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Personal and
LEARNING PROGRAMME: PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EDUCATION
The Personal and Social Education (PSE) programme helps to ensure that students feel secure and valued. In turn, this provides an effective base that encourages their learning, growth and social development. PSE underpins our entire programme, and is informed by both our mission and our Singapore context. It supports our international student community so that they feel truly valued by the adults who are leading their learning. The intent is that they can continue to grow in self-awareness, gaining an understanding of themselves and how they interact with those around them so as to develop effective and open-minded responses to personal and cultural differences. Time is dedicated each week for the intentional delivery of this important part of the student experience. However, student welfare is not limited to the allocated PSE time with their classroom teacher/mentor. Student welfare is also encompassed by safeguarding, learning support, wellness centre and counselling support, university advising, Heads of Grade, Vice Principals and Principals in supporting social and emotional needs of students. While all members of staff have a responsibility for the wellbeing of students, the learning support and wellness and counselling teams are central and work closely with teachers to ensure that students are supported both within and outside of the classroom.
The PSE curriculum content is classified in three overarching concepts: 1. individual wellbeing 2. relationships and community (interpersonal wellbeing) 3. student ability to engage with global issues (global wellbeing)
In 2018, the UWCSEA Strategy identified diversity and inclusion as goals for the strategic development of the College. As a result, from 2019/2020, UWCSEA embarked on a three-year project to build teacher capacity to assist students based on their individualised learning styles, by investigating how the College can better support neurodiverse students in the learning programme. The programme, which has been funded by donation to the UWCSEA Foundation, examines how behaviours in the classroom can be linked to differences in how students think and process information. By deconstructing the behaviour they observe in class, teachers can gain an understanding of how best to support the student’s neuro-developmental needs and preferences. For example, a student with an auditory processing issue (who may present as forgetful or disinterested) may need to have instructions written down, in a step-by-step list, rather than receiving instructions verbally or looking at them on a computer screen. Or a student with memory retention challenges (who often forgets their homework), may be helped by using tactile mediums to take notes or remember deadlines.
An initial pilot group, selected from Head of Departments across the Dover High School, were identified in the 2019/2020 year, and in partnership with Learning Support in the Dover High School, a professional learning plan was developed, identifying goals and training plans to implement while working with a core group of students. While COVID-19 interrupted the launch and expansion of the training, it created an opportunity for ongoing virtual training with experienced specialist educator Sylvia Leck, Academic Director of Foundations for Learning, which continued into 2020/2021 with the pilot group and High School Heads of Department completing core training modules by the end of the school year. Initial positive feedback has supported the continued plans to implement the programme across the next two years throughout the High School, which will be funded through donations to the UWCSEA Foundation. The work is linked to a simultaneous project examining mental health and wellbeing in the High School.
OPERATIONAL RESPONSE: SUPPORTING OUR BOARDING COMMUNITY
The focus on supporting wellbeing in our community - for students and their families, as well as for staff has been a priority in the 2020/2021 as the pandemic restrictions continued and our international community began to feel the extended separation that were, in many cases, a necessity in the new world of COVID restrictions - both on campus and in the wider world. Initiatives focused on ensuring that students were able to access peer and teacher-led support initiatives, parents were supported by wellbeing and counselling centre staff through the launch of a podcast exploring topics of interest, and staff were provided with additional access to support.
UWCSEA STORIES
Personal and Social Education
in action
The College’s strategic commitment to personal wellbeing and peace is woven throughout the five elements of our learning programme, and forms one of the three central pillars of focus with developing the personal and social education programme at UWCSEA. Interconnected elements of wellbeing are also central to the successful enactment of our mission competencies. At UWCSEA, our holistic, mission-aligned approach to education means that we are continually seeking ways to enhance student experience so as to enhance their learning. And that process starts when students first join UWCSEA in the K1 classrooms, where a deliberate approach to self understanding and acceptance is the beginning of the journey to peacebuilding and community wellbeing.
PEACE BEGINS WITH ME
Excepted from an article in Dunia June 2021, by Andrea Strachan, Infant School Curriculum Coordinator, and Catherine Malone, K1 Grade Level Curriculum Coordinator, Dover Campus When reviewing our K1 Unit of Study focused on Service at the start of the 2020/2021 year, with COVID safe management measures still in place, we began to realise that this component of our place-based learning programme, built around hosting the students of Child@Street11 for a series of visits to our school, could not be delivered as it had been in the past. We realised that a switch to an online format might not be as powerful, as the Infant School children would not have the opportunity to engage with others “in person”, and the teachers at Child@Street 11 agreed. With challenge, however, comes opportunity. The previous year had also highlighted for us the need to be more proactive in terms of speaking about, teaching about, learning about, and taking action regarding issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Educators and parents continued to reflect on the emotional processing begun in the 2019/2020 year, when ongoing acts of systemic racial injustice gained headines at te height of the pandemic restrictions in Singapore. We all searched for the right things to say and do, and this reflection continued even as we looked at how we might adjust our learning programme to accommodate the reality of COVID restrictions. As an internationally-minded community of learners, UWCSEA was already embarked on a journey of both reflection and action in terms of how we are addressing these important issues. An example of how our reflection has resulted in action was the introduction of a K1 language survey for parents to complete prior to the start of school, so as to provide us with more nuanced information on the linguistic profiles of the children coming into our care and classrooms. As educators, we used this information to find new ways of bringing home languages into the classroom, which included deliberately creating language buddies within our classrooms as we created K1 class groups, to support both a feeling of belonging and the development of literacy skills. As a K1 Team, we also re-evaluated our K1 Service Unit of Study, and took this as an opportunity to consider other ways in which we begin to develop an understanding of “service” that is meaningful and relevant to our youngest learners within this new context. In collaboration with representatives from the Dover Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Pod, we decided to develop a pilot Unit of Study framed under the DEI theme of “Peacebuilding”, focusing on the idea that “Peace Begins With Me”. The concept of peace-building, one of the ‘mission competencies’ outlined in our new College guiding statements, understands that peace can’t be achieved without knowing how to appreciate and engage with diversity, and that without understanding how to interact and negotiate with others, it is impossible to engage in meaningful service. We started this Unit of Study by helping students to further explore the concept of “identity”, focusing on what makes us the “same” and what makes us “different”. We worked with the Primary School Library to curate a collection of books that connected to our DEI topics of diversity, inclusion, identity and belonging. In K1, DEI learning often begins with an appreciation of diversity, celebrating the different people in the room. This is followed by a focus on inclusion, ensuring everyone in the room feels like they belong. Finally, we explore equity by examining the structures we put in place to ensure that diversity and inclusion happen. The intention was for this Unit of Study to lay the framework in which our K1 students can begin to better understand how to be open-minded and inclusive members of our community, happy and well within themselves, so that they are better ready and able to engage in service to others.
