Workforce
Then I ’ ve got managing student demands , managing student mental health , managing literacy and numeracy requirements , managing compliance , managing standards , managing parent demands and expectations . At the end of the day , I come home and my inner battery is quite depleted .
I need to take action on the three A ’ s . The first one is assess , so where am I at ? Where is the level of my battery at the moment ? Am I at 80 %, 50 % or at 30 %? The second part is awareness , asking ‘ what do I need ?’ and what I need is going to be different to what you need . The third A is action : I actually need to do something .
Do you think teachers have a tendency to focus too much on others ? Oh my gosh . We absolutely do . There ’ s a wonderful book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski called Burnout , and they talk about human giver syndrome where we give , give , give to everybody else at our own expense . I think we get really attached to this concept of busyness , and we use the word busy as a bit of a badge and we become a martyr and say , ‘ Well , I ’ m more busy than you and I ’ m so tired because I ’ m so busy .’ It becomes a bit of an addiction .
When I say addiction , I mean our nervous system only knows how to operate in a high alert stress response , and sometimes we forget or we don ’ t get taught how to actually activate our relaxation response .
Those first few days of the holidays , we don ’ t know how to sit still because we ’ re still on high alert , our nervous system is still busy , we ’ re used to being busy and we just don ’ t know how to sit still . So learning to sit still , learning to rest is so important , but it ’ s something we find very challenging .
Do you have any tips for teachers to improve their everyday mental health ? I think it ’ s really important that when we start to talk about wellbeing , we need to talk about the science and the research and the evidence as well . It ’ s not about ignoring the negative stuff , it ’ s about having enough resources to better cope with the demands that we face on a daily basis .
Things like gratitude , identifying my strengths , working with my strengths , mindfulness of course is a really big field of study and has been shown to be the most evidence-based strategy to reduce stress that doesn ’ t involve medication . There are so many incredible things that we can do .
You can get a lot of these things as apps on your phone , whether that be apps to track habits , to track gratitude , and apps to remind us to move , stretch and exercise . It doesn ’ t matter what you do but do something specific .
What are the benefits of good mental health for teachers , not only for them but also for the classroom ? There ’ s so much research from people like Sue Roffey , even John Hattie talks about how teachers health is so important for student outcomes . Then you ’ ve got Jenni Donohoo talking about collective efficacies and believing in my ability to make a difference , believing that collectively we are making a difference .
There ’ s strong correlations between teacher wellbeing and student wellbeing . There ’ s strong relationships between teacher mental health and student mental health .
I think Sue Roffey calls it two sides of the same coin . And you ’ ve got Faye McCallum who does a lot of work in the teacher education space as well about the impact on student outcomes . In fact , Donna Cross has got some fabulous research around the impact of teacher wellbeing on student wellbeing as well .
We are in the business of student learning , we are in the business of supporting students , but we can ’ t do it if we don ’ t include ourselves in the picture as a human being . We are not robots , we are not machines . We are a human being , we do care deeply .
In fact , one of the reasons we ’ re so stressed is because we do care , and teacher stress is higher in school populations than general populations , so we need to acknowledge we ’ re stressed because we do care . Putting ourselves in the picture instead of giving every ounce of energy to other people is so important , and we need to really prioritise ourselves , because goodness knows , we can ’ t be waiting for other people to do it for us .
We need to recognise that , number one , ‘ I ’ m a human being , not a human doing ’. Teachers always say , ‘ There ’ s just not enough time .’ And I say , ‘ Stop managing your time , manage your energy instead .’
There is no more time in the day , but we can actually manage our energy . If
Stop managing your time , manage your energy instead .
we really want to help our young people , we need to restore our own energy so we have enough to give . Supporting ourselves is crucial . Why ? So we can be a better educator for the young people that need us , to be a better educator for the young people that we care about .
How can school administrators better support their educators ’ wellbeing ? Just by having a look at some of the hazards in the workplace . I know sometimes I think , ‘ this meeting could have been an email ’. So why we are sitting here listening to a meeting that is probably unnecessary ? Then of course there ’ s lots of emails where you think this was actually unnecessary as well .
We can look at some of the systems and processes and really streamline them , because we talk about work health and safety in the workplace and we have warning signs to reduce physical harm . But there ’ s also hazards that relate to psychological harm .
We need to assess the psychological hazards in the workplace such as excessive workload , high work demand , low job clarity and low job recognition . That ’ s where I work with school principals to actually say , well , what are some of the systems that we can streamline to reduce the workload for teachers ?
Is the government doing enough for teachers ’ mental health ? In my opinion , no . When I hear some of the processes and policies released : we ’ re prioritising student wellbeing , which is essential and there is very much a need there , but not prioritising teacher mental health is almost like saying , ‘ We ’ re going to provide all these resources for babies but we ’ re not going to provide any resources for the mothers .’
It doesn ’ t make sense because they ’ re part of the same system . You can ’ t provide for one part of something and not the other part . So in my opinion , there ’ s not enough resources , there ’ s not enough funding , there ’ s not enough support and more needs to be done . ■
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