Beyond the Canvas: Nikki Bonus

Hi. I'm Gems, the, regional director for K-12 across APAC here at Instructure. Welcome to Beyond the Canvas, the people and the story shaping education. Today, I have one of the most amazing women that I have met, absolute role model, Nikki Bonus. Nikki, welcome, and may you introduce yourself, please? Hi. I'm Nikki Bonus, the CEO and founder of Life Skills Go.

Life Skills Go is an education company that developed technology hand in hand with the education community. It's an easy to use emotion and well-being data collection tool that measures students' readiness to learn, supported with a comprehensive library of evidence based and curriculum aligned resources. We exist to ensure that no child falls through the gaps. Where do I take it? Like, holy wow. I've only had one coffee and already, like, I am on this.

That is huge. Nikki, if I remember how we met, and the reason why I'm talking to this is because I think you and I, you walked into the room and it was just like, oh my gosh. This person is wonderful and I'm, you know, without too much. Sister from another mother. Yeah.

Right. It it was very reciprocated. Right? But the thing that I love about you is that no child slips through the gaps. Right? So what does that actually mean? And I think that, you know, obviously, Canvas and the ability to make sure that, you know, we kind of capture all of the students' educational needs and students in need of attention from an educational standpoint. But what does it mean from, obviously, your platform and what LifeSkills Go does? Yeah.

It's a really good question, gents. I think what I might do is just tell a little bit of a story. Please. If I just Love it. Go gangbusters.

Oh, one of the I I knew this incredible young man when I was at school, this beautiful little boy, and, he wasn't that academic, and he wasn't that, he wasn't really into sports, but just a very kind, very kind, very quiet, beautiful young man. And one of the things that I remember about him so strongly, particularly in primary school, was he loved animals, and and yet he was never in trouble, never in detention, but he kinda just flew under the radar. And what people didn't know about him at the time was he was living in an unsafe home, and he was being parentified, and there was a lot more going on, that anyone knew in the school system. Nothing over nothing, you know, nothing really standing out. By the time he found by the time he was in high school, he was running with crowds to find ways to self soothe his internal world, because he didn't have ways to be able to articulate that.

And by his late twenties, unfortunately, he'd taken his life. And the reason I tell this story is the really horrible part of this story, on top of the story, is that was my brother, and his name was Philip. And same children, same household, completely, completely different, outputs of what was going on. I, on the other hand, was extremely academic, particularly in my fur like, it happened till I was turned sixteen. But it's you know, let's just not go there.

Extremely academic, but I had very overt behaviors. You know, I was being suspended. I was being expelled. I thought, you know, I didn't have the words, and no one really got underneath what those behaviors were. And for me, initially, I looked at the way that we were measuring well-being and the way that we were seeing every student, and the traditional methods have always been attendance, behavior, teacher's observation.

And we would have been one of those families where they'd be like, oh god. We've got Nikki again in our class this year. Like, the shadow that a student who is extremely traumatized carries and the legacy of that within the education system. I I joke, but not really, that Philip used to say to me he wanted to be a gangster Yeah. And I wanted to be a nun, and we both went two separate Yeah.

Okay. Two separate different ways. And within that, you know, I was part of why I developed this was initially, it was really to be able to prove that I was okay. If I was really honest, I wanted to make sure that I was going to have some semblance of a life. You know, I was grappling with how do we prove out, what are the tools, what are the skills, what do we need to change.

And I entered into developing this nearly seventeen years ago, and started building the technology about eight or nine years ago, and it was just on the back of the most incredible period of time where neuroscience, positive psychology, we're able to gather data, we're able to really be able to pin down, you know, that we can make a difference, and it was proven through evidence. Sorry. I've just spoken so much, but I feel incredibly passionate around that story of the why, the why that myself and my team get up every day to do what we do to ensure that we are able to catch any child that might be falling, that might be slipping, and well-being is not like, you know, numeracy or literacy. You know, you're banking your, you know, your levels and everything's gonna be fine. As you and I both know, Gems, life lives life well, we live life on life's terms, and, you know, it doesn't we need to catch children and young people and young adults as they go through life at various periods of time.

Yeah. Well, right, because I I think thank you for sharing about yourself and Philip. I'm sorry to hear about Philip, but, also, I think on the flip side, Philip has given us this because it's He really has. I think for me though, Nikki, they're slipping through the gaps. And as you say, literacy and numeracy.

Right? We know that a child is constantly building and developing those skills, and you sort of build upon that. And once you know that, you know that. Right? And it stays. But with mindfulness and emotions and everything that affects, it is that roller coaster. Right? And I think, for me, I think about my childhood.

And, like, likewise, I was absolutely the, oh my gosh. I've got Gemma in my class. Goodness gracious. And I was a child that had a very interesting upbringing myself. I grew up in a small country town, and I had, people make a call to docs and those types of things about my childhood.

But my mental well-being was never tapped into throughout school. Right? Mhmm. And I think that we expect our our little people to come to school on a daily basis and do school. Whereas we as adults are allowed to have a bad day and are allowed to not always be on and are allowed to take a sick day, but our little people still have to navigate and get through the world like it's just this is school too bad, so sad, get it done. Right? Mhmm.

On the flip side of that we're also asking our teachers a really big job to not only manage their own personal well-being but how do they have these conversations with our young people where you've got the likes of and I'm kind of getting goosebumps thinking about it but life for me as a child was a little bit simpler regardless of what I had going in my life because I didn't have social media and I didn't have climate anxiety. And, you know, I one of my close friends told me about her her niece who is worried because Trump is now prime minister president. Right? Yeah. All of these things, and we're asking our teachers to also just be just teach. But how do they deal with kids that are struggling with this on a daily basis? Right? And I think the platform that you have developed and the data that we are seeing from that and the very rich data, and I love the fact that data is now being utilized within schools, not just businesses around revenue and Mhmm.

Optimization that you are actually enabling the teachers and the principals and the community to make better data driven decisions on our young people that are in our academic institutions. You know, I'm sitting here smiling, Gemma, because one of the things too is these beautiful, incredible teachers and educators and people that work within the education system. They're not data analysts, and yet there is huge pressures for them to be working on, you know, reports, frameworks. You know? I I always think that technology done well should be solving a problem. It should be solving a problem, and not just the time problem, but it should be something that is scalable.

And a couple of things you just said there were, you know, we started out initially as a face to face program, and I myself, out there teaching in schools on a daily basis, social emotional learning. And I could have done myself out of you know, we were we weren't a small company, and, you know, we were in very, very large amount of schools across Australia at the time. And I remember saying to one principal, how are you measuring the impact of this well-being program that your school has invested in? That's a large amount of capital, and you've got us going in there, and you've identified that you've got a social skills problem or you've got a resilience problem or you've got this problem, and, you know, and they are there. And I said, can you show me the data that you've got? And it was very much like, oh, well, we pulled it off this sense of belonging anonymous survey, and then we had this thing over here, and we think that it's going to. And I said, look.

I don't wanna do myself out of a job, but I think that we should be measuring the impact of the skills and the tools that we're teaching. And, you know, and particularly at that time with CASEL and the framework coming forward for, you know, child development and also the work that doctor Dan Siegel was doing, I was really at that forefront of being able to look at, you know, where do we start? What are those what are those main skills that our future, you know, our future focused learners need to have? What used to be deemed as soft skills? You know? Emotional literacy, self regulation, problem solving, collaboration. And within that, how do we then triangulate that back with their behavior, their attendance? But more than that, how do we give our young people a voice? How do we bring them into the conversation? How do we let some of that be driven by them so that we're actually bringing student voice in? And then we have, you know, coming back, how do we then scale that through technology? And how do we then use those data points? How do we then aggregate that? That if I said to you, gems, you're a teacher in a you're a prep teacher in a school, and tell me how many young people, were anxious on week two on Wednesday because of something that happened on the playground. You can't. You just can't.

And how do you how do you know our masking students like Philip that would have just said they're fine to a teacher's face every day? But what if we were bringing them into it and we had a way to ensure through rule sets and datasets that we're aggregating all of this? And, you know, there's it's kind of you know, there's an interesting interesting article on why check ins don't work, and I I'd have to agree. Like, it's way more than check ins. We can't just be logging my young, you know, young people are are, you know, oh, wow. I'm happy. I'm happy.

I'm sad. I'm sad. The amount of work and the amount of time that we've led this industry for a really long time to look at, how do we begin to lift that? How do we begin to ensure it? And going back to what you were saying about our academic institutions, we know that large emotions literally close off your brain. Like, if we go back to Dan Siegel's hand brain model, like, we've got all this science. So if students aren't in a state of readiness to learn, how do we begin to move into a preventative space and allow our teachers to then be able to do the incredible craft that they've got, which is teaching and enriching these young people's lives.

So being able to have a preventative model that whenever the day start or whenever they want to be able to use this tool, they know the percentage of readiness to learn at their class, their cohort, their stages, their collection of things, their whole school. They've then got data that if they are bringing in well-being programs like ours or like anyone else's, what well-being programs do they really need? How are they measuring the impact? The money that they're spending there, is it money that's actually working? Is it time? Is it are there other things that are needed? Because there's no one fix to wellbeing. Like, I always say that we're not the be all and end all. We need to work in partnership, and we're better together. But let's get baseline data.

Let's see where we're at, and let's always watch out for anyone falling through the gaps. Every time you speak, I'm just like, no word. But my brain is just going absolutely mental right because I think, you know, what the way that I interpret is that we are giving teachers, the principals, the opportunity to see the whole child whilst also giving the child an opportunity to be an advocate for themselves. Mhmm. And to your point, check ins are not enough.

Right? Yes. I mean, I laugh and I say that I'm a little bit woo woo. And when I ask someone and they say, how are you? And they say, yeah. I'm good. I can typically say, but how are you really? And the next minute, they spill their own their whole guts.

Right? And that is fantastic. But, also, children sometimes don't feel comfortable in doing that because, you know, we have these parents and everything's going on at life. And, you know, I think the ability as to what your platform does and how you are actually giving a child an opportunity to have a voice and what that means and where that can go out into the community. Because if I think about my childhood, my parents did the best they could with what they had. Absolutely.

And I left my parents when I was twelve, thirteen. Right? Because I I knew that that was not the life that I wanted. Right? But not all children have my gung ho ness that goes, yeah. Cool. I can get away from this.

Some children can't escape. Right? And even though our parents are there to be our caregivers, sometimes they don't know what that means. Right? So if we have an opportunity to support a child and pull them out of the situation that they are in so as they can reach their true true potential, not just academically, but how they're giving back to society and what that looks like. Mhmm. You know, even if it is just one child that you see from your platform, Mhmm.

Because I I have no words. Right? Because of the fact is that what you were doing and how you were supporting, if I think about that one child and they could have the cure for cancer. Mhmm. Who knows? But Mhmm. So much.

I think the reason why I wanted you on here today is because we always get asked. You know? Canvas, you do this. You are sort of market leader in teaching and learning, and people love our platform, and they love the outcomes that we're able to show around student outcomes and teachers and the data and analytics around their learning. But naturally, well-being is becoming more and more prevalent. Right? Mental health is not something it doesn't it doesn't just pick and choose.

Everyone Mhmm. Been exposed to mental health. Every person will know someone that has been touched by mental health. So it is very, very topical, and it's not something that we can just push away under the rug. Right? You talked about resilience.

That is something which we need to teach our young people. I teach my son that all the time. However, the reason why I brought you on is because you're a a partner. Right? And I think this is why I wanted to really sort of surface and spotlight the work that you were doing and to give schools an opportunity to consider as to, okay, is this something that they wanna adopt? Right? Is this something that they wanna explore further? And to your point, if it's not even your program, if it's someone else's, but I think we can't ignore it. We need to step up and we need to start making changes and giving students a voice.

So thank you. To that though, how did you you know, I know that you have had a lot of experience in your life. Right? What made you Well, we'll touch on the none point later, like, because I was a liturgical dancer, in Oh. In year six, and I was very proud of that. Was I good at it? Absolutely not.

But, did I enjoy it? Yes. Because I felt like an angel because I had the big sleeves and I Oh, I can just I can imagine you doing that. Yeah. But I wouldn't melt. But in some I did not wanna be a nun.

Nikki, I think what I wanna do now is just talk about how. Like, we know we know the why, but how did you come to be this? Like, when I introed you, I said that you're a role model. Right? Because I make no brains about the fact that I am an absolute tech nerd. I can't do anything with it, but I believe in the power of it. And I think when used for good, which is what you're doing, an absolute game changer.

Right? So can you just talk me through because I know that you've had a lot of experience. Like, I know, we haven't dived into the none part yet. Actually, you've been the none part. Yeah. Absolutely.

Although I used to be in a liturgical dancer, so maybe we could, you know, obviously, trade some dance moves. We'll build a We could. Well Yeah. Absolutely. We could put it in Canvas Studio.

Anyway, can you talk me through, obviously, how you came to be here. Right? Because I can't imagine that this is just something that, oh, one day I'm gonna wake up because you talked about the scalability and delivering it in schools previously. Over to you. Yeah. That's a really, really good question.

And, actually, I just wanna say thank you. Like, thank you for your vulnerability, and thank you for sharing, you know, your history a little bit. And I suppose this is just for me to be a little bit more transparent because when we look at a tech founder, we often think that they've gone after university, and they've done all these amazing things. And, you know, I unfortunately had to finish school at sixteen because my environment wasn't the kind of environment I can continue on with, but I did continue on with the deep level of knowledge of searching for answers. And my whole career kind of my career is always, you know, gestalt therapy, I am a yoga teacher, you know, going like, looking at neuroscience, positive psychology, leadership, all these things.

So back to how the technology began to be developed. We often talk in technology around product market fit. And so what I did was I rang ten schools, and I I made a PowerPoint of what I thought they were missing. And I said to them that I would like to pretty much walk through what we did in our face to face, delivery of our well-being and social emotional learning programs. But I'd like to I'd like to deliver it, through technology, and I kinda made this PowerPoint up.

And back then, if I had have said to you I was gonna become a tech founder, I think you would have fallen off your chair laughing. And I rang them up, and I I said, look. Can I walk you through this working group? This is what I'm thinking. I would really like to validate it. This is a need.

And then at the end of the session, I said, and so I'd like you to be involved in this pilot group, and it's gonna cost you x. And all ten of them signed up. And I was like, okay. That's that's that's amazing. Alright? Okay.

That's a good sign. You know, little did I know anything about product market fit or a validation, and I didn't even know what all those words meant. But I I knew they were missing something because we were working over eight hundred and fifty schools at the time, and there was this big gap of there's something there's something missing here. And because we were also collecting surveys and feedback every time we delivered a face to face program, we ended up having the largest amount of feedback from teachers and schools and even parents around what they wanted, what worked, what didn't work. And so at that time, I went over to San Francisco, and I I was doing the training program.

The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, delivered a program for a hundred CEOs from all over the world to go over there, and attend and be trained for five months. And I was working with the likes of doctor Dan Siegel and Amishi Jha and some amazing people. And one day they said to me, well, you actually have to share this knowledge. Like, you're sitting on so much, and I remember it because I had talked to the teachers, and I've had this idea this school. Sorry.

And I remember sitting there, and someone said, but you're the custodian of, you know, over twelve or thirteen years' worth of information of all these young people, and you have an opportunity to create generational change. And I remember the the imposter in me was like, you can barely use my iPhone. Like, oh, my my kids are helping me do my updates and things like that. I don't know how to do it. Anyway, I came back to Australia after that period of time.

I was still validating and massively failing at trying to build the first attempt. But my pilot schools just kept giving me more problems to solve and more problems to solve and more problems to solve. And, eventually, I was accepted into a leading, accelerator, and I spent a year there working and learning. And one of the first things I did was learn how to code, and began to really deeply under I know. Like, I'm, you know, you can probably tell a little bit.

I go boots in and all. Now do I still code? No. But I I needed to understand what it was like to translate the subject knowledge specialty that I had into something that I didn't understand. I surrounded myself with the best of the best of people I could find. I brought in mentors, and a lot of those were from the education department and from schools as well.

And slowly, we began to address that problem of you know, and I remember specifically, one of the face every feature that we've ever built has been built hand in hand with our education community. And a a story that still to this day gives me shivers up and down my spine was we were I'm in New South Wales today. And during the many billions of lockdowns we had, I was in a working group with a group of executives and deputies and principals. And one of them had the courage to say every morning we're coming back from another lockdown. Every morning, I'm sitting in my car, and I have tears pouring down my face because I don't know what my day is gonna look like.

I've got twelve hundred young people, and I don't know what's gonna happen, and I really wanna be able to support them, but I'm burning out. And I said to this person, what about if we work with you? What about if we begin to get you dashboards? What about if we begin to link that into systems? What about if we have partnerships with companies like Canvas or other Sys systems? What about if we work together so when you walk in in the morning, you have visibility across your whole school? Mhmm. You'll know any student that might have had an anomaly anomaly oh, how good is that? I couldn't even say my own words this morning. But you'll be able to see the percentage of readiness to learn. You'll be able to go through all of the classes, or it'll be lifted up for insights and data for you, and you'll be able to go, oh, there's a casual teacher down there being eaten alive.

Might need to give them a phone call. Oh, dear. Okay. That's an issue that we need to tend to. I'm gonna give that teacher a call.

And I really clearly remember this woman looking, and there was quite a lot of people on the call. And they all looked at me like, could we do that? And I'm like, yeah. And I think that gives an example of, you know, what what we began to do and how we've developed our technology. And from that, you know, that was quite a a period of time ago, but from that, it's, you know, what do we do next? Because the last thing we want is data for data's sake. The data needs to be something that we can action.

It needs to be aligned. It needs to be visible, and it needs to be integrated, and it needs to be triangulated, and it needs to be digestible, and it needs to be something that we can do something about today. And I can put my hand on my heart and say, after a very, very long period of time, I don't think there's a school that's ever had a demonstration or done a trial anymore. Probably say ninety five percent of class of schools come on board. And I'd say the other sort of five percent would be, we just need to make sure we get our executives in line, or we just need to actually let start it next term.

And my feedback to them is every day we miss is another day that we're not supporting our young people. We've kept it so simple that, you know, marking the role, it's mandatory. Mhmm. The young people mark the role. All the rest is done for them.

We've taken the heavy lifting out for schools. They get all the data and the insights and the reporting all lifted for them. They don't need data analysts. They don't need cognitive behavior therapists. They don't need they're all of these things even in terms of being able to how do we address a readiness to learn.

They're all built into the platform. That is so powerful. Right? And when you say that you are sort of solving for problems, it's sort of data is one of those things. We have so much of it. Mhmm.

And it's it's wonderful. I love it. But it's no use to anyone if it's just sitting there. Right? Data has such an amazing opportunity to change shape, you know, obviously, also predictive. Right? Mhmm.

Something that we're seeing is, you know, I think to my son Harry loves formula one. Right? But the other day, he was exceptionally upset because his favorite driver didn't win. Like, again, the predictiveness of knowing that to your point, you know, a principal steps in. If there's something huge that has happened on the weekend that is gonna fit this whole cohort of students, they know how to deal with that. Right? And then they go huddle with all of their teachers and say, right, guys, This has happened.

We know this. The data is showing us this. I'm now gonna prepare you. And I'm assuming that to that point, Nikki, when you're talking about, okay, you know, you used to do these in person events, you probably have resources to support teachers and principals around how to have that conversation. Right? Because yeah.

Just visualizing the data. I think that is amazing and then right? And, obviously, with all of your experience and all of these different courses that you have done has made up the tapestry of your experience and what that looks like. You talk me through a bit of that? We often talk about our working groups, and we talk about validating, you know, what are features and working with schools and listening to problems. But one of the biggest things, and it was really an intuition thing for a while for me, was all this work was coming out that mindfulness was amazing and cognitive behavior therapies are amazing, and I kept thinking to myself, I was a really sporty like, I think I survived because I just I ran, literally, physically ran. Like, I like, running was my thing, and I'm still to this day.

That's very, very big on or very high on my agenda of ways that I deal with life is I just physical exercise. And I was thinking to myself, you know, we've got all this adaptive learning, and we've got all this education around how do we teach emotional literacy. We've got self led. We've got, you know, coming off all the data and supporting teachers. Because the other thing is too, you're always expecting teachers to know how to teach something that often they've never been taught.

And I use my husband as an example where oh, I'll just use Australia as an example. I went, poor husband, I'm not forever doing that to the poor man. But, you know, in Australia, we go, how are you? Good. Great. Stressed.

Tired. Fine. Like, you know but yet we know if we name it, we can tame it, and we also know a critical part of self awareness if we look at the CASEL model is self awareness. And in there, it's not cognitively knowing the emotion. It's somatically understanding it, beginning to build that out, and that doesn't happen by running a lesson once.

It doesn't happen by going, oh, I'm going to teach you what happiness is or sadness is and the complexity of emotions that come and go. We have lots of them across stage. So within that, that ability to be able to if we unpack, and I am going somewhere with this, but if we unpack sort of trauma informed best practice, the most consistent, smallest thing that we can do every day. So having our young people identify their emotion Mhmm. Name it, feel it, have the content to deeply understand it.

Well, then, if we look at doctor, doctor Dan Siegel's framework, it allows the teachers to not have to be subject matter specialists. They're also if we look at child's sort of attachment framework or Dan Siegel's four s's, if we as humans can deeply see that young person in front of us, not from what they're saying, not from the behavior incidents that we think, but deeply begin to see them. When they when we see them, that young person begins to feel safe. Mhmm. They then begin to feel secure.

Mhmm. And then they also learn how to self s. Mhmm. And off that so that ability to be able to support the teachers, how do we really give emotional literacy? How do we begin to to teach it consistently? Just a little bit. Just consistently, you know, for all of us.

So building in that science, building in the efficacy, building in the understanding, and drawing with constantly updating because science research is constantly updating. And then from there, if I have social groups so there was a I was on a webinar with a a school who are in their third or fourth year this year, and I said to the principal this week, what are some of the things that you found out from life skills go that you would never have known if you were waiting on your anonymous surveys or you were looking at your normal data? And he said, you know, there are so many things, but a big one that stood out for him just recently is a grade three and four group of young ladies were having social issues and really quite and he could see the ones that were anxious, the ones who were angry, and the ones that were worried. And that identified, you know, through the through the different mechanisms that we do, that this had been consistent. And he was able to pull them out, and they were able to do a strategic program for them and actually wrap support around them. And I could sort of drop down into a million of those stories.

But if we come back to how do we support them, well, we have, you know, identifying, communicating, and managing emotions as part of our platform, you know, and from all ages, and it goes up. We have resources on how to teach emotions, or we also have emotion cards. We have hundreds of digital lessons that can be assigned to a class, a whole school, and schools also don't have to use our lessons. So I always say that there's a flexibility. But coming back I'm sorry.

You got me really excited. But coming back to the product, we always run them with these teachers. We ran one with students, and that that instinct in me of, like, okay, the runner in me, I would never have been able to sit down and close my eyes. I was too traumatized. Like, to close my eyes and breathe when going through what I was going through when I was in primary school.

So I had this amazing working group of young people, and I said to them, so when you're really upset and you're really dysregulated and you just don't know, you know, it's okay to be angry, but it's not okay to punch someone. Like, let's kinda, like, level the playing field here. What do you need from us? And they looked at me and they went, we need people to stop telling us to breathe. And I just went, hallelujah. Like, I'm sorry.

That was a light bulb moment for me. Yeah. And yeah. Right? And so we went off to then build their own login that they threw their own student voice in the same way, like, you have on your Spotify for preferred activities of how you wanna, you know, self regulate, they could go in, they could write, they could draw, they could pick the activities, they could have physical ones. So it's not one size fits all.

One school, the way that you're you know, that we work with them is not one size fits all. And, yeah, the depth of being able to support not only the schools, you know, data, that's fantastic. Let's get the baseline. Let's measure. Let's see what we need.

But, also, how do we then begin to support our students through the platform too? And I think you absolutely nailed it there again. Right? I completely think I went on a ramble, but I came back. I hope I can get you to the No. Like, I'm here for it because there was so much in that little piece, right, or big piece, however we wanna look at it. But, you know, we again, we think that as adults, we know best and, you know, we're asking our young people to breathe and to relax, to sit still, and to I I am late diagnosed ADHD.

I don't know how I've made it this far with my brain not being my best friend, but I have and I'm really freaking proud of myself. But I think back to my childhood and I was constantly in trouble because I was wriggling and doing all of the things. Right? Because there was so much angst and so many emotions and, you know, there was masking and things that I was dealing with because there was a lot going on in my little, little life. Right? Yeah. And I think, you know, I remember that you shared a story with me about a teacher who was kind of like, you know, cool, well-being, right, you know, blah blah.

And I love how you kind of were able to turn him around because I remember you saying that, you know, he was like, if he he identified that if he gets his kids out playing Red Rover crossover for the first ten minutes of the day and then come back in and and give those kids an opportunity to check-in again, they're ready. They're excited. Yeah. They want to. Right? And I think it's all of these little not one size fits all type scenarios, but people embracing it and thinking outside the box and making those little tiny tweaks and the consistency.

And I think as a child, feeling seen Mhmm. Feeling supported Mhmm. That just fosters an ability to grow. Right? Because And thrive. Just thrive.

Even academically, let's thrive. Yep. And I think, you know, it's like it's like that saying, you know, if a plant's not growing, right, you don't change the plant. You change its environment and you Mhmm. Keep a cold water or whatever that may be.

You don't blame the plant. You know? And I think that's what in my interpretation, that's what your platform is doing, which is why for me, it just makes sense because these two things go hand in hand. And if we want our young people to be the best versions of themselves, we need to support, and we need to give them their own opportunity to self regulate. We need to give them their own opportunity of self awareness, and there is so much power in that. You know, again, as adults, sometimes we're like, oh, I'm feeling this, but I don't know what that is.

I always say that you need to feel it and acknowledge it. Understand why you're feeling that, and then it you you give it an opportunity, you give it light, and you move on. Right? And I think if we're setting our kids up for success in this, then our world we are doing we we are making such impact. Right? It's something that just really bubbled up for me, and I think I just kinda wanted to touch in on that because, historically, I think, particularly in education, people are carers. You know? They see a problem.

They wanna take care of it. Mhmm. There's this myth that if someone's angry, I have to fix it, or if I'm, sad, I have to fix it. A lot of what we've done, again, throughout the development of the platform is also build into the platform, How do we work with young people when they are, you know, sad or angry and giving teachers those skills that, actually, presence and validation will actually that's enough. And there's so much research into coregulation that when I'm able to say to you, hey, Gems.

Really sorry you're sad today. It's a bit rough. Mhmm. That's it. Yeah.

I might say to you, is there anything you need? And you might go, wow. No one's actually never asked me that. Mhmm. You know? And and it's again, I feel like and I think you and I have talked about this before that we didn't have these things because we didn't have the knowledge. We didn't have the science.

We didn't have the research, but we can't deny the research now, and no learning can happen until we get well-being right. We know their little brains can't even begin to understand any information until they're in a state of readiness to learn. So whether you're on the well-being bandwagon or whether you're against the well-being bandwagon, let's lean on science. Yeah. And it says, whether you wanna use you know, sometimes I do wish, and I I probably should delete this out, but I'll keep it in.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed about the word word well-being because I feel like it sells yoga tights. I feel like it's used as something to banter around a new milk that's being released. But if we come back to the development of our young people to thrive in academic environments and to live their fullest life, I think there was someone that you and I were in a meeting with the other day, and his words have just sort of they're just stuck in my mind. You know? We need a contemporary solution for the world that we're living in today, and you nailed it right at the beginning. We didn't have access to devices.

We didn't know what was going on in other areas of the world or countries. You know, we we can't understand the amount of information that's going through these young people's world, but if we come back to our sphere of control, what can we control? Mhmm. We can do something collectively together in partnership, And we have the data, and I I think during that meeting where I was talking to someone very influential and well before COVID said, we've got a problem. We've got a problem. We've got a problem.

We've got a problem. We've got a problem with our youth. And now we've got the data. What are we going to do? And are we, as schools, willing to begin to do something differently? And we've got the evidence now Mhmm. That we can begin to work preventatively and proactively together.

Yeah. And and I think also the thing is, you know, it it is not just the school's responsibility because we have the data. It is the community. It is our education systems. It is our ministers.

It is our prime minister. You know? It's also again, as parents, I'm trying not to raise a little damaged child into the world. Right? Because I have this knowledge, and I'm helping set him up for success. Right? So he can be a kind of better person. You know? I think though as a parent, because I have more of this information.

Right? And that's what your platform does. It also has an opportunity to support the parents. So you've got the teachers covered. Right? You're also there's a a massive program that you that you're doing a little bit later. You have that program.

But also, again, the parents because sometimes ourselves, I'm a busy working full time mom that's got all of these different priorities running around, and I'm sitting here thinking, oh my gosh. I'm a terrible mom. Mhmm. But also, I'm human too. And so, as I said, my parents did the best they could with what they had.

But now you're also finishing parents and we have the best too. Right? So, again, the community now has a responsibility because we are all exposed to mental health in one way or another, and we all have a child in our life in one way or another. That's not going away. So we should all band together. And when we say, how are you? Really mean that? Because being seen Right? Like, people have jobs.

I have a job. You have a title, whatever that may be, but we're all Mhmm. We all have feelings, and we're all trying to, you know, make our way in this really hectic crazy world. But I think the kindness and the ability to be seen and to have a voice, there is so much power in that. And I love that I am living in this time where we have connected, where we are not going about it quietly anymore.

No. I love it too. And you just made me think about schools. Like, you know, when you were saying that and you're right. I was in another webinar again.

I'm just a lot of webinars like me and Well, it's just because you look so great on them, Nikki. Oh, so and Sharon hit me was saying, you know, when a young child enrolls in school, the school doesn't get the child. The school gets the family. Mhmm. And I was like and she goes, and it's a package.

And I just like it was like drop the mic moment, and I was like even just saying that, I just had goosebumps. But coming back to that, it's looking at okay. I've always said to, you know, my team or anyone that I've always worked with or anyone that I work with or any partnerships that we've got, you know, like, your yourself included, I wanna be the subject matter specialist and stay in my lane. I wanna work in partnership with other subject matter specialists that stay in their lane. I want to you know, our dream is to collectively come together Mhmm.

To really support and to be able to look at that whole community space. And we don't have to be all of that. You know, we don't have to be. And that part of our, you know, our schools is they are the hubs of our future you know, our futures. And what a privilege it is every day to be able to work in this space.

Yep. Absolutely. Like, Mike dropped that a hundred percent. Nikki, I think for me also, you know, coming back to the technology side of things. Right? You know, can you just walk me through, like, how your platform works within a school? You know, you've talked about, you know, they come in, they check-in.

But I can imagine that checking in for a prep and checking in for a year nine student are two very different things. Right? Because, you know, a prep child might be upset because their mom put the peanut butter on their toast. Literally. Yeah. Yep.

Absolutely. But a year nine student is probably really worried about something that they read on their social media or they couldn't get their hair right or whatever that may be. How do you sort of how does your platform cater to all of those different voices? Yeah. So, really, it's a highly customizable platform. Mhmm.

So you're right. The way that a a prep student checks in even down to the amount of emotions or there's also context that's involved in that or a readiness to learn scale right up to, you know, our sort of, you know, year ten, eleven, and twelves, the way that we've built it so that it's individualized for those age groups and it's age appropriate, but we also have the autonomy for schools to be able to customize it for their own environment. So and without going too deep, and people are able to reach out, but the customization piece has been incredibly important for us too because, you know, you're never going to nail an interface really well for a school that's in rural rural Queensland or in their northern territories. They might wanna have their own artwork. They might wanna choose their emotions.

But also the data coming through, how do we then weight those? Mhmm. There's a massive you know, without giving away our IP secrets. The amount of work that's gone into the back of those exactly to be able to lift those insights, those data rules, and that's why I think, you know, I'm very strong on check ins don't work. Because if I was just looking at, Gemma's happy today, Gemma's not happy tomorrow, Gemma's really sad at lunchtime, we need a lot of other data points to be able to lift it up to ensure that we're catching we can see patterns. Be predictive.

And using that technology to be able to, you know, whether it's a jurisdiction, whether it's a state, territory, what fits in within their framework too? You know, how do we build that out so it can be down to an individual school? They can even build out individual cohorts or or, you know, AD or BD units or, special needs units within schools. It's so simple at the click of a button without them doing heavy lifting. They can take the templates that other schools have used as well. And I think having that flexibility within technology and then the what next so, you know, we've got this. There's another part of our platform that we're about to release in a couple of weeks that will also really, whoo, really address that part.

But, again, you know, schools are individual places. They're their own incredible you know, what's the most important thing in a school? Relationships. Mhmm. How do we really begin to build those relationships? We get to know each other. We also watch out for each other.

Now asking a prep student what's really going on for them when they don't have the language or they don't have the ability to be able to identify and communicate or manage, even a year ten student or a year a grade nine student. So there's a the complexity is one of the reasons. Like, someone's gonna say to me, I'm telling you, it's taking you a really long time. I'm like, yes. It's a very we were solving and building something that's never been built before, and that's where the technology comes in, that that iterative, agile ability to be able to meet the research, the evidence, the needs, the science, and also the requirements of a school.

Mhmm. And simplify it in a dashboard where teachers, principals, you know, jurisdiction. They don't have to be a a data scientist. Right? And, you know, I've I've seen your platform, and the time that I saw it, like, it was a no Thank you. And I love the fact that we that we are partners because, again, stay in your lane.

We are really good at teaching and learning. You are really good at well-being, so let's work together so as we can scale. And all of those people within that ecosystem of a school, how do we all work together? And I think that that I've noticed that a lot more in my return to Instructure is that schools and sort of diocese and clusters and, you know, associations are becoming more collaborative and not competitive. And that for me is, like, thank goodness. Right? Because we all need to work together to solve for this thing.

So thank you so much for everything that you are doing within this space. I know that we have been working a little bit across various different little projects. A new a new feature coming. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pry because, obviously, there's there's gonna be a big launch on that. But, Nikki, is there anything that you would like if you wanted to if you wanted to tell us something where you've seen some pretty amazing change that you think just sums up your platform in one, what is that? And I know that that's probably a really difficult question because there's probably been so many different stories and so many different individuals and emotions and people that play into that.

But if there was one, what would that be? I'm gonna share a story that really, again, whether you're on the well-being ban or not, I think it's it's kind of everyone gets up to go to school to make a difference in the lives of young people. School reached out to me because they talked about it's really, really hard for teachers to measure the impact of what they're doing on a daily basis and the changes that they're doing. They work so hard. It's such a complex job. They give so much of themselves, and this principal rang me because she was gobsmacked by this incredible human who had brought her his own test and learn and evidence of what he'd been doing.

And you touched on it lightly before, but I kinda wanna give it some context because it was a very big drop the mic moment for me. We we keep using that word today. I picked it up off you. I'm gonna let that one go. But, so what he realized is on the days that they had, p, double s, a, so it's sports in the school, the young people were checking in, and their data for their state of readiness to learn when it was aggregated was much higher than the days that they weren't doing physical exercise.

Mhmm. And this teacher wasn't exactly very you know, initially, you know, it was just like, well, why would we you know, what's this gonna give me? You You know, what's this gonna give me? You're asking me to do something. And, you know, and as much as there's not really anything for the teacher to do because it's so systematically built in, it is another thing. You know? It is something. And so what he did was he had this hypothesis that if he did more exercise before they started learning, would that increase their readiness to learn? And he created a spreadsheet, and he did his fifteen minutes every morning, and it went right up to ninety three percent consistently over a three week period.

Now that's great. He was able to validate. He was able to come to his principal and go, and, you know, it might not it might be something else for someone else. Somebody might be very passionate about mindfulness or dance or creativity or art. Like, the point being, that's great.

It increased their readiness to learn. But the bigger part that came out of it that I think was really when we come back to creating environments where there's a sense of belonging and young people wanting to be there. So it's a very low socioeconomic area, very low attendance. What happened over that three week period beyond the readiness to learn was that their partial attendance went up, and their attendance went up over thirty percent. It's three weeks.

Beyond the well-being. Right? Because the point is that the well-being is the bottom of that and you solve for that and all of these other little things get affected in a positive way. Mhmm. Supporting the well-being, you're also supporting the teacher with the well-being. Everything else just around it becomes better.

So thank you so much for driving into that story a little bit more because that one gave me goosebumps, and that was where the penny dropped for me. Because, likewise, it was like readiness to learn. What does that mean for a teacher that has thirty kids in the class and then have not ready? Then what? Right? Yeah. The more and more we unpack it, we now see, and you can't lie with data. Mhmm.

You can't lie with science. It's there. Nikki, we have come to the end of our session. Thank you so much for having us, but I have three questions that I am asking all of my wonderful guests. I think we've already touched on yours, but we'll see.

We're calling them the hidden gems. Are you ready? I am. Ready? We should check you in. But what did you wanna your readiness to answer. What did you wanna be when you grow up? A nun.

We we nailed that one. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Compassion amplification. Yeah. Yeah. It is.

And what do you love most about Canvas? The partnerships and being able to work with, yeah, incredible, incredible humans like yourself and an organization that really is a subject matter specialist and doing incredible work within education. Thank you. We love working with you too. Let's go and make more of an impact together. We're we're down to that one.

Nikki, thank you so much for coming. It I'm I really I've got a lot out of this, and I'm sure that anyone who watches this will because, again, it's so important. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can't wait to work with you, and I can't wait to see the magic that we make happen. And straight back at you.

Thanks so much, Jones, for having us here. We're really, really, really excited. Have a beautiful day. Okay, mate. Oh, you've got magic.