Students
Practical strategies for naming feelings, calming down and sorting out disagreements.
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- Our Impact
Our impact
Small skills. Big difference.
One workshop won't end conflict. But giving students a sequence they can actually use changes what happens in the next difficult moment. Here's who benefits — and where Mind Matters goes next.
Who could benefit
Five groups, one set of skills.
Teachers
A shared language for emotions and conflict — and less time untangling playground disputes.
Schools
A ready-made session that supports existing wellbeing programs without adding staff workload.
Families
Strategies students can use at home — in sibling arguments and everyday frustrations.
Communities
Skills learned at ten carry into high school, workplaces and relationships later on.
A note on claims
Everything here is what the workshop could do. We have no outcome data yet, so we don't claim results we haven't measured.
What difference it could make
From reacting to responding.
Mind Matters targets a small but decisive gap: the few seconds between feeling something and doing something.
- A student notices anger building before they act on it
- A disagreement gets talked through instead of escalating
- A student can say “I felt left out” instead of shutting down
- Someone listens properly, and the other person feels heard
- A student asks a trusted adult for help without feeling they've failed
Why this lasts beyond the session
Students don't just hear the strategies — they practise them. Skills that have been rehearsed are far more likely to surface under pressure than skills that were only explained.
Research on school-based social and emotional learning supports the broader case for teaching these skills. See Research & Evidence for sources and scope.
In the real world
Where this could be used.
The workshop is deliberately portable — one facilitator, one room, two hours.
In classrooms
A single class or a full year level, inside a normal school day.
In wellbeing programs
A practical component alongside a school's existing pastoral care.
Online
For regional, remote or smaller schools without easy access to visiting programs.
Beyond school
The same four steps apply at home, in sport and in friendships.
Measuring it
How we'll know it's working.
We measure engagement during the session rather than testing students on it afterwards — which would undercut the point of the workshop.
- Worksheets — what students write shows whether the strategies landed
- Games and activities — how students respond in scenarios shows what they've absorbed
- Teacher feedback — the people who know these students tell us what changed
Results will be published here once we have them. We'd rather show nothing than numbers we haven't collected.
Future possibilities — not current offerings
Everything on this page is where Mind Matters is heading — not what it delivers today. The workshop described elsewhere on this site is what currently exists. We've separated the two so ambition is never mistaken for a service.
Future possibilities
Four directions we're working towards.
More schools
Expand access to schools across more regions and reach more Year 3–6 students. The workshop was designed to be portable and self-contained precisely so it can scale without losing what makes it work — the hands-on, practise-it-yourself approach.
Teacher training
Develop resources and training that help teachers reinforce emotional regulation and conflict skills beyond the workshop. A two-hour session plants something — teachers are the ones who can water it every day, and they should have the materials to do that.
Parent resources
Develop resources that allow parents and carers to continue conversations and strategies at home. Skills students practise at school work best when the same language is used around the dinner table.
Greater access
We're starting with schools that can fund a workshop directly. The goal is to pursue government funding and grants — including Queensland's mental health and wellbeing grant programs — so public schools can run it just as easily. Cost shouldn't decide which students get to learn how to handle their feelings.
Improving the prototype
How the workshop itself could get better.
The current session works. These are the changes that would make it work harder.
Changes we're considering
- A follow-up session, so skills are revisited rather than taught once
- Take-home cards students can keep in a pencil case or on a fridge
- Versions pitched separately for Years 3–4 and Years 5–6
- A short pre- and post-workshop check to measure what changed
- More scenarios drawn from what students actually raise in sessions
Additional features
What we could build next.
A teacher toolkit
Lesson plans and prompts so the language keeps being used after we leave.
A parent guide
A short take-home explaining the four steps so families can reinforce them.
Student workbooks
A keepable booklet rather than loose worksheets.
Scenario card deck
A physical set of conflict scenarios teachers could run themselves.
Facilitator training
Training others to deliver the workshop, so it isn't limited by our availability.
Impact measurement
A simple way for schools to see what changed for their students.
None of these exist yet. They're the directions we think are worth building.
Reaching more students
Could this work at a larger scale?
The workshop was built to travel. It needs one facilitator, a room and two hours — no specialist equipment and no long set-up.
Three things would let it reach many more students:
- Training other facilitators — so delivery isn't limited to us
- Online delivery — already possible, and well suited to regional and remote schools
- Funding and grants — so cost doesn't decide which students get access
What stays the same
However it grows, the approach doesn't change.
Students learn emotional skills by using them, not by being lectured about them. Every future direction above is built on the same principle that shapes the current workshop: less sitting, more doing.
We'll also keep being careful about what we claim. As Mind Matters grows, the evidence base grows with it — and we'd rather describe what the workshop actually does than promise outcomes we can't stand behind.
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Help us turn a good idea into measurable change for students.