headteacher-secondary

7 teachwire.net IT STARTSWITH YOU Using his own experiences as a starting point, Andy researched and wrote a book, The Compassionate Teacher , which explores and explains how individuals working within schools can improve their own mental health. It also offers some practical tips from a teaching perspective to help educators maintain an impactful yet manageable work-life balance. For more details and ordering information, visit bit.ly/tscompassion and emotions, we’ll be in for a tricky ride. Evolution is formidably powerful, though, and luckily for us, it built a failsafe into our minds. If we nurture our human ‘soothe’ brain, we can calm our threat systems, promoting more effective mental health, as well as more effective environments for us to work within. Systemic issues When I realised the model I’d been working with was about compassion, my heart sank. I didn’t want to just be told that being nice to myself and others meant that everything would be OK, but I was wrong. Compassion is about honesty and warmth, not just ‘being nice.’ It engages the ‘soothe’ brain by encouraging us to speak to ourselves in a kind and honest way. By understanding ourselves, while becoming kinder in the process, we can begin to understand the point of departure of others – both colleagues and students alike. We are specifically evolved to benefit from kindness, and to give it to others too. That got me thinking. Can this apply to wider systems, not just individuals? What if we’re stuck on the threat/drive access with no outlet? What if – as a system – education is forcing us to focus on outcomes and external measures to justify our own existence? What if schools’ validation comes only from external sources, such as exam results, rather than the quality of relationships that happen inside the building? Pressures on headteachers and their staff to conform to a competition- based model of education with league tables at their heart has led to exactly the reverse of healthy mental behaviours at a systemic level. Schools should be about soothe/drive – a desire to achieve, stemming from a warm and compassionate place. A threat/drive school starts from entirely the wrong place, and may well lead to some appalling consequences and outcomes. Start here Moving forward, there is absolutely a way out of the quagmire. To a degree, change at a systemic level is out of our control; however, we can genuinely begin a cultural shift if we start with ourselves. It begins by seeing ourselves as part of a much bigger picture in terms of the systems that might be exerting pressure on us. If we collectively do this, we can begin to create the schools our teachers and young people deserve. As individuals, we can begin by practising things like Soothing Rhythm Breathing to calm ourselves (look it up – there’s loads of free guides online), being conscious of things we appreciate in our lives, and even just noticing how we feel, and the triggers that may be leading to this. Sometimes, the honesty we provide ourselves can tell us things we might not want to hear in terms of leaving our schools if they are detrimental to our wellbeing. The point is this – unless we are prepared to recognise our own warning signs and do something about them, individually and collectively, things will only get worse. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andy Sammons is a director of English and strategic lead at a secondary comprehensive in West Yorkshire; The Compassionate Teacher is published by John Catt; follow him at @andy_samm “We are specifically evolved to benefit from kindness...” W E L L B E I N G