Page 16 - Autumn 2018 Echo AVE

14 Human Science

gary Streeter discusses green Paper with Students

On Friday 12 October, Gary Streeter, Member of Parliament for South West Devon, once again visited the
College to discuss topics with student representatives. this visit was designed to gather views concerning the
green Paper based around children’s mental health provision. Mr Streeter was highly impressed by how
articulate the student representatives were, saying he was “blown away” by the intelligent and passionate
views expressed in the meeting. he said that the input of the students will form a significant part of the green
Paper process and he is going to collate their ideas and present them in a speech at Westminster. he has also
expressed an enthusiastic interest in maintaining an on-going close relationship with the College.

Mental health and Wellbeing

We are continually raising awareness of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the College, significantly in the
context of both staff and students.
A core group have engaged with the 'three Principles of Mind, thought and Consciousness' philosophy. this is
a framework that explains what underpins the world we experience: how we are essentially biased by our
thoughts which can lead us to creating an illusionary truth, in other words we are all strong and resilient;
however we lose sight of our inner-strength because of negative cognition and how we over-think situations
and experiences. In teaching the students this philosophy we are:
1. Showing them that is every day and normal to talk about mental health - it is not a dark secret.
2. We are all strong and resilient in essence.
3. the only person who can fix us is ourselves.
these three points highlight why this approach is so important to the College and the mental health of the
students. We are setting up a proactive approach for the students to be able to deal with the very normal
cycle of life's stress rather than a reactive one, for example, dealing with exam stress in Years 11 and 13.

the Diamond group

A small student focus group has been working in liaison with external coaches to
develop their resilience. In essence, they have been introduced to the Inner
Diamond Philosophy which has shown them how they are resilient and strong and
confident and also how our natural disposition is to over-think a situation and focus on
the negatives.
the Diamond group have gone from strength the strength and are now helping Year
7 students in a bid to develop a proactive, rather than reactive, ethos about mental
health at the College.
Incredibly, they have presented their paradigm in terms of explaining the lack of
resilience in the youth of today at a national Resilient Young Minds’ Conference. this
was live streamed around the world, so our students are being real pioneers for the
youth of today. their message was very well received and we are leading the way
with well-being in schools.

the College echo - Autumn 2018 - www.ivybridge.devon.sch.uk