Every student in front of you in a classroom, has a cup into which they pour everything they need to handle in a day; be an adult in their life who can help fill that cup, writes Sydney Catholic Schools’ student wellbeing specialist, Jim Clifford.

Seriously, my cup right now is full.  Spilling over the edges.  And if we were talking about a nice double shot soy latte in the sunshine on the patio, that’d be great – but we’re not.  

In fact, truth be told I can handle a bit of a latte spill-over, and being one of the clumsiest individuals I know I’m even used to it.  But when this cup is full and at the point of overflowing, well it can be pretty untidy… 

A very knowledgeable and talented colleague of mine presented me with the cup analogy a while back.  

After any number of years working across some pretty challenging (and wonderful) places, from mainstream secondary and primary schools to out of home care and specialist disability settings, I’ve used balloons, soft drink cans, bell curves and all manner of other metaphors to help me understand and explain a kid’s limits. But I think I’ve settled on the full cup being pretty much where it’s at for me.

“For every student in front of you in a classroom, they have a cup into which they pour everything they need to handle in a day. For some kids that cup is huge… But for some, that cup isn’t starting out quite as large as others.

For every student in front of you in a classroom, they have a cup into which they (or more often we) pour everything they need …