​On Tuesday evening we were delighted to have hundreds of parents and teachers from Scots and the wider community join us for a special ScotsIdeas conversation, ‘Helping Children to Deal with Stress and Uncertainty’.

Guest panelists included well-known psychologist and author Andrew Fuller, ‘Digital Nutrition’ pioneer and clinical psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, and Wellington College (UK) Deputy Head David Walker. They addressed a wide range of topics based on questions from attendees, including using technology well, engaging with frustrating behaviour, building relationships while remote, and supporting children to talk through their anxieties and aspirations.

Key take-away messages included:

• Be curious, not furious. It’s easy to respond to frustration with more frustration. Take a step back back and recognise your own emotional and physical state.
• When boys express frustration in poor behaviour, ask ‘What’s happening?’ Use the HALTS acronym to ask: Are you... Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? Stressed?
• Use this unique time to talk with your children about what kind of world we want to create for the other side of the pandemic. Engage them in thinking about making a meaningful contribution to the world, and stimulate projects to support this.
• This is a pandemic, not a productivity contest. Don’t stress about students falling behind during the pandemic. Stimulate executive functioning skills like memory and self-regulation by building good daily and weekly rituals and routines as a family.
• Take an interest in your son's gaming habits, by having a go yourself!
• When wearing different hats as a parent (parent, teacher, coach), it’s important to frame this for children. ‘Now it’s time for learning’, ‘Now it’s mummy time. Shall we go for a walk?’

We are looking forward to continuing to work with Andrew Fuller through our partnership with Skodel, a unique wellbeing platform developed by Scots Old Boys Julian Fagan and Ian Fagan. In Term 4 we will be introducing the wellbeing check-in tool with our staff and Senior School students, and expanding our care coaching into 2022.

For more information about ScotsIdeas please click here.

"Countries must learn how to capitalise on their citizens' cognitive resources if they are to prosper, both economically and socially. Early interventions will be key."

Quoting a recent publication in Nature, eminent thinker Professor Ian Hickie AM opened our recent ScotsIdeas forum, Beyond Mental Health, with this provocation. As he explored the unique developmental differences between individual young people, and the value and importance of 'kin' - networks of relationships within communities who are invested in that individual's care and flourishing - it was the nature of such interventions that characterised much of his subsequent discussion. As those in attendance will testify, the evening offered an important and timely exchange of ideas about the ways we can best care for the social and emotional wellbeing of our young men.


The video of Professor Hickie's presentation is now available online - please click here to view it in full. It was a true privilege to have such world class thinkers contributing to our knowledge and practice as a College community, particularly as we look to create the first of our five Patribus Centres, focusing on the character and care of fine young men.


Be sure to visit scotsresearch.org/scotsideas to watch videos of past forums on topics ranging from sustainability to speechmaking, sports science to the art of motivating boys. We look forward to seeing you at future ScotsIdeas events in 2017.


Dr Caitlin Munday
Research Fellow (Professional Learning)

How do we engage boys in transformative learning experiences? That is the question every teacher at Scots asks every day as we seek to bring out the best in our boys and form them into fine young men. To help us create rigorous, reflection-rich learning designs connected to real-world practices and places, the College has been developing its own model of Experiential Education in line with our Strategic Intent 2015-2025.
 
Last week a number of teachers from across all areas of the College had the opportunity to encounter, understand and begin to apply Experiential Education (or ‘ExpEd’) practices at a special workshop conducted by the Glengarry Leadership Team and the Scots Research Centre. Staff began the day in the blackness of the basement of the Main Building, simulating the caving activity boys undertake at Glengarry. They were guided through a modified version of the Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle – framing, immersion, direct debriefing, bridge-building and assimilating – and shown how an outdoors experience such as caving can be powerfully connected to other curriculum areas, discussing Plato’s conception of the cave and listening to poetry on the nature of darkness and light in Christian formation.
 
Staff then participated in interactive sessions exploring the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of ExpEd at Scots, before exploring ways of embedding it in their own practice. Hearing from exemplars such as Mr Phil Atkinson’s Year 9 Mathematics Fishing Hike, Year 10 Australian Business Week and the Vanuatu Mission Trip, we had the opportunity to imagine the rich possibilities for transformative learning experiences which we could provide for our boys. A number of pilot programs are now taking shape to test and refine our model of ExpEd, while wider training and conference programs are being developed to further enrich our collective understanding of ExpEd. 

On Thursday 14 May a full Coote Theatre enjoyed hearing distinguished athletes, doctors and coaches reflect on the relationship between sport and holistic development at Sports Science: A ScotsIdeas Demonstration and Discussion. Drawing on the College’s extensive sports science research links with major universities and sporting programs, Mr Tenzing Tsewang, Director of Sports Science, brought together an exceptional panel which included: Dr John Orchard, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney and physician for top teams including Cricket NSW and the Blues State of Origin team; Dr Carmel Harrington, Managing Director of Sleep for Health and Honorary Research Fellow at the Children's Hospital Westmead; Dr Stephen Cobley, Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences at the University of Sydney; and Mr Brian Smith, Director of Rugby at Scots, a Wallaby in the 1986 Bledisloe Cup and 1987 World Cup, and a highly experienced coach. 

The panel discussed the questions guests had submitted on such topics as the relationship between sport and academic performance, the sleep needs of young people, the challenges and opportunities for boys keen on pursuing a career in sport or sport-related industries (including the growth of ‘big data’ analysis in coaching), and the importance of ‘playing the long game’ in looking after your body and not over-training. 

Guests at the evening also enjoyed the opportunity to see the College’s first-class sports science facilities and hear from researchers and students about the way research (often by Scots boys using their own maturation data) is shaping our approach to injury management, the relationship between body and brain, and the nature of adolescent development.

To watch footage of this ScotsIdeas event please follow this link: 

For more information about research in sports science, please see here.

We look forward to our final ScotsIdeas event in Term 4, ‘Well May We Say…: An evening of great Australian speeches’. We also invite you to join us at the annual Clark Lectures in August, featuring distinguished historian Professor David Bebbington. 

How can we motivate our young men to achieve their best?
Over 100 parents, staff and members of the community enjoyed a stimulating evening at the Motivating Boys: A ScotsIdeas Symposium. Our panel of guest speakers offered thoughtful, honest and entertaining answers to the audience's questions about such topics as:

• Components of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic
• Differences between boys and girls
• Myths around the need for more male teachers
• Technology and distractions
• Boys and reading
• Feedback and goal-setting in sporting and academic settings
• The pros and cons of homework

Guest panelists included:

Professor Herb Marsh, Australian Catholic University
Recognised as one of the world's most productive educational psychologists and the 11th most productive researcher across all disciplines of psychology, he is an expert in measuring motivation and teaching effectiveness.

Dr Helen Proctor, Senior Lecturer in Education at The University of Sydney
Author of several books in education history and policy, including Controversies in Education (2015), A History of Australian Schooling (2014), and School Choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia (2009).

Mr Scott Monk, novelist and editor at The Australian
Author of acclaimed novel Raw (an HSC set text), Beyond the Knock Knock Door and other books that have ‘got boys into reading’, now an editor at The Australian newspaper.

Mr Lee Morley, The Scots College
A former professional rugby player in the UK, now a Scots Business Studies and Economics teacher and winner of the College’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014.

Video of the symposium can be viewed here.

Depression and anxiety are major issues facing young Australians. A recent nationwide youth survey found that 1 in 16 young Australians (or 180,000 people) currently experience depression and 1 in 6 currently experience an anxiety condition (440,000) (ABS, 2008, p 29). In 2013, almost one in four young people (24.3 percent) said they were sad, very sad or not happy when asked to report how happy they were with their life as a whole (Mission Australia, 2013, p. 25).



At The Scots College, our holistic philosophy of education means we take seriously the challenges these statistics present for caring for each boy. Accordingly, in 2014 the College commenced participation in a small-scale study of Year 7 students across six schools, conducted by researchers from The University of Sydney and directed by the College's Counselling Department. The voluntary study asked boys to answer a range of questions regarding depression, self-esteem, self-perception, anxiety and friendships. Students responded to statements such as "I worry a lot" and "I am nervous in new situations, I lose confidence easily", or "I like to spend time with my friends" and "I am really understood by my friends". 



The interim report indicates that, on all measures, the Scots boys involved in the study demonstrated slightly lower than average incidences of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Lead researcher Catherine Gittins concluded that the boys "demonstrated a level of psychological wellbeing that would be expected from children of their age". This study will continue in 2015 with the same cohort as they move into Year 8, and will be extended to include the new Year 7 cohort. This valuable research helps the College provide the best possible pastoral care for each boy and prepare them well for the challenges of life beyond Scots.



For more information on this study, please contact Mr Matthew Pfeiffer in the Counselling Department on 9391 7600 or m.pfeiffer@tsc.nsw.edu.au.