WILLIAM Martin Schools on Tawney’s Road, are thrilled to introduce their new Wellbeing Ambassadors who are being trained in peer mentoring by Anna Harvey, the schools’ Pastoral and Attendance Manager.”We work closely with Essex Mind, training our Ambassadors to support children’s mental health and emotional wellbeing in school, the children feel really proud that they are making a real difference, seeing that they can make someone smile really makes their day!”.

These amazing children check in weekly with Mrs Harvey, to discuss their wellbeing and what has helped them to overcome any difficulties, encouraging them to become more self-aware.  They design posters which are up around the school, promote the use of worry boxes which are in place in all the classrooms and have launched our #bekind initiative, where children nominate their classmates for their random acts of kindness, so that they can receive special awards during Friday Worship.  

Gina Bailey, the Executive Head Teacher, is thrilled at how all the children and staff have embraced the school’s focus on mental health awareness and well-being.   “We are so proud of the work we are doing across our schools to promote children and staff’s wellbeing – we have a team of psychotherapists and counsellors in our schools, who support children, families and staff in making our schools a happy and healthy place to learn and work.  We have our brilliant well-being Ambassadors, who work hard to spread happiness and the ethos of #bekind around the schools, and we have a well-being team of staff who organise a range of events to make staff feel a valued part of our William Martin family!” 

The Ambassadors helped run Hello Yellow Wellbeing day on Friday and our now working on collecting and analyzing all the children’s ideas from across the Key Stages, on how we can make our schools an even happier place to learn.  So far, the most exciting idea was having real elephants as class pets – I’m not sure if we can do that one though, although it would be rather nice!!!!!