Current Initiatives

School Staff Well-Being: Make it a Priority

The “new normal” for BC schools has school staff rife with concern.

“Well I know that the Minister of Education has announced the opening of schools part time again come June 1st, and I know that myself and my colleagues are extremely anxious about that and what that’s going to look like. That sense of loss of control in your life – it’s in our personal and professional lives with COVID so I do think some sort of wellness initiative would be really helpful.” Northern BC Teacher

According to the WorkSafeBC report published in January 2020, there was a 79% increase in Mental Health related claims made by workers in Education. More specifically, there was a 135% increase from 2017-2019 in Mental Health claims made by teachers and educational assistants alone. With the onset of COVID-19, we expect that these numbers will rise due to the increased demands on school staff. Why is this important? Not only does it show the need for support for school staff well-being, but research has also suggested that a teachers’ well-being has effects on student well-being. (Emerson et al., 2017; Burić et al., 2019; Harding et al., 2019).

DASH completed a School Staff Well-being Literature Review and found that the vast majority of research only looks at teacher well-being and individual level approaches. DASH would like to expand this research by focusing on the well-being of all school staff. This would include teachers, educational assistants, administrators, school counsellors, bus drivers, custodial staff, etc..

Research has shown that reporting personal stories tends to be more meaningful than statistical evidence when topics include ourselves and/or our health (Freling et al., 2020). Therefore, DASH has begun conducting interviews with an array of school staff in order to use their voices to support their well-being. The research and interviews completed thus far are invaluable, but there is much more to be done.

With your donations, DASH will continue this research and interviews so that we can create a storyboard to help schools in BC design their own staff well-being initiatives.

For more information, please contact us at: info@dashbc.ca

Empowering Youth Voice

In British Columbia, one in five students in grades 7-12 (approx. 57 729 students) reported vaping with nicotine in the past month. Students spend a significant amount of time at school and therefore it is essential that school communities are reacting to the rise in vaping by adapting their policies and practices.

DASH has completed a School Based Vaping Initiatives Literature Review and conducted a series of interviews with key stakeholders from health and education across the province. The consistent theme that arose from the interviews was the importance of meaningful engagement with youth in the planning and implementation of vaping initiatives.

With your donations, DASH will engage youth perspectives and feedback to help inform, develop and implement school and district wide policies and practices around vaping.

For more information, please contact us at: info@dashbc.ca

Help Over 50,000 Students Continue Their Education While Staying Healthy During COVID-19

DASH is playing a proactive role by reaching out to teachers and administrators from Indigenous and remote British Columbia communities to ask how we can help support them in keeping their students healthy, active and connected during this time of school closures due to COVID-19.

According to the BC Government website, only 33% of rural BC communities and 35% of rural BC Indigenous communities have access to recommended broadband internet speeds. Therefore we estimate that around 144 rural communities and 86 Indigenous Schools or about 49,668 rural students and 3,300 Indigenous students may not able to take advantage of the multiple online resources.

DASH aims to help source quality resources such as books, printed activity sheets, games, videos and other relevant materials to support students without adequate access to the internet in staying healthy, building family connections, and developing resiliency during stressful times.

Do you know of communities, schools or families that may not have adequate access to the internet and may benefit from receiving healthy living resources as described above? If so, please contact us at: info@dashbc.ca

Thanks to your donations, as of May 1, 2020, we have reached an estimated 10% of the Indigenous Schools or 330 students requiring assistance.

We wanted to send out a special thanks to Transparent Solutions for their generous donation of 10 refurbished computers that were sent out to Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw School in Port Hardy to support students learning from home who lacked technology for online learning.

DASH Supports School Communities

DASH is taking a multipronged approach to supporting our school communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DASH staff have created easy-to-use, one-page resources that can connect educators and parents to the BC Physical and Health Education Curriculum through various activities, lessons, videos, podcasts and more. These resources will be uploaded daily onto our website and include topics from the following four areas:

Eat & Grow
Move & Play
Mental Health
Staff Well-being

Check them out here.

See what people are saying about us:

DASH’s Healthy School Communities Certification Pilot

DASH has enrolled 11 schools to take part in DASH’s Healthy School Communities Certification pilot program for the 2019-2020 school year. This initiative, based on Ontario Physical and Health Education Association’s program, recognizes and celebrates school communities for promoting and enhancing the health and well-being of students, school staff, and the broader community.

By completing the 6-Step Healthy Schools Process over the course of the school year, these pilot schools will earn points and apply to be certified in April 2020.

The goals of DASH’s Healthy School Certification are:

To support and increase the capacity of schools to address a priority health topic through the effective implementation of the 6-Step Healthy Schools Process
To celebrate and formally recognise an individual school’s achievements relating to Healthy Schools

To learn more about the program see Ophea’s Introductory Webinar.

Have a question or want to be involved for the 2020-2021 school year? Contact us to find out more.

Regional Outreach

It is DASH’s mission to work with schools and other partners to create, facilitate, and support school communities to be optimal places for health and learning though a Comprehensive School Health Approach (CSH). Comprehensive School Health Facilitators can offer your school community workshops with a central focus on the Comprehensive School Health framework.

CSH Facilitators can also offer support and guidance in developing and implementing your school’s action plan to help your school achieve its priority health and wellness goals for students and staff, assistance with connecting schools to your respective health authority partners and other community organizations, help with sharing health-related resources and programs designed for school staff, students, and administration, and implementation and guidance through DASH and Healthy Schools BC programs and supports.

If your school is interested in working with one of our regional Comprehensive School Health Facilitator, or if you’d like more information, please contact one of our facilitators.

Healthy Schools BC

Healthy Schools BC (HSBC) strengthens health-education partnerships and supports effective implementation of healthy school initiatives using a comprehensive school health approach (CSH). CSH is an evidenced-based “whole school” approach that supports students’ health and academic achievements through four interrelated components: social and physical environment, teaching and learning, healthy school policy and partnerships and service.

DASH manages the Healthy Schools BC program and its website. As such, we create and disseminate provincial tools and support the collaboration between health and education sector partners.

To learn more about Healthy Schools BC, visit their website at: www.healthyschoolsbc.ca

Healthy Schools BC Regional Grants

Healthy Schools BC Regional Grants support education and health-sector partners to work together on initiatives that support healthy schools, with a focus on promoting mental health and well-being, and Indigenous ways of wellness. The grant application process is now closed for the 2018-2019 school year. We thank the Ministry of Health for funding these grants. Please check back in 2020 for new funding opportunities.

Healthy Schools BC First Nation School Grants

Healthy Schools BC First Nations School Grants are intended to support First Nations schools in implementing Indigenous ways of wellness across a whole-school environment. This funding stream is now closed. We thank the Ministry of Health for funding these grants. Please check back in 2020 for new funding opportunities.

DASH BC District Mental Well-being Grants

The grant application period for DASH BC District Well-being Grants has closed.

DASH BC District Mental Well-being Grants support education and health-sector partners to work together on initiatives that focus on mental well-being of staff as a way to improve the mental well-being of all members the school district community. These grants were funded in partnership between DASH and the McConnell Foundation.

Mental Well-being Coaching

Funded by the McConnell Foundation, DASH provided leadership and managed the Mental Well-being Coaching Initiative from 2018-2019 that paired expert coaches with school district teams to support the development and implementation of district-wide approaches to promoting student and staff well-being.

Six participating district teams included a senior administrator, a district-wide teacher/ counsellor and a health authority partner, all committed to dedicated time to work with a coach throughout the initiative. The coaches were retired senior leaders from the BC education sector. Through the district level work and reviews of research, our knowledge of staff well-being did increase. Learnings included the challenges school and district staff face, and how to make change to support staff and students. Work around focus groups was a promising way to gather data, engage staff and develop a shared ownership of staff well-being.

To learn more about the Well-being Coaching Initiative, view the videos on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3TRVI2RxlXGuAUd5KaqXsLubJjzrO9OW

You can also find an article on staff well-being in schools on the EdCan site here: https://www.edcan.ca/articles/3-steps-to-districtwide-staff-well-being/