Reflections on Student Wellbeing Beyond Measurement

Last year, while running two pilot wellbeing surveys with Grades 9 and 10, I noticed something unsettling. Many students were grappling with complex feelings and existential questions, often unnoticed by their teachers or even the wellbeing team. They seemed to live in two selves: their public one and their private one. But what about those who were not coming to counseling? I wondered, what are we not seeing?

That question sent me back to my ongoing research on how wellbeing can be meaningfully measured in schools; a journey I began several years ago. I hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, most likely because it is elusive and, in many ways, subjective. Still, after reviewing numerous clinical tools, we settled on a questionnaire, which we enriched with our own questions to build a fuller individual context around each response. It was a labor of love! Our purpose has always been to support our students’ wellbeing so that they can thrive, personally and academically. The stakes are high. The insights we gained reassured us that a wellbeing survey would be helpful for our students, who told us that they wanted more from us: more curiosity perhaps, but also more direction. In truth, students will always want more from their school.

As we prepared to launch our new survey platform, I asked myself once more, how can we best and most responsibly evaluate individual and collective wellbeing? Around that time, Baroness Amanda Spielman, who led England’s schools’ watchdog between 2017 and 2023, made headlines when she warned:

“If schools have re-conceived themselves as therapeutic institutions and are looking for things to be wrong with the child, they’ll probably find some. And we’ll stay in this sort of negative spiral of unintentionally encouraging children to find things to be unhappy about.”

At a time when schools were increasingly blurring the line between education and therapy, her words landed like a slap. We are not, and should not try to be, a therapeutic institution. But…were we, by inviting students to choose statements to rate, agree or disagree with, inadvertently lending them words and feelings? I shared these reflections with the wellbeing team. To be clear, I deeply believe that supporting wellbeing has its place in schools, but do we sometimes have blinders on? Are we too prescriptive in how we ask young people to self-examine?

Sadness is woven into the fabric of growing up. The first heartbreak, the first house move, the first loss… all shape who we become: let’s not panic about mental health. That was, in essence, the message I shared when introducing our new wellbeing survey. As adults, we are perhaps too quick to interpret distress, to find a cause, to fix. But the truth is simple: if we do not look, we do not see; and if we stare too hard, the problem grows.

So, I adjusted my gaze. Over the first six weeks of this semester, one by one I met many new middle schoolers, every new high school student, and all of Grade 10. When I told them I would see each of them individually, I imagine that they received the news with varying degrees of curiosity, caution, and perhaps mild dread. I wanted to signal that we were listening while also encouraging them to seek help when they need it, on their own terms. I am, by temperament, a counselor who prefers to wait for students to come forward.

I learned a great deal. Our students hover between childhood and adulthood, often with striking self-awareness. Many spoke candidly about change, identity, and belonging. Others reminded me, sometimes with comic precision, that teenage concerns, from friendship dramas to the longing to be liked, are both trivial and profound at once.

Behind the bravado, I found vulnerability. Beneath confidence, a wish to stay hidden. Many are angry with their parents, not out of rebellion but displacement. The frequent moves that define their lives can make some stronger, but also leave invisible bruises: frustration, fatigue, fear of attachment. Their rage is quiet, even repressed, because it frightens them. Their longing, for recognition, for the warmth and steadiness of maternal love, is there. Mothers, it seems, are the most frequent “visitors” in our conversations. And how natural, too.

They feel held by school and grateful for it, yet overworked, as though education were something done to them. They want to please, but also to be seen. They hide best in groups, which offer both camouflage and belonging. And yet, paradoxically, it is in groups that they reveal themselves most.

Groups! I love them — watching who speaks, who stays silent, who follows, who leads. I dissect them with more fascination than I ever managed in science class (and honestly, who enjoyed prodding a pig’s liver?). A group of adolescents, with its shifting alliances and eruptions of feeling, can make Mount Etna look positively tame. Yet in that chaos, there is vitality, and courage too: affection, humor, empathy breaking through at unexpected moments.

So, what have I learned from these one-to-ones? A lot I already knew. That students are complex, contradictory, and often wiser than they realize. That sadness is not a symptom to be erased, but a natural part of growing up. That our task is not to fix, and not to stare, but to keep seeing with care, not scrutiny.

By the end of those six weeks, I noticed something curious; the students I met later in the schedule tended to open up more than those I saw first, as if the word had spread that it is good to talk. I am looking, and they feel seen. Because if we do not look, we do not see. But if we look well, what we see can grow into something strong, kind, and lasting. Perhaps the art of seeing in schools begins with granting time and space to notice — before we diagnose, label, or fix.


Originally published in the International School of Paris newsletter.