Meet Katie Pearce - Gotcha4Life Mentally Fit Primary Schools Program Facilitator & Educator

Katie Pearce

Gotcha4Life Mentally Fit Primary Program Facilitator & Educator

The most valuable thing a child can learn at school isn’t content for when they're tested in an exam. It’s skills for when they’re tested in life. Here, Katie Pearce shares what she’s learnt as a specialist teacher in the mental health space - and how a unique Gotcha4Life program bringing mental fitness to primary schools is delivering the most important lessons of all.

The Journey Begins

The chicken or the egg? Others can debate what came first there. But after 15 years working in education, I’ve no doubt what should come first for teachers in the classroom. And that’s really knowing ‘who’ we’re teaching, before we get into ‘what’ we're teaching them.

After starting as a high school English teacher, I found my passion in special education, enrichment and diverse learning roles, including in small, alternative schools for students with emotional or behavioural needs.

Working in diverse needs and alternative settings really hit home the importance of knowing your student, knowing the person and their family life, before trying to teach them any kind of content.

So being part of the team developing, designing and piloting a program that takes such a unique, positive, proactive, prevention approach to mental health in primary schools is really exciting.

It’s at the forefront of what I think is important professionally, but it’s also important to me personally. 

When my son was born early at 34 weeks, I went through a period of postnatal depression – so my own mental health journey is very real. I’ve also seen it touch the lives of loved ones in my life. One in two teachers have anxiety symptoms, which is why teacher self care has become really important to me. You have to look after your people and our program helps schools do exactly that.

One of a kind

When we sit down with school leadership at the start, we look at what’s already in place – what’s working, what’s not and where the opportunities are.

Every time, it comes back to two things: it has to involve the whole school, and it has to focus on prevention.

That combination is rare.

There are plenty of programs where a guest speaker visits once and the school never sees them again. But schools have us for three years. It’s free, accessible and designed to support real cultural change. That’s unique too.

It’s unique to talk to the parents and carers. We’re not giving parenting advice, we’re equipping them for their role in this and helping them build connections with their kids.

There are too few opportunities for kids to have a common, robust, comprehensive program they can talk about with their teachers at school and their parents at home and all be on the same page.

We’re building a shared language around mental fitness, so when kids go home, the conversation can continue and the parents know exactly what they’re talking about.

Skills for life

It’s about preparing children for little tough moments now, so that when the big curveballs come in their life, they have some tools in their toolbox.

How to stay emotionally adaptable when things aren’t going their way. When they’re having a tough day. When friendship issues pop up. When they don’t make the soccer team.

It’s building connection skills so they can look after others in their ‘village’, and know they have people around them to support and cheer them on.

And help seeking, so they know they’re not alone and to not worry alone – that there are always people they can ask for help, and it’s brave to do that. Even at five years old.

Sometimes, the people at home aren’t the ones they can freely ask for help, so expanding that circle for children is really important. 

Making it easy, making an impact

The feedback has been beautiful. Schools are so grateful. Every time we finish a session, schools say it’s so worthwhile and tell us we have to come back. We do! They share how they’re implementing the lessons, and that their kids are doing the brain breaks and mindfulness exercises we taught them.

The aim is to make it easy to do that by taking some of the onus off teachers, because they’re swamped. The resources we’ve created are all there for them, little daily activities for every year group, lesson plans and packs, videos, whatever they need – so they can just take it, know it’s evidenced based, curriculum aligned, and go.

They’re using what they’re learning beyond the classroom. One teacher told me she’d used the strategies in a parent meeting – five weeks into the program, that’s phenomenal. They’re finding it so useful to scaffold those trickier conversations with parents.

It really is about the whole person – and for the whole community.

You can help equip more people to live

Every donation powers Gotcha4Life to keep developing and delivering life-changing programs and initiatives to equip more people with the mental fitness skills to live.