wellbeing - Doubled Up

I read about Mrs OCs positive assemblies with particular interest, as I have had a real-life example of how the attitudes of other people affect our wellbeing over the last week. It comes in the shape of a visit from my German mother-in-law!

I find her visits particularly draining, as she looks upon life so negatively. One example being; "Why does England come to a stop when it snows? 3000 schools closed, how ridiculous." (Of course, no amount of explaining that our weather is a bit different and we don't get snow every year etc etc will change the view that we are a third-world generation). On listening to her 5 year old grandson read fluently from a book about space, you would think she would be proud at what he can do. Instead, she says; "Well, my friend who's a teacher says that despite starting school years earlier, English kids don't do as well as German children."

Then, last night, after her grandson's birthday party, the criticism came forth; there were too many children, most of them didn't even speak to him, the presents are plastic, the hall was too cold, two boys didn't join in the party games and they didn't eat half the food. I went to bed really dejected, thinking that my son had not had a good time and that his friends would have preferred the usual magician/bowling/disco type party.

Then, this morning four mums came up to me to say how much fun their children had at the party, and my mood changed. It has set me up for a positive, enjoyable day today and I am about to set about work (a little late, admittedly) with a whole new attitude. I am sure that I will be more creative, more fun to be around and more productive than I would have been had I remained in the grump I was in at bedtime last night.

So, I call for all teachers who may read this to go into school tomorrow (and every day) with a hugely positive attitude. It doesn't only affect your life but also the lives of everyone around you.

The Guardian report on a study of school surroundings made interesting reading last week. The study has apparently found that walking or travelling through an area of decay and deprivation on the way to school negatively affects the behaviour and possibly the learning of children.

Not really very surprising, I guess. But I do think it is important that such studies are carried out. It has long seemed to me that schools are seen as little islands of their own and that it is down to the individuals in carry out policies and meet targets set by people who have long-since been into schools themselves. For example, it is seen that the number of young people with obesity and type 2 diabetes are rising, so schools must teach more about health, nutrition and exercise. Then no-one backs this up by providing excellent sports’ clubs and facilities for young people, banning advertising of junk food to children and improving food standards. When it is noted that levels of depression and mental health issues amongst the young are rising, then well-being gets put on schools’ agendas. But does anyone look at some of the reasons behind the depression, such as viciously aggressive marketing to children, size 0 celebrities, abusive parents and poverty?

I’m not saying this is wrong. I think it is fabulous when schools are concerned about the ‘whole child’. I also think that flagging up the well-being of students is long overdue. But I also think that schools alone cannot deal with it, and that policy makers simple must look at the bigger picture.

In the case of the study mentioned above, I am sure that schools in deprived and run-down areas can provide a safe, clean and stimulating environment and instil in their students that education is a means to avoid the poverty that surrounds them. I am equally sure that in many cases schools are safe-havens in which children are given hope for their future. I bet there are many head teachers who, rather than accepting the litter and graffiti and lack of play areas, are involved in trying to improve the local area.

But I also think that policy makers, once again, need to look at the bigger picture and see that, yes, schools are hugely important in improving the life chances of young people, but that they will be able to do this better if they are backed by public policy that addresses poverty, that rejuvenates towns and that looks beyond schools as the sole solution to so many of society’s problems.

I had a fantastic day yesterday! I went to a course in London called 'Winning the H Factor, the secrets of happy schools' and it was brilliant.

The speakers were Alistair Smith (of Accelerated Learning/thinking skills fame) and Sir John Jones (knighted for his services to education). Apart from the fact that their double act was funny, entertaining and inspiring, I came home with loads of ideas for making our school an even happier place.

At first sight, I was worried that this course might have just been about keeping everyone's chins up and being nice to staff and pupils, possibly at the expense of learning. I couldn't have been more wrong. The key thing that they wanted us to do was to find our school's core purpose - that is, what are we there for? Then to keep this core purpose in the front of our minds in everything we do. So, if our core purpose is to make every lesson so fantastic that children are inspired every time, then we should look at what is getting in the way of us doing this and remove any obstacles. Then we were given plenty of tips as to how to do this. A few of these are below:

Have the hard conversations (ie deal with staff who don't fit in with the school culture that you want.)

Involve staff in deciding what may be getting in the way of them providing brilliant lessons  - ask them!

Some schools have provided ironing services/MOT services etc to come into school so that teachers don't have to spend time doing this and can instead spend time preparing fantastic lessons.

Have a vulnerability register - get staff to say what times of year they are most vulnerable because of particular aspects of their work, then work as a team to protect those members of staff at these key times.

There was loads more, but what this wasn't was a wishy washy "ah, make the kids into softies who can't cope with the real world" type of course. Instead it was about preparing children for a world that is changing faster than we can possibly imagine and giving them the skills to cope with the things that life will throw at them.

If you want more information, you can go to the Alite website.