Well Being and education initiative. 

 
44:48 
You can register just as an individual for a login where you can do our professional learning modules. 

 
44:54 
There is also the option for whole schools or early learning services to register for VU and that's how they can particularly access our consultant support and further leadership tools and resources. 

 
45:08 
You can also follow us on social media. 

 
45:10 
So that's a really easy way to keep mental health in mind. 

 
45:17 
Thank you very much everyone and I wish you all the best in continuing your studies as an educator and also for when you graduate and are out there working as a teacher and educator and supporting the mental health and wellbeing of a generation of young Australians.