Visible Wellbeing is more than a wellbeing curriculum.
It is a whole school approach to support the wellbeing of teachers, staff and students alike.
It is a whole school approach to support the wellbeing of teachers, staff and students alike.
“We have created a sense of positivity through the more difficult moments in the education calendar.
The acknowledgement of our positive achievements and the use of a shared, strength based language is creating a much more resilient educational environment within the school.”
“We have created a sense of positivity through the more difficult moments in the education calendar.
The acknowledgement of our positive achievements and the use of a shared, strength based language is creating a much more resilient educational environment within the school.”
- Brian Drewe, Principal, Scone High School
Meet the VWB Team in Africa
VWB Schools in Africa
What is Visible Wellbeing?
Designed by award winning and internationally acclaimed psychology researcher, Professor Lea Waters, AM, PhD, Visible Wellbeing™ (VWB) combines the science of wellbeing with the science of learning to achieve the three key goals of:
- helping students and staff to more clearly see their own and other’s wellbeing using VWB practices;
- helping students and staff more systematically build wellbeing using the SEARCH framework;
- facilitating learning through the visible wellbeing classroom process.
Visible Wellbeing is the culmination of 20 years of high-impact research in psychology and education conducted and published by Professor Lea Waters.
At the core of VWB is the SEARCH framework, developed by Professor Waters from her large scale bibliometric analysis of over 18,000 journal articles.
The SEARCH framework is delivered by Lea and her team of trained facilitators to bring wellbeing to life in practical and accessible ways in all classes and across co-curricula. The VWB techniques help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student wellbeing.
VWB is not a set curriculum, it is a flexible approach which can be applied across any subject area, and in all contexts – early learning, primary, secondary, and in the staff room. With the VWB approach, academic learning and wellbeing are truly integrated.
VWB aims to help everyone thrive at school, and the training and techniques are equally relevant to staff - teaching and non-teaching - as they are to students as a way to build a culture of wellbeing across the entire school.
The SEARCH framework which underpins the Visible Wellbeing Approach.
Visible Wellbeing has been independently reviewed and is listed in the Be You Programs Directory.
When we feel good, we function well.
When we function well, we can do good.
When we function well, we can do good.
VWB Training Options
There are different ways to introduce the Visible Wellbeing approach into your school, depending on where you are in your wellbeing journey and the resources you have available.
The Visible Wellbeing Partnership provides schools with a bespoke training schedule and live modules for all-staff training, while the VWB Program provides a hybrid model of training combining webinars and online training for your staff.
Chat to our team to find out which option suits your school best.
“Visible Wellbeing is a fantastic approach to ensure that our efforts at creating a successful school climate where every student feels safe, secure and supported are actually working.
More than that, Visible Wellbeing gives us a whole school approach with a framework, drawn on Lea’s vast experience, to leverage our student’s strengths, providing data and validity to a process enabling our school to nurture each of our students to flourish.
In short – it works, well!”
“Visible Wellbeing is a fantastic approach to ensure that our efforts at creating a successful school climate where every student feels safe, secure and supported are actually working.
More than that, Visible Wellbeing gives us a whole school approach with a framework, drawn on Lea’s vast experience, to leverage our student’s strengths, providing data and validity to a process enabling our school to nurture each of our students to flourish.
In short – it works, well!”
- Courtney Howard, Principal, Cambridge Primary School
Visible Wellbeing Program
Visible Wellbeing is a whole-school, evidence-based program, based on the science of Positive Psychology, to provide both staff and students with a toolkit of strategies to support wellbeing and buffer against mental illness.
VWB creates a unified and consistent approach to wellbeing across the whole school. The program trains all school staff (teaching and non-teaching) in a suite of mental health strategies that builds their capacity to implement wellbeing practices into daily life at school so as to:
Foster student agency.
Provide students and staff with coping mechanisms to deal with the strains and stressors of life.
Help students and staff manage emotions.
Strengthen relationships and enhance communicate skills.
Build literacy about strengths, gratitude and mindfulness
Create a common language around wellbeing, integrating practices across all areas of the school.
Your school will gain an evidence-based framework, tools to measure the wellbeing of students and staff, resources to print and use with students, 250+ activities tailored to all age groups from K-12, wellbeing guides for periods of remote learning including 120+ wellbeing activities that can delivered in virtual classrooms, newsletter excerpts for parents, a teaching rubric and on-demand orientation modules for new staff.
“Armed with ample resources and engaging presentations, our school found practical and accessible ways to bring wellbeing to life in a challenging online environment.
Putting the SEARCH Framework at the centre of key decisions and innovations supported our school community to discover alternative ways of thriving, that will continue to support better educational outcomes."
“Armed with ample resources and engaging presentations, our school found practical and accessible ways to bring wellbeing to life in a challenging online environment.
Putting the SEARCH Framework at the centre of key decisions and innovations supported our school community to discover alternative ways of thriving, that will continue to support better educational outcomes."
- Simon McIntosh, Assistant Principal, Yarra Primary School
Visible Wellbeing Partnerships
Becoming a Visible Wellbeing (VWB) Partner school is an investment in the future wellbeing of your entire school community. Professor Lea Waters and her team of facilitators will work closely with your school to help you to measure and embed Visible Wellbeing practices across all areas of the school.
The partnership will run for a two year period to work deep within the culture of a school. During that time we provide staff training, leadership and team coaching, measurement tools, student lessons, downloadable resources, online portal access and a parent night to ensure your school has all the tools required to make the partnership a success.
Some schools also decide to combine resources and work as a cluster to support each other along their Visible Wellbeing™ journey, we are happy to discuss how this option could work for your community as well.
"Lea's approach is very real - she was so intuitive with her answers it was like having her in the same room. We are all loving learning new concepts and know that her online presentations are greatly impacting our teaching capacity."
"Lea's approach is very real - she was so intuitive with her answers it was like having her in the same room. We are all loving learning new concepts and know that her online presentations are greatly impacting our teaching capacity."
- Vanessa Murphy, Principal, Royal North Shore Hospital School
See Visible Wellbeing in Action…
Go behind the scenes to see what Visible Wellbeing looks like at different schools all around the world…
VWB at 3 State schools in Mildura, Victoria
VWB in a Primary school in Tasmania
VWB as seen on the ABC documentary “Revolution Schools”
VWB at Ridley College in Canada
VWB at Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, New Zealand
“We’re not interested in a band aid approach or simply tacking on another programme that ticks the wellbeing box. We’re investing in this because we don’t want our students and staff to be just ok, coping or even doing well.
We want them to learn how to thrive now and throughout their lives.”
“We’re not interested in a band aid approach or simply tacking on another programme that ticks the wellbeing box. We’re investing in this because we don’t want our students and staff to be just ok, coping or even doing well.
We want them to learn how to thrive now and throughout their lives.”
- Narelle Umbers, Principal, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, New Zealand
The Visible Wellbeing Alliance
Schools who have competed the VWB Partnership (VWB Partner Schools) or VWB Remote Training (VWB Member Schools) are accredited as part of the Visible Wellbeing Alliance. The Alliance is an international network of schools actively adopting a whole school Visible Wellbeing approach to support the wellbeing of the students, teachers and staff within their school community.
VWB FOUNDATIONAL SCHOOLS
VWB PARTNER SCHOOLS
VWB MEMBER SCHOOLS
VWB PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAYS
"Suddenly, we are not necessarily planning for and talking about Wellbeing,
but it is actually becoming part of how we live and teach."
"Suddenly, we are not necessarily planning for and talking about Wellbeing,
but it is actually becoming part of how we live and teach."
- Mark Beech, Principal, Discovery College, Hong Kong