A non-tokenistic approach to Teacher Well Being

Google provides this definition of well-being:

Reasonable enough. www.mentalhealth.org.uk provides a slightly more nuanced definition:

"It is important to realise that wellbeing is a much broader concept that moment-to-moment happiness. While it does include happiness, it also includes other things such as:

• • how satisfied people are with their life as a whole

  • their sense of purpose

  • how in control they feel"

As a headteacher, I can't take ownership of my staff's "life as a whole" and therefore amended the above to:

• • how satisfied people are with their working life

  • their sense of purpose

  • how in control they feel

  • manageable workload to support balance.

Wellbeing has been central to the ethos of The Rise school since 2016-2017. Using the good old oxygen mask analogy, we recognise that staff must pay equal attention to their own wellbeing if they are to be in the best possible position to give their best selves to our deserving kids.

Under previous head teacher @proudHT's guidance, @manaz_pimple - our middle leader and Wellbeing Lead - created this vision statement:

THE RISE SCHOOL WILL BE A SCHOOL WHERE ALL MEMBERS OF ITS COMMUNITY FEEL VALUED AND FLOURISH.

Manaz is hugely well-informed about the principles of positive psychology and compellingly taught the staff body about the active practices we could engage with to help manage and maintain our mental health (like managing your physical fitness) so that we would be better placed to cope with life's set-backs; they might knock us to the "meh" part of the spectrum rather than make us more substantially unwell:

These practices to "boost" mental health are summarised in our GREAT approach to wellbeing:

Manaz and The Rise then tried to cultivate ways in which we could embed each aspect into life at school.

Examples include:

I'm totally aware that the above COULD seem tokenistic. Certainly I watch the frequent "Don't give me yoga sessions, just give me time to do my marking!" Twitter comments with a wry smile.

However, I fundamentally stick by it because, it's the TOP layer of a thoroughly considered "wedding cake" (haha!) of wellbeing:

YES, we pay for our staff to be members of a "perk" scheme called Perkbox (my favourite benefit is cheap cinema tickets), have a pretty well equipped gym that is used by students and staff, and the wellbeing initiatives above. But this is sincere and authentic BECAUSE it sits on top of fundamental consideration about workload and culture. If we were just doing schemes like secret buddy in isolation, THEN it becomes tokenistic and pointless.

CULTURE

I asked staff during an inset to complete this sentence:

"At The Rise, the way we do things around here is...."

And the answers were humbling. I picked the first ten post-its and you can see what they said:

HOW, as leaders, have we established this culture?

• • We are approachable and "open door" - staff know (and do!) come and speak to us about all sorts!

  • We role-model gratitude, including the shout outs in briefing, but beyond that: thank you cards, notes, post-its, mini-treats etc.

  • We consult with staff authentically - we don't ask if a decision has already been made, but often invite opinions and ideas. Eg - do we want to move to a model of twilight insets?

  • We invest significantly in CPD and have a "say yes" approach to it: a well stock staff library, sourcing of relevant online courses, self-directed CPD menus, high quality external speakers and so on.

  • We actively promote a culture of feedback, including providing structured and frequent opportunities to give it to one another. We re-visit this slide on a termly basis in our teams:

WORKLOAD

• • Our default PPA allocation is 17% (not the statutory 10%) which equates to 5/30 lessons (rather than 3/30) and is often greater than that.

  • We moved from 12 data drops (beginning and end of each half-term) to 3 in a year (end of each term)

  • We have streamlined the amount of narrative/comments expected in reports; we give out reports on parents' evening to encourage the conversations to happen that way.

  • We evaluate and stop certain activities task (eg. daily home-school books --> weekly communication emails, proud folders.)

  • Our whole-school calendar with every twilight, parents' evening, data drop, ISP deadline is shared a year in advance allowing staff to get visibility on work demands ahead.

I see all three layers as my job: to keep my eye firmly on the culture of our school, the workload we ask of staff, and ALSO the proactive ways staff can be informed about, and manage their mental WELLNESS.

Recent staff survey (63/67 staff completed) shows that we're getting it right at the moment: but I'll continue to guard against complacency!