Ben Alexander: Welcome everyone. Welcome to the Running for Resilience podcast. We’ve got a special episode today. We’re talking about Recess for Resilience, which is Running for Resilience, but for schools.

I’ve got three of the legends who help drive it: Mr Hall, Miss O’Neill and Mr Nicho. Before we get into what Recess is, why don’t we go around the horn? Introduce yourselves, how long you’ve been teaching, a little bit of your backstory. Mr Hall, we’ll start with you.

Adam Hall: Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to come on. I have been told multiple times that I’ve got a face for radio, so now I’m finally reaching my potential. I appreciate the opportunity.

Ben Alexander: You look good though. You look good today.

Adam Hall: It’s the light probably, bouncing off.

Ben Alexander: They put that there for me. They knew I was coming in.

Adam Hall: I’ve been a teacher for 17 years here in Canberra. I’m at Canberra Grammar at the moment, but I started at Canberra Girls Grammar, then went over to Burgmann for a little while, and now I’m at Canberra Grammar School.

I have a passion around trying to make sure that what we’re teaching is actually action. When we’re teaching something, as opposed to lecturing it or giving information to students, we actually want to see some form of action from them.

I think that’s why we’re all here today in some shape or form, because the community that you’ve set up with Running for Resilience is the action on wellbeing.

I think that’s where Recess for Resilience fits in. It’s building the habits. That side of education is really my passion. I don’t just want to teach people. I want to see them build on the knowledge they’re getting and eventually eclipse me with the knowledge they’ve gained, so they can then teach me or teach the next people around them.

It’s that society concept about stepping towards a better society as well. It’s a great profession. It has its ups and downs like every profession, but it’s something that’s enjoyable.

Ben Alexander: Before we jump to Miss O’Neill, Mr Hall, you were the person who emailed Running for Resilience about this idea. Talk us through that initial idea. Why did you email R4R about starting some sort of partnership with Running for Resilience and schools?

Adam Hall: It goes back to what I was saying about action. I’d known you for a period of time and had seen the development and the impact that you were having on the community.

Ben Alexander: Twenty years, mate. A period of time.

Adam Hall: As adults, we either learn from our teachers or we learn the hard way. We learn when we’re on a downward spiral. We know people tell us to eat right, drink well, sleep well. Sleep is coming through as one of your greatest assets at the moment. There’s a lot of research around that. We also know exercise is good, and that message has been there for us for a long period of time, whether we listen to it or not.

Running for Resilience was something I saw as an active habit that went against the trend of our physical sporting trends at the moment, where people are becoming less active.

Community sport can be hard because people don’t always want to rock up to something organised all the time. There are registration fees, logistics and all those kinds of problems. People want something they can lob into at a time that suits them, where they can connect with people, do some physical activity and get some enjoyment out of it.

At its heart, I think that’s what Running for Resilience is. If you look at the five core foundations of resilience, you’ve got connection. You’ve got physical health — am I sleeping, is my nutrition good? You’ve got self-awareness — being able to identify within myself what my emotions are. But then you also need optimism, the belief that things can get better and that I can see a better future. And you need flexibility to be able to enact those changes.

Those five foundation skills for resilience can be taught, but it’s the action that needs to build into the habit. That’s the hard bit. The knowledge is the easy bit.

Ben Alexander: Yeah.

Adam Hall: Actually taking that step and having the flexibility to make the change is the hard bit.

Running for Resilience provides that for multiple people, whether all of your participants realise it or not. It’s providing connection, movement and physical health. It’s providing self-awareness and social connection, which is really important.

The idea was to bridge the gap. Let’s be more proactive and get the next generation, as your motto says, helping make Canberra one of the healthiest cities in Australia or in the world. Let’s go back a couple of years. Not saying you’re only focusing on adults, but let’s go back to the primary years or adolescence and tackle mental health there. Let’s help build habits before anything needs to head into a professional stream of mental health support.

Ben Alexander: That’s been very important with Recess. We tell the kids that everyone knows Running for Resilience is about reducing suicide in Canberra or eliminating suicide in Canberra, but it’s been a great learning experience for us at Grammar.

When we launched, the goal the kids bought into was to make Canberra the happiest and healthiest city in the world. To do that, we think we need to exercise with friends and check in with each other.

Thank you to Grammar, Mr Hall, and everyone for what you’ve done so far, getting the ball rolling. Then we had Miss O’Neill from Torrens reach out. We know each other because we were coworkers at the great KPMG.

Steph O’Neill: We sure were. A lifetime ago.

Ben Alexander: Miss O’Neill, what made you want to get involved? Tell us your story into education. What got you into that space?

Steph O’Neill: I’ve been teaching for about seven or eight years. I did a stint over in London and I’ve been teaching in Canberra in the public system.

I did have a little bit of a break. I went into the public service, then I went into private, where I met you. Then I had a very difficult time in my life where I just needed community around me, which is how I got into Running for Resilience.

I went down there and it was such a great atmosphere. I was talking to people who had just started Recess for Resilience at Grammar. They said, “You could start it in the public schools in the ACT.” I thought that was such a great idea.

I took it to my deputy, who was very, very supportive, which made the whole thing so much easier. We just started it from there at the school.

Ben Alexander: Mr Nicho, before we go back to Adam, can you introduce yourself, your educational background, and then explain how Recess is working at Torrens? What are we doing, how are we getting the groups engaged, and how’s it going?

Mark Nicholson: Thank you so much for having us. I really appreciate the opportunity to get out of the classroom and the school and do something fancy like this. It’s very cool.

I’ve been a teacher for 25 years, and hearing these two’s numbers makes me feel really old all of a sudden. All of that has been here in the ACT, working across a number of schools — primary, high school and some of our super schools that were set up early in the 2000s.

Ben Alexander: What’s a super school?

Mark Nicholson: Your P to 10 schools. Amaroo is one of them. Very big.

I’ve always been really keen on student wellbeing, student engagement and the culture that comes from physical activity.

When I was at Amaroo as a young teacher emerging as a leader, I used to run what we called A-Fit. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, we ran a bootcamp with 40 or 50 kids coming to school.

The school had just opened. We opened K to 5 in the first year, and then K to 8 in the second year. We inherited all these Year 8s who had been to high school and turned up to a really small high school at the time. They were like, “This isn’t what I want. This is not high school.” There was no culture. There was no connection.

The idea of A-Fit was: you guys love sport, you love fitness, let’s come in and do some boxing, stretching classes and things I enjoyed doing, and build up that culture. We got to about 100 kids by the third year coming in and doing all this physical activity.

That wellbeing part of activity has always been in the back of my mind.

I was really lucky with Recess for Resilience. Steph came to me incredibly passionate at the start of the year when I was in the acting principal role. Sometimes in schools, particularly in the public service in Canberra, we can be a big brother society of, “Do you have a plan for this? Do you have a map for this?” We make things really challenging to do.

There’s a big administrative load on teachers, and a really risk-averse nature in how we approach everything. I know we do that for safety and security reasons, but a 150-page document on swim safety doesn’t make our swim carnival safer. It’s actually the processes you put in place and the people being active.

As a leader, I’m very much a “yes, how do we make that happen?” person. So to have Steph come to me at the start of the year and say, “I’ve got an idea, and we’re going to make it happen because I’m passionate about this,” was great.

She said it would impact heaps of kids, but if it impacts one, it’s done its job. So we started ticking the boxes — risk assessments, checking policies to take kids off school grounds. We started small. We had to change some of our permissions for off-site activities with kids, so we started on site. After one term, we moved across to the field across the road.

We started Recess for Resilience inside our school gates, and we had pretty solid turnouts. I’ll be honest, it was a pretty bland sort of run, but the kids still enjoyed it and got something out of it. It was a good soft launch. We got good regulars — kids who were keen to come and exercise, keen to come and chat.

After that term, when we’d built up a bit of culture around expectations and the language we use to talk to one another, we trusted them. They were showing themselves to be responsible young adults. These kids are from Year 3 to Year 6, and we’ve even had some Year 2s come across recently.

Then we went outside the school gates to the oval across the road. That was the shot in the arm it really needed. There’s an immense pride for the kids in being able to go outside the gates to do something.

Ben Alexander: They feel trusted or something. Like they’re venturing.

Mark Nicholson: They take it seriously and they take the responsibility. One of the kids actually came to Steph earlier this week and said, “I can’t go on Thursday. I’ve got the school soccer thing. I’m so sorry I won’t be there.” It’s cool, but they really identify with and attach to that day.

It’s had a huge impact on a core group of kids. When we look at mental health, sometimes we look for big solutions to solve everyone’s problem. That’s not what mental health is always about. Sometimes it’s about making a difference for one person at a time, then doing it again and again and trying to impact as many as we can.

In schools, we can fall into the trap of saying, “There aren’t lots of kids going,” or, “It’s quite expensive to send two staff out across the oval for 30 kids,” or, “There’s a lot of admin work.” Then those things die. But the impact it’s had on the kids has been huge.

We’ve got two kids in particular I want to talk about. One little boy is struggling at school at the moment. He’s struggling with connection, changes in medication and family routines. He has an amazing family who support him immensely, but he’s going through a lot of big emotions and struggling to connect with his peers and regulate, particularly at the end of the day.

Thursdays are his highlight. He is at Recess for Resilience no matter what. He could have had a shocking few days, he could have been away, and he is away a lot, but his attendance on Thursdays is near perfect. He comes to Recess for Resilience. He bags us if he misses it.

In the first session, I think I had a chuckle with you, Ben, because we did our big circle, like the huddle or the scrum, and he said, “No, don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” That’s part of his diagnosis and challenges. But two or three weeks later, he was getting his arms in and starting to join in. He gets a bit shy when they don’t put their arms around him now.

The positive impact that has on him on a Thursday is worth all the resources and all the admin, just to impact that one child.

The second example is a new student to our school who has a number of challenges. You don’t always move schools because things are great, and she had moved states and jurisdictions. She is a selectively mute student who doesn’t talk to a lot of people and has had trouble finding friendship groups.

Steph was her class teacher for most of Term 2, and I don’t think you heard her speak until about the end of Term 2.

Steph O’Neill: Yeah.

Mark Nicholson: In Term 1, she never spoke to a single adult. She spoke to one child and would whisper in her ear. In Term 2, she had a couple of good friends and they would come across to Recess for Resilience.

By the end of Term 2 and into Term 3, we saw this pattern with her. Mondays, she’d be pretty quiet. Tuesday, she’d start to warm up and wave as she walked by my office. Wednesday was really good, and Thursday it was like, “Oh my God, can you get back in your box? You are so excitable and happy.”

I’d been away ill for a few days, and she came up and gave me a huge hug today and said, “I missed you. Where were you for Recess for Resilience?”

Her teachers have really noticed the difference across the week, building up to Thursdays. It flows into other aspects as well. Her friendship groups have expanded. Older kids ask her how she’s going and check in with her.

To impact those two students, forget all the other benefits for the other 30 or 40 kids who come on and off and love it as well, and the benefits Steph and I get from it individually — it’s totally worth it. I’d recommend any school look at it because the impact it can make in a kid’s life, you don’t know what the follow-on will be 10 or 20 years from now.

Steph O’Neill: Their confidence has shot up.

Ben Alexander: It’s crazy you said that focus on one person. That was Breeny when he started R4R. He wanted to create something that would have helped his dad in his darkest moments. There was no grand plan to help all these people. Breeny just wanted to save one life from suicide, to try to substitute losing his dad. It’s grown and rolled from there.

We’ve noticed with our new event organisers that we’re trying to tell them, no media in the early days. Just do a soft launch. Get going. Build momentum. Later down the track, pour a bit of fuel on the fire and raise attention. At the start, when you’re a small group, it forms this really tight-knit core community, and then the crowds and masses eventually build on that.

Mr Hall, what have you noticed? Are there any stories you want to share? Or Miss O’Neill, have you got any others from Torrens?

Steph O’Neill: We’ve built this at Torrens, and we really do have a core group of about 30 students who come every week. They’re super enthusiastic to be there. They’re always there. It’s almost like we don’t even need to do anything — they’ll show up because we’ve created this space that they really like.

One of the things that has made it work so well is the message that it’s completely optional. If you don’t want to come, don’t come. If you want to come, come. What that means is all of the kids who are there on the day are really excited to be there.

We’ve created this nice little community within the school community.

I was talking to some of the students, asking what they like about Recess for Resilience. They all said similar things. They said they like being part of something and feeling like they belong somewhere. They like that they can check in with their friends. Even if they’re not doing it during the week or on a daily basis, on Thursdays they are. They also like meeting other people in the school.

A lot of them said they feel more energetic afterwards.

Mark Nicholson: I love how they check in on us too. That’s something that doesn’t happen in schools anymore. The days of thanking your teacher at the end of the day and putting an apple on the desk are gone. Parents don’t even remember to give chocolates after a camp these days.

But these kids come up to you and it’s not just, “Hey, how are you doing today?” They genuinely ask, “How are you?” They do it through the week as well. They open doors for you. They smile. They notice those differences that make a change into wellbeing.

You couldn’t have forced that onto kids. You couldn’t have put a PowerPoint up. You couldn’t have done a speech. You couldn’t have made them do it. You just had to create a space, which Steph did, that allowed it to grow.

Adam Hall: Picking up on a couple of points, Mark, going back to what you said about logistics and legalities around schools and education, it’s such a heavy point for us to create opportunities that provide a space for students to find belonging, community or place.

It is a shame that it takes a driver. It takes an individual teacher who is passionate and willing to push that forward.

Early on, when Benny and I were talking about it, we wanted to set templates that eroded that work. No one owns a risk assessment template, but it could be picked up and plugged into any particular school.

For anyone listening, the Recess for Resilience webpage and Running for Resilience resources are designed to take some of that heavy lifting away from schools so they can get straight into creating the space for their community.

What I love about what we’re talking about is that when Breeny set up Running for Resilience, and when you and I were chatting about Recess for Resilience, we didn’t actually have a fixed end goal. It was something we wanted to try. From having a go at something, you start to really learn.

We learned early on from Grammar how things were working and tracking. We had big numbers, then small numbers, and some great stories. But one of the brilliant things is hearing what you’re doing at Torrens, and then coming back and changing how we operate at Grammar.

We’ve put in some of the rugby huddle you’re doing at the end, and the chant. We’ve started to look at how we get across the road. We’re fortunate to be at the base of Red Hill, but there are government permits we need to get to go onto Red Hill. That might be the shot in the arm for us too.

The concept was that we never wanted one school to own Recess for Resilience. We wanted it to spread. It’s easy enough to do for 15 or 20 minutes during recess.

There are studies from the US around recess time and increasing physical activity among students. They saw recess as downtime, but they were also looking at how students reacted to stress testing if they were active at recess versus not active.

The points you mentioned about what the kids enjoy are really interesting. When I was talking about the decline in adult participation and teenagers from 14 to 18 engaging in sport, it’s because they don’t always have those elements in sport. It’s too competitive. They want to connect with mates, hang out with mates, be active with mates and enjoy what they’re doing.

Competitive sport doesn’t always allow them to do that. So they’re losing an element that used to help a lot of kids stay active, which is one of those key components of being resilient. If you’re not active because sport is too competitive, we need to find a non-competitive space to be active.

Ben Alexander: What was the stat you told me? Something like the average kid in America stops exercising at 11. Then you told me once a kid stops exercising, what are the odds they ever get exercising again in their life?

Adam Hall: I can’t remember the exact stat, but as soon as you stop, it’s hard. It’s easier to maintain than it is to get back to where you want to be. We find that out the hard way ourselves. If I just stuck at where I was previously, I wouldn’t have to get a little bit fitter or run harder again.

The competitiveness side is what’s pushing people away from sport at the moment. This isn’t only tackling mental health. It’s starting to tackle physical health as well. We’re not trying to be too physical, but we’re getting them into the habit of thinking, “When I do this, I feel more energetic afterwards.”

That’s self-awareness. If we can get them into that, that’s unreal.

Steph O’Neill: Another thing the students said they liked is that they can choose to run or walk. It’s such a simple thing, but a lot of them said they like having the option.

Adam Hall: It’s a bit hard at Grammar in the uniforms to run. In the early days, we had some kids who felt it was a competition. They wanted to get out and blitz it, which meant they missed the concept of connecting with someone. But for a couple of kids, that might have been how they connected. They could connect at that pace, with a little bit of competition.

The other thing I like is that we’re moving away from closed questions. Even as adults, we fall into it. It’s great to pick up the phone and say, “How are you going? Are you all right?” But the tools we’re starting to teach these kids create an opportunity for a larger conversation.

If you ask, “How are you?” and someone says, “Not good,” how do you respond? It can close the conversation off. Teaching them relationship and communication skills is another level.

If we can get kids to identify those spaces and domains, and give them tools to articulate them, imagine what they’ll be like as adults.

Ben Alexander: That’s why we wanted to support Recess. It’s a preventative strategy. We’re trying to help people who are struggling with work, family and life, but what about equipping people earlier in life with the tools?

Growing up as a sports person, I thought sport was just good for my body. It kept me active and helped me manage weight. I didn’t realise how good doing it with my friends was for my mind.

Before we get to stories from Grammar, Miss O’Neill, you were talking about the benefit of going off school grounds.

Steph O’Neill: Yes. I think one of the advantages of going off school grounds is that the kids are excited about it, but also that it’s neutral ground.

Ben Alexander: In what way?

Steph O’Neill: Because it’s not the school. Obviously, we’re still the teachers, but it feels like we’re all just there together as a group.

Kids are fantastic at working together, but within a school there are spaces. There are kids who hang out on the basketball court, kids who hang out on the soccer court, kids who hang out in the sandpit. When we were running around the school, it felt a bit like stepping into someone else’s house. You’re never quite yourself.

Mark Nicholson: Whereas when we go to the neutral space, everyone’s equal.

Steph O’Neill: Exactly. Everyone’s equal. It feels more casual. We’re all going over there because we all want to be there, and we’re all going to have a run or a walk together and catch up.

Ben Alexander: That’s probably the same at Forrest Primary. Mark Robson at Forrest and Adam Buck at St Clare’s are two other legends who are doing it. At Forrest, we’re on campus when we do it. As we walk past the cricket nets, one of my daughters runs off to play cricket with her friends and we lose her. We start the first lap with a good crowd, but because they’ve got an even smaller campus, we have to do two laps, and we lose kids on the first lap.

It’s something I’ve been chatting with Mark Robson about, but as you said, there’s a big administrative burden to navigate before seeing if it’s possible to go off-site.

Let’s get into some of the stories from Grammar.

Adam Hall: One of the things I’ve enjoyed watching is the staff side. We talked about logistics and teachers having duties at recess and lunch. We needed to work out a way that teachers didn’t see this as an extra burden, because we didn’t know how many students we were going to have. Sometimes we were up around 300. Other times we were down around 30, 20 or 10. It depends on the day, and again, it’s not compulsory.

We needed a duty structure so teachers could attend without it being an extra burden. Very quickly, we noticed that even teachers who didn’t volunteer to supervise came along in small groups. We had year groups and cohorts of teachers walking together, checking in with each other and doing Recess for themselves.

Ben Alexander: That’s cool.

Adam Hall: As Mark said, the kids would check in with them as well. That interaction between staff was really nice to see. The kids checking in with them was also really nice.

It’s a great opportunity for us as educators to break down an appropriate barrier and build relationships with our students. We get the best out of people when we have a good relationship with them.

We also have a couple of neurodiverse students who are really benefiting from this. One particular student comes each week now who couldn’t go near a tree. He was terrified by trees and terrified by the concept of walking outdoors near trees. That was part of his makeup.

Now he comes every week. He has a one-to-one offsider, but to see him go along and enjoy that is fantastic.

One thing we’ve learned from Torrens is getting the students to do the initial welcome: why do we do Recess for Resilience? How do you check in with someone? Today this young gentleman got up in front and wanted to have a go at that in his own way. It was brilliant, not only for him to have a go, but to see our community welcome him in his way.

Mark Nicholson: It gives confidence to the other students too. Public speaking is scary. To see that student in a different light is huge. Some kids might have thought of him as one-dimensional — the kid with this thing who avoids trees. But when they see him take part, it builds empathy and care.

The students I talked about earlier are not always liked by their peers because of their behaviour. But by being part of this, other students see them in a different way. They build respect and care in a genuine, authentic way. That’s an awesome story.

Adam Hall: When you have a diverse community, that’s the best way people learn. If we boil education down to its heart, we want people to be successful in society after school, in whatever way they choose. We’re trying to set them up with the right tools, and that’s part of what Recess for Resilience is doing.

Another story was a student who walked along with you one day, Benny, and said, “I’m really not sleeping well. I’m struggling to sleep.” He opened up to you a little bit about that.

Having him find someone he trusted in a space where he could say, “I’m not doing too well with this,” is exactly what we’re trying to set this up for. It removes stigma around connection.

Ben Alexander: We won’t get into too many details, but it wasn’t just, “I couldn’t sleep.” This kid was in distress. I didn’t really know what to say. I said something like, “I hope you’re all right. Have you spoken to someone?” Then I went straight to the school.

That’s another thing. Getting out and walking has been great for teachers as well. I’ve loved getting to know Mr Weatherall. I went and told him and you straight away, but the school had already flagged some things.

Adam Hall: Dan oversees our pastoral care. That being flagged through you and then through to the pastoral care team meant the school was able to support him straight away.

Ben Alexander: I don’t think we had as much depth before. You guys were aware of some of the challenges, but this kid was not sleeping. Maybe an hour. It sounded like he hadn’t slept the night before.

Adam Hall: What a great position that opportunity creates, to catch that and be able to help that individual.

Ben Alexander: We haven’t seen him back, so hopefully maybe he’s sleeping better and doesn’t feel he needs to come. But Dan’s checked in with his teacher a couple of times, so I think he’s going okay.

Mark Nicholson: Opening that door to be able to speak to people is such a huge skill. We as adults are not always great at it. We send texts to mates, but they’re pretty superficial at times.

I love that Recess for Resilience and Running for Resilience aren’t about solutions either. If there was a magic wand for mental health, we’d be pretty dumb for not using it already. It’s not about a fix. It’s not about something being wrong with you. It’s just that life has tough times.

For a kid to be brave enough to talk to someone who is effectively a stranger, but part of that group, is immense. That will hold him in great stead.

Adam Hall: That’s a perfect point. We need to remove the concept that if you’re not feeling okay, you’re broken and need to be fixed. It’s definitely not about that.

Ben Alexander: I was at a lunch today where someone said exactly that. People are not broken. They just don’t have a space to be themselves and talk about what’s on their mind. They need a space where they can share it, get help and not feel judged. I think that’s what R4R and Recess are doing exceptionally well.

This year has been one big experiment. We had no idea what we were doing. What do you think have been the biggest lessons? We’ll start with Miss O’Neill. What have been a couple of the biggest lessons, and where would you like to see Recess go in the future?

Steph O’Neill: In terms of implementing it at school and getting it up and running, I started by going around to the senior side of the school to gauge interest — whether students actually wanted this at the school and whether they thought they would benefit from it. Pretty much everyone said yes.

Then I got the okay from exec, sent out a note to parents and the community to let them know what we were thinking of doing, and put it in the newsletter. I started putting posters up around the school to get the word out.

It’s funny because every Thursday, before Mark and I get out there, all the kids who want to go are already down at the gates stretching.

It really is about piloting it and seeing what works. We started in the school, then took it out. When we get to the oval, we take a photo of everyone, which makes it feel like a bit of a thing. It’s funny because I’ve taken so many photos and they all look the same because the sky is the exact same blue in every photo. We always have really nice weather, which helps.

We’ve made changes along the way. At first, Mark or I or you would do the message: “Our aim is to make Canberra the happiest and healthiest city in the world. We do this through exercising with our friends and talking with our friends.”

Now the students do that. At first, we had random students doing it, and it’s really cool because they take the message in and add their own flavour to it. They say it back in their own way.

From now on, we’re doing captains. We had the captains do it this week. We go off and do the run. It helps that Mark and I are both there, and you’re there sometimes too. We’ve got a man and a woman, which is really good because some students connect more with men and some connect more with women.

Before we head off, we talk to them about checking in. How can you check in with your friend? We use the scale of one to five: what number are you today and why? Or we use rose, thorn, banana peel: what’s something good that’s happened lately, what’s something tricky, and what’s something silly to lighten the mood?

Then we come in afterwards for a little huddle and have a chat. We do hands in, and we change the word each time. Now the captains think of what the word is. It gives them leadership opportunities.

We change captains every two weeks. The first captains we’ve got are girls in Year 3. When I told them, they were over the moon. They said, “But we’re not in Year 6.” I said, “You don’t have to be in Year 6 to be a captain for Recess for Resilience.”

They’re really jumping into that leadership role. They want to make announcements to remind everyone that Recess for Resilience is on, and they can come to us with ideas. That’s open to everyone anyway, because the students are so enthusiastic. They come up and say, “I was thinking this…”

Like Mark said before, if they can’t come, they let us know. They don’t have to do that. They do it because they really like it.

Ben Alexander: They care what you think too.

Steph O’Neill: Yeah. It’s interesting how such a simple thing can be so effective.

I asked one student the other day what she liked about Recess for Resilience and she said, “Everything.” She said she went over as a 10 out of 10 and came back as an 11. She was very happy anyway, but she got even happier.

Where we want to go now is to build on the roles the captains have and the leadership. We want to get more refined with our check-ins and what we do in that space.

One of our big goals is that we go over to one oval now, but there’s another oval near us that’s very nice looking.

Ben Alexander: The Mawson ovals across Athllon, the soccer ones? They’re green because they’re watered, not like the dead one full of golf balls.

Steph O’Neill: The one we were on the other day actually needed a mow too.

We want to head over there as a special end-of-term thing. Mark was saying maybe we could hand out icy poles as a thank you for being part of this. It has worked well at Torrens, so it’s definitely something to be proud of.

Ben Alexander: Do you have anything to add, Mr Nicho?

Mark Nicholson: Steph has really nailed it. The biggest thing I’d say to teachers taking up Recess for Resilience is that it can’t be measured in your normal quantitative ways. It has to be measured in small impacts that make a difference to each kid. You’ve got to take those wins and celebrate them.

From a personal point of view, the kids check in with us as adults. Obviously, I don’t dump my deepest and darkest secrets on them, but it’s nice as an adult to be reminded that a check-in doesn’t have to be with someone your own age.

These kids remind you that you matter. They’re checking in on you. There are insights that come out from them. They might ask, “How are you today, Mr Nicho?” and I might say, “I’m actually only a three. I’m not feeling great today.” They’ll ask, “Is anything going on?”

It makes a difference. Sometimes as adults we think we’re above it, or that a child can’t understand work, mortgages, older kids at home and all that, but they do. They understand empathy. Even if they don’t have a solution, I’m not looking for a solution. I’m looking for someone to be caring and compassionate.

As a teacher, set this program up selfishly if you need to. Set it up to enjoy the exercise for yourself. Set it up to get a little bit of time for you. You can build a connection that benefits you. But beyond that, it makes a huge difference to your kids. I can’t recommend it enough.

Ben Alexander: I couldn’t feel more selfish about the early Running for Resilience days while Shooter and I were putting it on and I was shouting the beers and pizza. It was keeping Shooter and me active and massively helping us. Everyone was saying, “Thanks for putting this on,” but I felt selfish. I was doing it for me.

Mr Hall, what have been the big learnings for you, and where do you want to see Recess go — not just at Grammar, but in general?

Adam Hall: The big learnings came early on, not really knowing how it was going to look, what the benefits would be, or how it would play out with students.

For us at Grammar, different educators had different concepts of what success was. Some may have measured success by numbers. Is Recess successful when we have 300? We had large numbers early on. We hit the 100 mark for a couple of weeks. But when that drops down, does that mean it’s not successful?

That was a learning lesson. Success isn’t in the numbers. It’s in building consistency.

The ripple effect is something we’ve started to talk about a lot in our leadership structure at school. If I cast a stone into the pond, I want it to be a positive cast, and I want the ripple effect that hits others to be positive, so they then send it on to the next person. It’s creating a space that allows that ripple effect to happen.

We talked earlier about adults saying our stress levels are about cars, mortgages and houses. But one of the other learnings is that stress is stress.

I try things with my two boys at home, whether it’s a yarning circle with a talking stick, rose, thorn, banana peel, rewind or another checking method. My five-year-old had a meltdown because the lolly packet he got wasn’t a koala, it was an emu. For him, that was the worst thing in the world.

As adults, we can laugh about that, but for him, that was heightened stress. Adults have bills or other things, but stress is still stress.

Identifying a space for people to share whatever their stress or mental health components are has been a big learning. We’re creating habits of vulnerability. We’re decreasing the stigma around how you check in.

The only way you practise and get better at this stuff is by doing it. It’s like going to the gym. You can’t just flick a switch and say, “I’m going to be the best communicator now because the teacher told me how.” You’ve actually got to do it.

So for me, success is providing an opportunity that allows anyone to talk about whatever they want to talk about. It’s creating that vulnerability space and getting them to practise the tools and habits.

We’re heading in the right direction. I haven’t sat down with my colleagues and mapped out exactly what we want this to do or how we want it to look. We did fruit one week, and that was a massive hit. The next week, kids asked, “Where’s the fruit?” Music is something I’d like to add as well.

Ben Alexander: What do you mean by fruit?

Adam Hall: We had a station at the end with cut fruit. As the kids walked in, they grabbed a slice of watermelon. Again, it came from learnings from Running for Resilience.

If we model the trajectory of Running for Resilience on Recess for Resilience, some of the lessons are probably going to be similar. At Running for Resilience, as soon as someone finishes, you get a drink in their hand — whether it’s water, coffee, beer, whatever — and they stick around for 20 minutes and chat. You get something in their hand and then they think, “I can’t go, I’ve got a drink in my hand. I better stick around and finish it.”

Your icy pole idea would be interesting. It’d be good to get some anecdotal data about how that works. Even if you promoted it beforehand, that would be an extrinsic reward. It’d be interesting to see how many people from outside the core group come once you add the icy pole. Maybe one week you don’t tell anyone. Then you’ve got some data on how to affect the ripple, how to get more people along to hear the message.

If we get them along once or twice and they start to hear it, then go home and practise it, that’s great.

Some of the messaging we’ve done to parents is that we want them to do the same. We want them to go for a walk, check in and use those tools with the students. I haven’t got stories about that happening yet, but I’ve had emails from parents saying they’re happy we’re doing something proactive and talking about this.

We’re putting it in our student diaries too. Students get a diary where they tally their timetable and notes for the week. Usually the front has the school rules and values, but we’re putting the cheat sheet there.

We haven’t mentioned Emma Hales yet. Emma has been a brilliant advocate for this space and helped massively behind the scenes. She designed the cheat sheet for teachers and did a lot of the hard work on that, which has been wonderful for teachers, even if they’re just showing it in a classroom.

We haven’t collected data on that yet. I’d encourage the school I serve to collect data on where we’re at and use that data to move forward. What does success look like? How many people are we reaching with this message, even if it’s not specifically at Recess for Resilience?

The thing I’ve really enjoyed is settling into the idea that it doesn’t matter if 10 people rock up. The habit is really nice on a Friday. Even hearing corridor chat between executives or other staff — “Are you walking today?” or “Are you doing Recess?” or “I know I’ve been off, but I’ll be there next week” — that’s another form of checking in among colleagues and students.

I think it’s great that there are a number of us really having a crack at providing a different educational space for our students.

Steph O’Neill: One more thing we’ve done at Torrens is that I’ve made a Recess for Resilience wall. It has all the information and is up permanently. The students are always looking at it.

We’ve put photos up from when we go over to the oval. We’ve got the captains up there. We’ve got Mr Nicho and me up there so students know it’s us. We’ve got the poster with all the information on it. It just makes it feel like it’s there and people can see it.

Adam Hall: One of the other things we’ve linked in is service learning at Canberra Grammar School. Service learning is the action out of charity. As opposed to just donating money, service learning is about raising awareness with different communities.

It’s not working to a person or saying, “I’m going to help you, mate, and this is how I’m going to help you.” It’s about asking, “What are your needs, and how can I work with you on that?” It’s not working to you or for you. It’s working with you.

Our approach to service learning is underpinned by that concept.

The next thing we want to do is build relationships and work with different foundations. One of the ways we’re doing that is through our house system. Our houses are linked to colours, like most schools, but also to Indigenous totems.

We’re trying to build a link between the Indigenous totems, the colours and a foundation. Gagali is the local word for kookaburra. Our Gagali house is blue, and the blue house is linked with the Blue Tree Project, which raises awareness around suicide and mental health.

What we’ve done is make our meeting point for Recess for Resilience a blue tree. The Gagali house crocheted small blue patches of wool, and we created the tree through that crochet work the kids did. The service was crocheting and raising awareness around mental health. Now it’s our meeting point for Recess for Resilience.

It ties in another foundation that is working towards the same thing we’re trying to tackle: positive mental health and tools for mental health.

Ben Alexander: I love that tree. With R4R, we’ve got the Ark, this rusty old ark that didn’t have a name and didn’t mean anything, but we started calling it the Ark of Resilience. The government let us put a plaque on it in memory of Breeny’s parents, and now it’s officially named the Ark of Resilience. If you Google it or type it into an Uber, it’ll take you there.

It’s a symbolic meeting point, which is really cool. It gives Breeny warm and fuzzies seeing his parents remembered. Down the track, we’d love to get more people putting plaques there for the people they’re running for.

To wrap up, what’s one bit of advice you’d give to a teacher thinking about bringing Recess to their school? Mr Hall, Miss O’Neill, Mr Nicho — we’ll go around.

Adam Hall: I’m going to steal Matthew McConaughey’s words. He said recently, in talking about his poem book, “If you’re going to do it, just do it. Don’t think about it. If you’re going to do it, do it. And don’t half-arse it.”

There are enough of us here in this room who will give time, templates and support to help you get over the little hurdles at the start.

Even if you start with five or four students, or just a couple of teachers, have a go at it. Take a lesson from how Running for Resilience started.

Steph O’Neill: I’d say don’t worry too much about the numbers. Even if only a few students come, it’s still really beneficial for those students and for the teachers who come. You still get a lot out of it, even with small numbers, because the people who are there want to be there.

Mark Nicholson: Not much to add to that. The biggest thing is that mental health matters. It’s a core part of our business in schools.

At the end of the day, kids don’t remember what they learned in a particular maths test. They don’t remember the day you made them rewrite something out of a book. But they remember the day you made them feel good. They remember the day you made an impact on them.

We don’t know where that impact will go. Programs like Running for Resilience are too far in between. We’re losing them in modern society and modern schooling. We have to do 90 minutes of literacy in the morning, 60 minutes of this, fit that in, do this and do that. We lose the stuff that matters.

Our goal is not just to make kids who are smart. Our goal is to make good human beings. This is a huge chunk of that. Whether you affect one, 50 or 1,000 kids, it’s worth it. Just get out and do it, and do it well.

Ben Alexander: I think we need more of us doing it. As educational institutions, we seem to value academics so much because we measure it, and often you value what you measure. Education needs a bit of a shift towards measuring mental health, character strength, wellbeing, resilience and how to pick yourself up.

That’s how we’re going to build the next generation. We want to be better than we currently are.

I’d love to see the goal of all the schools in Canberra doing Recess for Resilience because students from every school would benefit from it.

Mark Nicholson: We did something very cool at Amaroo many years ago. We used to do World Challenge, where kids would go off to Vietnam or Cambodia for a two-week tour, and they had to do something to raise money.

Two awesome kids organised an attempt to break a world record with the world’s biggest air guitar on the Amaroo oval. They invited all the schools in Gungahlin.

How cool would it be in a year or two, Ben, with your support and the other people, for Recess for Resilience to get as many schools as possible to one spot and have a world record Recess for Resilience? You’ve got the lake. You could have a Recess walk, kids all walking at the same time.

You could have a Recess for Resilience Day, like Clean Up Australia Day. You’d get so many kids there. The impact would be incredible. That’s not a pebble in a pond — that’s a boulder dropping into a little pond.

Hopefully we can get past some of the administration we get stuck in, but I still remember that air guitar day. There were 2,000 kids on the oval.

Ben Alexander: What was the song?

Mark Nicholson: I think it was an AC/DC one. Someone from the radio station came out and ran it. But it was their idea. Everyone was like, “No, that’s not possible.” But it is possible. You just have to get it in motion.

If we get enough teachers behind this sort of thing and break the barriers down into little chunks, what a cool feather in the cap of making Canberra an amazing place to be.

Ben Alexander: It’s going to take a team effort to make something like that happen.

On behalf of Running for Resilience, thank you to the three of you, and to Mr Robson and Mr Buck, and everyone else — Georgie Pye, Dan Weatherall — thank you for being part of this experiment, this first year of Recess for Resilience. Long may it continue.

We’ve been mates a long time, but Mr Nicho, I want to thank you. Getting to know you this year, I have so much respect for how you approach education. You don’t lecture kids. Watching you side by side and seeing how much those young boys look up to you, I just want to thank you for being such a great role model to those guys. It makes a difference when they grow up.

We do a lot of work with Menslink and young males who don’t always have great role models. Those young boys are lucky they’ve got you.

Mr Hall, the girls looking up to you. Miss O’Neill, thank you as well. I have so much respect for how you all go about education. Thank you for being part of this experiment.

Mark Nicholson: Thank you, mate.

Adam Hall: Thanks for being open to it and supporting it, and for putting the R4R name behind it. I think that’s given it the momentum it needed. Thank you.

Steph O’Neill: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Mark Nicholson: Thanks, Ben, for making a difference for our kids.