Why English class might be the quiet hero of student wellbeing
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
One school in Western Australia moved its wellbeing check ins out of pastoral care and into English. What happened next says something important about where belonging actually gets built.
Roshelle Weir
Co Founder, Switch4Schools · Learning and Development Specialist · 7
minute read
I have spent a lot of time in high schools over the past few years, watching how different schools try to build a moment of check in at the start of the day. It is not surprising that most schools land on some version of this. There is a growing body of research, much of it associated with Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey, that tells us how much a simple sense of belonging matters to a student's ability to show up and learn.
Belonging is “the feeling that we're part of a larger group that values, respects, and cares for us, and to which we feel we have something to contribute.” Doug Fisher, ASCD — What Does It Mean to Belong?
The research they point to is fairly stark. Students with a strong sense of belonging perform better academically, and they also experience better mental health, including a lower risk of suicidal thoughts. Once you have read that, it becomes very hard to treat a morning check in as a nice to have. It starts to look like something closer to essential infrastructure.
So most schools we work with do some version of a check in, usually first thing in the morning, often run by a homeroom or pastoral care teacher, as a way to help students prime themselves for the day ahead. That much is common. What is far less common, and what genuinely surprised me, is what we have seen happen at Margaret River Senior High School in Western Australia, where the check in has become part of English class rather than a separate pastoral slot.
An unexpected pairing that makes a lot of sense once you sit with it
At first glance, English and wellbeing checking in do not look like obvious partners. One is a subject built around texts, essays and exam preparation. The other is about feelings, regulation and connection. But the more time I spent thinking about what happens in an English classroom, the more the pairing made sense to me, and I do not think it is a coincidence at all.
English, at its core, is a subject about literacy and communication. It is where students learn to name things precisely, to notice nuance, to put words to experiences that might otherwise stay vague or unspoken. That is also, almost exactly, what emotional literacy asks of a young person. Learning to talk about feelings, learning to describe a relationship that is going well or one that is not, learning to reflect honestly in a journal entry, these are not just wellbeing skills. They are writing skills. They are communication skills. A teacher helping a student find the right word for a complicated feeling is doing English work and wellbeing work in the very same breath.
There is also a practical argument here that I think schools sometimes overlook. In a lot of schools, mental health and social emotional learning sit under the health curriculum, and health is very often taught by PE specialists. Those teachers are, understandably, trained and passionate about physical health first. Some are wonderful at the mental health side too, but it is not always where their specialty or their confidence sits. English teachers, on the other hand, spend their entire careers helping students find language for complex ideas and experiences. That is arguably closer to the actual skill set that social and emotional learning demands. Attaching check ins to a subject that already lives in the world of language and reflection, rather than one that is built around physical movement and fitness, seems like a much more natural fit.
The elective problem nobody talks about enough
There is another issue we have seen play out again and again in secondary schools, particularly in the senior years, and it is one that does not get nearly enough attention. As students move into the later years of high school, subjects start to become optional. Health, pastoral care programs, wellbeing electives, all of these can become the first things to be quietly dropped from a timetable as students narrow their focus toward exams and university pathways. English does not have that problem. It is one of the small handful of subjects that almost every education system in the world requires students to study right through to the end of schooling.
That makes English an incredibly reliable place to anchor a wellbeing practice. If check ins live only in a health class or a pastoral program, they can disappear for a student the moment that subject becomes optional, often right at the point in adolescence when a sense of belonging matters most. If check ins live inside English, they travel with every single student, every year, without exception.
What we actually saw at Margaret River Senior High School
This is not a theory we are proposing in the abstract. Margaret River Senior High School has been running check ins through their English classes, and the results, documented in their case study with Switch, are worth sitting with for a moment.
“All I have to do is say check in.”
Ellie Macaulay, an English teacher and the school's Student Wellbeing Coordinator, described just how little friction this adds to a normal lesson. That is the whole barrier to entry. No extra period, no separate program to manage, just a few words folded into a lesson that was already happening.
Ellie Macaulay · English teacher & Student Wellbeing Coordinator
One student put it simply: “We love this class... you really care about us.” Teachers reported a lighter wellbeing management load, and wellbeing staff found themselves making decisions based on real, consistent data rather than guesswork.
None of that happened because English teachers were asked to become counsellors. It happened because a small, simple check in was placed inside a subject that already gives students practice putting language to their inner world, taught by teachers who spend their days helping young people communicate more clearly.
Why this matters beyond one school
I do not think Margaret River's experience is a one off. The broader belonging research backs up why this approach works so well. Fisher and colleagues have pointed to studies, including work by Allday and colleagues in 2011, showing that students are more likely to engage academically when they feel genuinely welcomed by the adults around them. Korpershoek and colleagues, in a review published in 2019, found a consistent positive relationship between a student's sense of belonging and their engagement, motivation and participation in school.
The common thread in all of this research is that belonging is not something that can be left to chance or bolted on as an occasional initiative. It has to be built into the ordinary, repeated rhythms of school life, in the subjects and moments where students already are, rather than in a separate program they may or may not attend.
English, as it turns out, is one of those places. It is compulsory, it is universal, and it is already a subject about finding the words for what is going on inside us. Pairing it with a simple, consistent check in gives schools a way to reach every student, every year, in a way that feels natural rather than bolted on.
If your school is thinking about where wellbeing check ins should live, I would encourage you to look past the health curriculum and consider the subjects where language, reflection and communication already live. You might be surprised, as we were, by how well it fits.
About the author
Roshelle Weir is a Co Founder of Switch4Schools and a Learning and Development Specialist with a background in helping schools build practical, sustainable approaches to student wellbeing.
References
Allday, R., Duhon, G., Blackburn Ellis, S., & Van Dycke, J. (2011). The relationship between teacher greetings and student on task behaviour. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(3), 675–679.
Fisher, D. What Does It Mean to Belong? ASCD Educational Leadership.
Fisher, D. Belonging as a Leadership Strategy: Five Practical Actions That Strengthen Learning. EdWeek.
Fisher, D., Yoder, N., Caverly, S., & Blanc Gonnet, K. Designing for Belonging: Practical Leadership Strategies That Strengthen Learning. Sanford Harmony.
Korpershoek, H., Canrinus, E., Fokkens Bruinsma, M., & de Boer, H. (2019). The relationships between school belonging and students' motivational, social emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education: A meta analytic review. Research Papers in Education, 35(6), 641–680.
Switch4Schools. Margaret River Senior High School Case Study.
