The Empower Me! Program

What is the Empower Me! program?

The secondary teaching and learning program Empower Me! was developed as part of the “Every Student Every School” project for the “Changing Minds” Community of Schools: Campbell House, Karningul and Verona Schools and Dorchester ETU. The program was introduced to Punchbowl Boys' High School in 2017.

The program has been developed as a preventative mental health (well-being) initiative focused on the explicit teaching of strategies and tools for promoting self-awareness, empathy and self-regulation of emotions. It is intended to support the implementation of Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) in secondary settings, and has been developed around a framework for working with students: Reflect, Resolve, Restart. 

Focus areas

• Equipping students with tools for understanding their emotional world and basic neurophysiology (how our brains work).
• Supporting students to reflect on their thoughts, feelings and actions (self-awareness), especially in terms of their own personal triggers as well as their personal strengths.
• Empowering students with specific strategies to more effectively regulate their own emotions and to help keep them at their best.
• Empowering students with tools for building positive relationships, especially through strengthening empathy.

Purpose

A core intention of the Empower Me! program is to equip both students and teachers with a shared language and understanding for communicating about behaviour as well as working out strategies for genuine resolution of the problems which may underlie various behaviours. It is strongly linked to the Student Wellbeing Framework for Schools in that it draws from positive psychology and the PERMA model (from Martin Seligman’s Wellbeing Theory). In addition, the program is intended to support and enable schools as they support student wellbeing at a systems level. This is particularly in terms of whole school implementation of the Reflect-Resolve-Restart framework.

The Framework

Under the Elements of Learning and Achievement, Empower Me! is a key vehicle for the explicit teaching of Personal and Social Capability (in the Australian Curriculum).

To download a high resolution, printable copy of the framework, click below:

•  7 Elements of Expectations (PDF 564KB).