How Student Happiness On and Off Campus Leads to Success

Student success is measured by the university they attend, the grades they receive and the career they build once they graduate, but does a great job truly equate a great life? 

According to a study published in the Economic Journal, the most powerful predictor of a successful and satisfied life is a child’s emotional health. 

According to the study mentioned above, 0.5 percent of life satisfaction is attributed to family income, with physical and mental health having a much higher influence. 

How Can a School Develop Emotional Health in Students?

At the International School of Tanganyika (IST), developing and improving the emotional wellbeing of students is in the DNA of the school. Yes, IST provides a rigorous academic curriculum, but they meticulously partner the challenging work with different types of lessons, be it time to reflect, time to collaborate with one another or productive feedback given by the teacher.

“I develop their emotional wellbeing by giving them time to reflect on the bigger ideas that I'm going to introduce or after I'm finished teaching,” said Evelise Togi Vaoga, a teacher at IST. “They are given a space where they can explore the knowledge that they’re coming into the lesson with or the knowledge they’ve acquired since learning the unit. It gives them the chance to voice some deep thoughts.”

In the study outlined above, they found that teachers play a pivotal role in providing an atmosphere that develops emotional health. 

“Teachers need to include social-emotional learning and mindfulness in their classroom and make sure it’s part of everything the students learn,” reads the Economic Journal. 

For example, if students are learning a difficult subject such as a complicated math problem, students need to be reassured before they start learning that this is difficult and they should be encouraged to ask questions if they’re confused. 

In Vaoga’s class, and many others at IST, they approach complex subject matter in strategic ways. 

When asked, Vaoga outlined strategies she uses for the stress that comes with public speaking assignments and with subjects such as data analysis. With public speaking, she first puts students in groups to present, then puts them in pairs and finally, once the student is feeling confident enough, they present alone. 

As for content knowledge, she believes in collaboration. 

“I put my students into groups to bounce ideas off of one another,” Vaoga said. “Learning in collaboration is paramount to student success.”

For Vaoga, nurturing the emotional wellbeing of the students is not only prevalent in the tactics she uses for teaching, it’s also in the way she speaks to her students. She chooses to use words such as “friend” and “beauty” to make sure her pupils feel cared for. 

And it’s a strategy that’s working. 

“I received a thank you note from one of my students the other day with a section that said, ‘To Ms. Evie, I also love the fact that you call each student beauty, I never realized that such a simple word could brighten up someone’s day so much’.” 

If students are given the support they need in the classroom, if they have opportunities both on and off campus that nurture their emotional wellbeing, they will be more motivated, more eager and more attentive, all necessary attributes to a successful, fulfilling life. 

“We have to get into the heart before we can reach the brain,” Vaoga said. “If we reach the heart, we can inspire them to do anything.”

At IST, the school provides more than the development of emotional wellbeing, they have a world-class faculty, personalized learning, a distinguished history, just to name a few. Click the link below to discover nine ways learning at IST differentiates from other schools, why learning at this school is superior.