Wellbeing projects: Nurturing Potential
by Mark Edwards
Mark Edwards' biodata will be found at the end of the article, or by clicking here.
In
1992, when I was still a Head Teacher, my School Support Officer suddenly
vanished, never to be seen again. Actually to be more specific his title did.
The same chap remained, as affable and supportive as ever, only now he was known
as a ‘Schools Officer’. A seemingly minor alteration but one that signified
an important change in the relationship between LEAs and schools.
A
few years later I wrote a letter to the Chief Education Officer describing
a vision I had for
developing a personal support structure for Heads and teachers. It was partly in
response to the increasing levels of stress that I and my colleagues were
experiencing, and I began working with a senior LEA advisor on putting together
a package that we believed could provide necessary personal support for
colleagues. It was basically about stress management and creating a healthy
work/life balance.
The
CEO must have been impressed because he phoned personally to arrange a visit. We
talked the ideas over and he followed the visit up with a letter thanking me for
my time and expressing a wish to develop the plans further. Then it went quiet.
I heard nothing for ages, and then the advisor and I discovered that he had
organised a ‘School Improvement Planning’ conference for headteachers on the
same day for which our ‘Healthy Headship’ (as we called it) launch was
planned.
I
left the Authority shortly after that, slightly bewildered. I still teach though
I am also training in counselling and psychotherapy. Recently I discovered that
the LEA I currently work for is showing an interest in some ‘well-being’
programmes which have been piloted by Norfolk LEA. They appear to be basically
about stress management and
creating a healthy work/life balance.
You
can call me a cynic if you like, but this is not a case of sour grapes. I
didn’t work for Norfolk and I’m sure I haven’t been the only one to
trumpet the importance of emotional health. Well done to that LEA for their
pioneering work and I’m glad that finally people are taking notice. No, what
really irks me is the fact that local LEA officers are now attending
presentations by Norfolk and will presumably set up their own ‘well-being’
programmes as a result. Once they have been safely pioneered and ‘tested’
and stamped with the DofEs seal of approval, people will be falling over
themselves in the rush to jump on what will surely become yet another bandwagon.
A ‘Well-being Chartermark Award’ is not inconceivable.
And
it’s all for the wrong reasons. When I first developed my ideas about
supporting colleagues it was because I thought it important that people felt
supported and that they maintained a sensible work/life balance. Full stop. Not
because it would lead to a prestigious award, and not even because teachers
might be likely to stay in their
posts longer. And not because it might positively affect standards, though it
doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that a caring, supportive environment in
which people feel valued might just have an effect on teaching and learning. No,
I just thought that it was important to care about people as an end in itself, a
belief that became unfashionable in the 1980’s and seemed to die a quiet death
in the subsequent decade. Now there is much talk about emotional literacy. It
has almost become a buzzword now,
but its underlying humanistic principles have been around since Neanderthal man
first uttered his angst-ridden screams.
Those
principles are based on a belief that people matter; people with thoughts and
feelings who reflect about what happens to them in their daily lives.
Lives that are more than just a salary-earning exercise comprising of a
desperate scramble to meet the increasingly unrealistic targets set for them by
a Government which has its own sights set firmly on the next election. People who are becoming increasingly stressed as a result and are
beginning to wonder why they are doing what they are being asked – or told –
to do.
As
I write this, I hear that LEAs are being encouraged to develop ‘well-being’
programmes to avoid possible litigation in the future by staff who might claim
that the authority did not fulfil its legal ‘duty of care’ obligation. I
also hear that a senior Government minister has resigned because he wants to
spend more time with his family.
Cynical? Perhaps. Older and wiser? Definitely.
Mark Edwards was a headteacher, who still teaches part-time but combines this with writing articles, educational consultancy and entertaining people who like to hear badly performed rock, pop and music hall classics. He still carries a torch for child-centred education and is encouraged by the current interest in emotional literacy and thinking skills in schools. Mark is re-locating to Somerset, with his partner Liz, where he will continue his training in Integrative Counselling. He is a Master Practitioner in NLP (Psychotherapy). Email: Mark4Ed@aol.com.