Tag: wellbeing

Half term and wellbeing

So the 2nd half of the half term begins and I spent my half term finding some time for myself including a bit of a holiday with some excellent company, but with a little bit of an intrusion from work.   I went through some traumatic travel situations, as I often do, some poolside trauma and have had a difficult family issue arise.   All this in a half term.   So it got me thinking about wellbeing, which made me put fingers to the old keyboard and put this post together as I started the journey on my second of four trains for the day.

Wellbeing?

One of my first thoughts on wellbeing is simply the complexity of it.   It’s a simple word and its easy to say your wellbeing is ok or not, or for wellbeing to be put on the agenda for weekly meetings, but what is wellbeing?   Now am not going to say I have done any real research on this but for me there are a number of aspects including our physical fitness, our mental wellbeing, a spiritual element and well as elements related to stress, both positive and negative, agency, purpose, family and much more.   It’s a bit of a complex soup of things yet I feel that often when organisations look at wellbeing they look for simple solutions where none really exist.

Work and wellbeing

I think this area is particularly complex.   As mentioned in the intro, work intruded a little in my holiday abroad, through email notifications I saw on my phone which led me to feel the need to act and respond.   I also had an emotional response to the message which had an impact where I had to that point being getting quite relaxed and very much in holiday mode.   Now it is important to note that there was no explicit need in the emails for my response but I felt the need to respond.   I had the agency to respond or not to respond, and had the agency to disable notifications had I wished.   There was a lot in my control.   But equally I feel there is an increasing narrative around the need to be efficient, to be effective, and therefore having identified an issue via a notification I felt a partially intrinsic but partially extrinsic need to act, independent of being on holiday or not.   Technology facilitates many benefits but putting these notifications in front of me, may be the flipside, and negative side of this.

Stress

The word stress often brings with it a negative image.   With the M5 closed, and being my main route to the airport, with all surrounding roads clogging up as everyone else, like me, sought to find alternatives, it certainly wasn’t positive stress I was experiencing and it wasn’t how I anticipated my holiday to begin.      But equally the November ahead of me and the number of events which I will be contributing to, equally represents stress but I see it more as a positive challenge, challenging me to better prioritise, to network, to us resources at my disposal and to grow professionally.    As I write this it gets me thinking of “desirable difficulty”.   It therefore worries me that we seek convenience, ease and the status quo all too often.   There is negative and avoidable stress that we should rightly seek to avoid.   But equally there is a lot of stress which we should seek to embrace.    From my holiday one such stress was my irrational fear of bodies of water, where my gondola ride in Feb caused some distress, and where this time it was a pool by the apartment.   Like with the gondola, I once again embraced the stress in the hope of growing, this time entering the pool, albeit in the shallow end.   That’s the first time I’ve been in a pool in over 20 years, and I hope is another step in trying to grow personally and get comfortable with that which makes me uncomfortable, and which stresses me out.    I think this also links back to my previous comment on agency, in that I can control this stress and how I engage with it.    I feel a lot of the stress in our lives, we can either control or at least control how we respond, and that it the key, to avoid the emotional hijacking which often arises from stress.   Maybe if I had avoided such a hijacking I may not have responded to the email notifications, and may have left it for others to pick up or for me to pick up on my return.   Who know how that may have turned out?

Wellbeing initiatives

I have a particular view on wellbeing initiatives in that I feel they are largely ineffective.   They often represent activities which can be accessed and sometimes, unfortunately, which are made compulsory.   These simplistic measures don’t do much to address the complexity of individual wellbeing.   I will however note, taken at a macro level, they may have a positive average impact on a wider staff body, but I write this from the point of view of an individual.    The initiatives I have seen so far fail to deal with the complexity of wellbeing.  For myself, at the moment, the family issue which has recently arisen is definitely not going to be addressed by any activity my school can put on or arrange.   It can however be addressed by a strong open and warm organisational culture, complete with appropriate line management structures.    It does make me think that we should spend less time on wellbeing discussions and initiatives and more time going back to the basics of leadership and management, and making sure staff feel supported, positive challenged and engaged, fell they have agency, etc.    If there is one other thing that I think schools and colleges need to do it is to provide the time to stop and reflect as this long train ride is providing me on this Sunday afternoon.

Conclusion

Wellbeing isn’t simple.   It’s a bit of a soup of factors.    As I sit at my 2nd last station of this leg of my trip I wonder whether I would benefit from a bit of a force analysis of the internal and external factors which impact my wellbeing and about what I or other can do to support my wellbeing.   Might that help to unpick things?  I also wonder if thinking about wellbeing when discussions of wellbeing and stress are often framed in a negative fashion, may bias me towards more negative views as to my own personal wellbeing.   I am not sure, although if there is one thing I am sure of it is that an analysis would take some time, and if there is one thing that would positively impact my wellbeing it is to have the time to stop and reflect.   

Now how do we build that into the school programme and how do we support all to stop and reflect?  

And also how do we manage the narrative around wellbeing to reduce the largely negative framing which I feel currently exists?

Thoughts on a new academic year

As a new academic year begins, this being my 26th academic year (has it been that long??) I just thought I would share some thoughts and maybe predictions.

Artificial intelligence

I don’t see the discussion of artificial intelligence in education going away as there is such potential.  The use of AI to support students, to help teachers and rebalance workload and much more.    It also makes for a good talking point for conferences or for developments.    I have two problems though.   One being that I think there will be a lot of talk, especially from vendors, without the reliable evidence supporting the impact and benefit of their tools.    As such I feel there will be a lot of misdirection of effort and resources when looking across schools in general.    Two is that artificial intelligence is all well and good, but it needs the relevant access to devices, to infrastructure, to support and to trained and confident teachers.    These digital divides need to be addressed before schools in general can then seek to use AI and leverage its potential benefits.

Online Exams

The issue of online or digital exams feels partly related to the sudden growth in AI and the resulting potential for AI marking of student work and therefore for AI based marking of student exams.    Again, I see this as another talking point for the year ahead but again am not sure we will see much real progress, possibly seeing less progress in this area than in AI.     The issue is that exam boards are taking things very tentatively so there first step will be “paper under glass” style exams which simply take the paper version of an exam and digitise it rather than seeking to modify the exam or examination process to benefit from the new digital medium.    For me the key benefit of online exams will be realised when they are adaptive in nature so can be taken anywhere and at any time.   This then means that schools wouldn’t need access to hundreds of computers for their students to sit an English GCSE exam as the students could sit the exam in batches over the day or over a number of days.    This would help towards the digital divides issue as it impacts online exams as schools wouldn’t need as many devices, but they would still need the infrastructure and the support to make digital exams work.

Mobile Phones and Social Media

Oh yes, and then there’s this old chestnut!   I suspect the phones and social media discussion will trundle on.   Students are being given phones without any parental controls and then schools are having to deal with this.   And some schools are taking the prohibition approach which is unlikely to succeed and may just deplete patience and resources.   I continue to believe we should be seeking to manage student mobile phones in school, so might restrict use in some areas and at some times but embrace and use them at other times.   We need to spend time with students talking about social media and its risks and benefits helping to shape the digital citizens which the world needs.

I also note here that social media is being blamed for the lack of focus and ease of distraction in students, and through association it is the fault of smart phones.    The world isn’t that simple, and having recently finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari I am not more aware that other factors such as increasing levels of societal pressure to succeed, increased consumption of processed foods and our on-demand culture are all having an impact on our children.    Yes, social media, and by extension smart phones are playing their part but they are not the root and sole cause of the issues in relation to attention which we are seeing in schools and more broadly with children.

Fake news and deepfakes

This links to AI and also to mobile phones and social media, in the increasing ease with which fake news content can be convincingly developed including the use of images and video, and then shared online.    As fake news becomes an increasing issue, which I suspect the US elections will draw some focus on, there will be an increasing need for schools to consider how they discuss and address this challenge with their students.   More locally within education and within schools will be where we start to see increasing use of AI tools to create “deepfakes” by students and involving other fellow students, either “just having a laugh” or for the purposes of bullying.     This will be very challenging as the sharing of such content will quickly stretch beyond the perimeter of schools, spread through social media, messaging apps and the like, but where the victim and likely the perpetrators will be within the school.   

Wellbeing

This one came to me last, but if I was re-writing this I would likely put it first.   We talk about wellbeing very much but every year we look to see if the exam grades have gone up and are faced with increasingly compliance requirements around safeguarding or attendance or many other areas.    Improvements in results, or even the efforts to improve results mean more work, which means more effort and more stress.    More compliance hoops equally mean more effort and more work.    So how can we address wellbeing if educators are constantly being asked to do more than they did previously.   And exam results and compliance are just two possible examples of the “do more” culture which pervades society possibly driven by the need for economic and other growth as something to aim for.    Although growth and improvement is something laudable to seek, it cannot be continuous over time, not without deploying additional resources both in terms of money and human resources.    As such there needs to be a logical conclusion to the “do more” culture and my preference would be for us to decide and manage this rather than for it to happen to us.    AI can help with workload for example giving more time for wellbeing however my concern here is that this frees up some time to simply do more stuff, albeit stuff which might have an impact, but not positively on wellbeing.

Conclusion

The above are just five areas I see being cornerstones of educational discussion in the academic year ahead.   I suspect other things will arise such as equity of opportunity, although I note this links to pretty much all of the above.   There will also be other themes which arise but it will be interesting to see how these particular five themes develop during the course of 2024/25.

And so with that let me wish everyone a successful academic year.    Let the fun begin!

Efficient mental health?

Am currently reading The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertx and managed to get a good few chapters read while on the train from Bristol up to Leeds for the EduFuturists Uprising event.    It was in reading it, and on thinking of AI in education, the efficiency narrative and concerns in relation to mental health and wellbeing, that I thought I would scribble this blog post together.   And I apologise in advance for what will likely be a series of rambling and loosely connected thoughts, but hopefully you will find some value in them and be able to draw some semblance of sense from them.

Now I have written on the efficiency narrative before, that we are forever looking to be more efficient.   This is about getting more done with less so taking less time, or using less resources, or reducing errors.    The issue though is that this isn’t sustainable as ever time we save time, or save resources, we simply identify further things to do which will make use of the saved time, or saved resources.    Often under the guise of “continual improvement” we end up doing more, but we cannot continue this approach indefinitely.     One look at the teacher wellbeing index and we can see the resulting stress and workload issues brought about by a culture of “efficiency” and “do more”.   So individually we are all being challenged to do more, and our organisational structures, our teams, our leadership structures, etc, are all being challenged also to do more, but also to oversee continual improvement, which in turn means doing yet more things.

I have also written in the past on the subject of social media and the false sense of connectedness that it provides.    I have found myself surrounded by virtual friends and colleagues, sharing thoughts and ideas, but still finding myself isolated and alone.     This presents another challenge as we seek to be connected, to get involved and contribute, but all without the benefits of face to face get togethers and proper, real life socialisation.

Loneliness, or as Hertx describes it, that lack of connection not just from friends, family and colleagues but from our wider communities, our political parties and society as a whole is another concern.   Now Hertx points towards this as being a contributory factor in the fracturing of current society, including the growth in extreme views particularly as related to far right politics.     Now for me this links to social media where such ideals can be easily shared and garner favour or even see their way to going viral.    And for the students currently in our schools this is quite significant given that all they will have lived through is a world of social media, of extremist views, the breakdown of social cohesions, covid and its related lock downs and isolation, and similar other challenges.

Maybe we now live in a world where more than ever we need to reconnect with what it means to be human and in particular being the human, social, animals we are.   Maybe we need to spend time rebuilding our communities and rebuilding the social cohesion which I feel, on reflection, was an important part of my childhood.   A time where we knew who our neighbours were, and we worked, or as kids, collectively looking after each other, our kids and our families.    Technology can do so much for us but I do wonder if too much of our lives are now experienced or moderated through technology, rather than being “properly” experienced.   As I sit typing this on the train, I can see some irony in that.   I note I did enjoy some momentary chit chat with my fellow travellers, given the crammed nature of the train.   I could have been getting on with work and being efficient, but instead I sparked up a conversation with the strangers around me and felt, in myself, a little better for it.

Maybe it is these conversations which we need to have much more, putting down our technology, putting aside our “get more done” culture and just being human social animals a little more!   

Attendance or Family Time?

There is currently much debate in the UK on school attendance and parents who choose to take kids out of school to benefit from cheaper holiday costs during term time.   The debate is often framed as quite basic in that taking kids out of school impacts their learning however I feel the issue is more complex and multifaceted, touching upon academic performance, mental health, family bonding, and socioeconomic factors. As education systems around the world emphasize the importance of regular attendance for student outcomes, families face the challenge of balancing these demands with the need for quality time together. This balance becomes particularly complex when families consider taking children out of school during term time to take advantage of cheaper travel options.

School Attendance

Regular school attendance is widely recognized as a key factor in academic success. Many studies show that students who attend school regularly are more likely to achieve higher grades and perform better on standardised tests.   Additionally, schools provide students with a structured environment where they can develop important social skills, learn to work in teams, and build friendships. These experiences being essential for developing emotional intelligence and resilience, with attendance at school therefore being a prerequisite.

But attendance is not just about being present; it’s about engaging with the curriculum, participating in class discussions, and building relationships with teachers and peers. An unhappy child is unlikely to be “fully” present so this might point to the importance of family time and holidays possibly.

We also need to consider that the attendance discussion is largely being promoted from the point of view of government, from that central viewpoint where, on average, students with poorer attendance achieve less than those with good attendance.   But there is an issue in terms of how “achievement” is measured as it is often measured in terms of exams or standardised tests;   Are these tests, this grading and categorising of students all that really matters?   Or is there more to education than a GCSE or an A-Level?

Family Time

While the importance of school attendance is generally clear, family time is equally crucial for a child’s development and well-being.  Quality time spent with family fosters a sense of security, builds strong relationships, and provides opportunities for parents to impart values and life skills. For many families, vacations and time spent together are important for bonding and creating lasting memories.  In today’s fast-paced world, both parents and children often lead busy lives, and taking a break to relax and enjoy each other’s company can reduce stress and improve overall wellbeing. These moments of respite are essential for maintaining a healthy work-life balance and preventing burnout.

Traveling with family can also be educational. Exposure to new cultures, environments, and experiences can broaden a child’s perspective and enhance their learning in ways that classroom education sometimes cannot, igniting curiosity, encouraging a love for learning, and providing practical lessons in geography, history, and social studies.

But for many families, the cost of travel during peak school holiday times can be prohibitively expensive where traveling during term time can make vacations more affordable.   So, some parents may decide to take kids from school to allow for a family holiday and their children to experience destinations they might otherwise not be able to visit. This economic consideration is particularly relevant for lower-income families who may have limited opportunities for leisure travel outside of term time.

Conclusion

The current attendance or lost learning argument is yet another false dichotomy.   Additionally, we need to be careful in viewing holiday time with parents as frivolous and without any educational value.  This is a very simplistic view of learning, and might result from the narrow association of learning with traditional exams and standardised testing.    Learning is much broader, more nuanced and more complex than this.

I feel there is a balance to be reached as parents taking students out of school, when done proportionately and with appropriate communication with the school, can have educational and more importantly wellbeing benefits.    It is therefore very much about the relationship between school and parent, accepting that both have a responsibility for learning, and that such responsibility is interdependent.

Or maybe schools should look to vary their timetables to challenge the holiday, supply-and-demand model, or the travel agents need to be challenged on their pricing model and prevented from pushing prices so high during the holiday periods?    Sadly I suspect these options are difficult to implement, so it is very much about school and parents communicating and working together.

Reflecting on 2023/24

And so another academic year draws to a close so I thought I would share some initial reflections:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI continued to be a big topic of discussion throughout 2023/24 and saw me speaking to school leaders, teachers but also to school support staff on its potential as well as the risks and challenges.    I think like a lot of Tech AI has those which are heavily engaged and supportive of its use, then a larger body with are unsure or reluctant, followed by those that are anti and against its use.    As such at the moment the impact of AI when viewed generally, may appear less than its potential or what those positive about AI are proclaiming.   For me it is about getting more staff experimenting and finding out how AI can benefit them in schools, often in little and simply ways rather than the flash examples we often see.   Personally, I am slowly introducing greater use of AI into my various workflows and in doing so seeing benefits in time saved but also, and possibly more importantly, on the quality of outputs.    By using generative AI to assist me, AI and I (??) are coming up with more ideas, using a wider vocabulary range, creating better graphics and reducing errors among other things.    Two heads, even if one is a headless AI, are better than one!

Digital Divides

I have already mentioned AI and generative AI but it represents yet another aspect to the issue of digital divides.    Technology, and generative AI has such potential to enable greater creativity, address imbalances such as those related to SEND or to language proficiency, support collaborative and communication and much more.   But you need to have access to the technology, the software, the hardware, the internet bandwidth and more, with this access often the product of a digital strategy or plan, and the relevant budget and finance.   You also need access to support and help, to a culture which embraces the potential of technology and generative AI, at school but also add home and in your local community, friends and colleagues.    The number possible divides between those that have and those that have not is only increasing, and the magnitude of each divide is only widening with each passing day as those that have, experiment, adapt and innovate, while those that have not are held back, continuing to work in ways that are long established, as the world around them changes.

Digital Future Group (DFG), collaboration and sharing

Generative AI advancement is just one indicator of the increasing pace of technology change, with resulting impact on society more broadly.   But how can we keep up with these dizzying advancements and changes?    Can one person keep up with all the apps, the tools, the different approaches?  For me the key here is in approaching the problem collectively and collaboratively rather than individually.   For example, this year has seen the creation and my involvement in the Digital Futures Group, which is all about sharing and networking.   I am so blessed to be part of a group of professionals who operate across different contexts, in different roles and with different skills and experience, across the UK, and I am better for my involvement.   I have also had the pleasure of being involved with the Association of Network Managers in Education (ANME) and also the Independent Schools Council (ISC) Digital Advisory Group.    Each of these organisations has allowed me to network with some amazing people, gaining from their experiences, their values and views, the knowledge and maybe even their humanity, and in a world of increasing use of AI, maybe our humanity, and sharing our humanity is all the more important.

Wellbeing

I think another reflection on the academic year relates to wellbeing, and it may be that this jumps to mind due to a recent presentation at the ANME South West event in relation to wellbeing and IT support staff.    This academic year has for me been a very difficult one personally with a major personal upheaval hitting me in the first term, something that I am not sure I have fully recovered from as we complete the final term.   Actually, thinking about it I don’t think it is about recovery but more about adapting to the changed circumstances I now find myself in.   This has forced me to stop and reflect and in doing so identify a lot of personal practices and habits I have developed which have led to an unbalanced life.   It took a significant life event to make me stop and reflect such that I am now trying to rebalance and establish new habits.   This has also got me thinking about the “be more efficient” narrative and what it means to be a good employee.   I get the concept of being more efficient and therefore doing things quicker or using less energy, etc, but if all this leads to as being asked to do yet more things, surely this isn’t a sustainable model.    Laura Knight talked about resilience and how this isn’t something we should aim for as its ok to being resilient to short term issues, but having to constantly exist in a state of resilience isn’t really living and in all honesty isn’t something we can do for any significant period of time.    For me “efficiency” may suffer similar problems.    And if being efficient is driven by an organisational need for efficiency, so does this mean that to be a good employee I need to be efficient and get more done than others, and if this is the case does it not possibly drive unsustainable hours, stress and workload issues.   So maybe schools and other organisations need to consider what it is to be a good employee, with leaders modelling this and with the expectations clearly espoused.  Maybe we also need to stop and identify what really matters, rather than constantly adding more tasks, more requirements and more considerations to our everyday roles.

Conclusion

This for me has been a year of difficulties but also of a greater sense of community and collaboration.   AI, Digital Divides, Networking and Wellbeing are definitely the four themes which currently stick out for me from what has been a busy academic year, but then again when are academic years in schools or colleges not busy?    Am hoping that 2024/25 will be another positive year and soon enough it will be upon us.   I am going to post in the coming weeks a month by month review of some of my highlights for the year including some photos but for now let me just wish everyone a good holiday period acknowledging that myself and my team, plus many others, particularly IT teams, will actually be working much of the holiday period on IT upgrades and many other things, ahead of the new academic year.    All the best to all.

Wellbeing and muppets

I have blogged a couple of times on how we are constantly adding things, processes, tasks, etc, in order to result in better outcomes.  We are also forever looking to be more efficient, so we release some time to allow us to do yet more things.   One look at what teaching looked like back in the late 90’s when I qualified (god, am I that old??) compared with now very easily illustrates this.   Now a lot of the things we have added have came out of increasing amounts of research showing us what seems to generally work, or they have come out of a response to where something has gone wrong, but they have all involved doing more.

Now no-one wants to do worse, where taking something away, a process, a resource or anything else seems to logically result in a reduction in performance or quality of outcome.   We also have loss aversion, a heuristic, to deal with whereby we value what we have, and our current processes, more highly than alternatives, leading to us being reluctant to let go of that which we have.

And all of this means we are forever doing more, and one look at the teacher wellbeing index seems to point to increasing amounts of stress in education, increasing incidences of burnout, etc.   Recently I have also found myself looking at increasing email and message volumes with some research pointing to increased stress resulting from increased email traffic.   We cannot continue on this trajectory of adding and must at some point step back and reassess education and what really matters.   Not an easy ask sadly!

So what can we do?    I don’t have an answer to solve this problem as it is such a big problem impacting on wellbeing that it will take a fundamental rethink of what education is all about, and about what matters in schools and colleges.    I would suggest one thing we need to do is to reconsider the resiliency and efficiency narratives;  Being highly resilient, as Laura Knight recently raised, or highly efficient may be good in the short term but what does it mean in the long term?  How long can we be in resiliency mode for before it wears you down?    Can you flourish as a human being, enjoying life and contributing to society if your whole focus is on hyper efficiency?

Again I don’t have an answer but I do have a suggestion;  It is the need to lighten up and have a little fun.  To be social, to have a laugh and remember it isn’t all about resiliency and efficiency.   So to address that, a team member recently, with permission, used GPT 4o to convert our staff photos into the muppet versions of ourselves, before posting these to the staff list and onto our Office 365 profiles.    It didn’t solve the workload or wellbeing issue, but this random act gave people a laugh and raised a few smiles.    And maybe we need a little bit more of that!    

Autumn term blues

We are now in the 2nd half of the autumn term and I cant believe where the time has gone.    We had the usual build up ahead of the start of the new academic year, followed by the unsurprisingly manic start of term.   The start of term in schools and colleges is normally manic as new students and staff join and as everyone tries to quickly get back up to speed following the summer break, trying to establish the positive habits which should underpin the year ahead.    For me, the first half of this years autumn term was made all the busier due a number of events which I had agreed to attend or contribute to, such as a couple of industry cyber security events and speaking at events in Leeds, London and Amsterdam.   Each of these events were really useful however the travel and preparation work related to the events add to the stress and pressure.   Its worthwhile, and I certainly take much from each of the events, the ANME/Elementary Technology AI and EduTech Europe events in particular, but it isnt half tiring.

It was therefore no surprise that I reached the half term feeling very drained and run down but having quite a bit to catch up on before the planned period of rest towards the end of half term.   And this is where sod-law kicks in.    Just as I get the time to regroup and to rest, illness shows its head.   Why is it that just when you get time to enjoy yourself and relax, that you end up ill?    Now I suspect part of the answer is the fact that, when busy, adrenaline carries you through and keeps you going however as soon as you see the light at the end of the tunnel, as soon as you take your foot off the gas and your body and mind relax a little, the bugs, the viruses and the general malaise set in.   And so it was that I spent a fair amount of the half term period working on, as us IT people need to do in school holiday periods, while feeling less than 100%.   When I did get a few days off to relax the time was largely spent in bed or crashed out in front of the TV with little energy and a persistent cough.

Before I knew it, the 2nd half of the term had begun and the opportunity to spend some proper time on wellbeing and mental health has passed me by.    So with the 2nd half of the term now fully back in the swing of things, it is once again time to put the foot to the floor and proceed towards Christmas (bah humbug 😉) .    At this point I still don’t quite feel 100% but I am definitely better than I was during half term and for now I hope I can get to Christmas, and pass into the festive holiday period without any further illness.   But only time will tell.

The challenge we all have is in accepting that life and work is not linear;  There will be periods where things are manic and busy, and where mental health and wellbeing will take 2nd or maybe 3rd place, however equally we need to seek a balance which means there will need to be times when mental health and wellbeing come first, even when this is at the expense of other things.    For me, the manic autumn term just means I need to ensure I put time aside for myself, either at Christmas or at some point in the spring of summer terms, putting myself first over other pressures.  

Onwards and upwards as they say, and also let me share an important message with all my colleagues in schools and colleges;   make sure to look after yourself as unless you are well, physically, mentally, cognitively, etc, you won’t be able to effectively help, look after, teach or otherwise support others.    Take care and good luck for what remains of the autumn term!

Good enough?

In the world of education, it is easy to become obsessed with the pursuit of perfection. Teachers and students alike strive for excellence, academic, pastoral, and otherwise, pushing themselves to achieve the best results possible and constantly seeking to improve processes, knowledge and skills.  I look back on over 20 years of working in schools and see all the things that have been added for teachers, school leaders and support staff to do.   All of the various things that have been added have been added for good reason, to improve education or to address risks or dangers, but they largely have all been additions;  additional systems, additional processes, additional statutory requirements, additional school requirements, inspection requirements, compliance requirements, etc.   We cannot infinitely continue to add.    Also, in this relentless pursuit of perfection, it is all too easy to overlook the value of “good enough” and the negative effects that perfectionism can have.

The concept of “perfect” is a subjective one, and what one person considers to be perfect may not necessarily be the same for another. The problem with striving for perfection in education is that it can lead to unrealistic expectations, which in turn can lead to feelings of failure, anxiety, and stress.  It can lead to increasing workload where workload is a considerable issue impacting on educators the world over.    We can become so fixated on getting everything right that we lose sight of the bigger picture, and what really matters and is most important.     And what is most important is equally subjective;  is it academic achievement, developing character, soft skills, sportsmanship, preparing students for future life, supporting student wellbeing, or the many other things which schools are involved in.

I believe the culture of constant addition is doomed to fail us, it is simply unsustainable.   We do not have the resources and this is already clear given ongoing discussions regarding workload in schools. As such we need to look towards what is most important and prioritising.  We need to look towards “doing less” which is one of the principles I have shared with my team in looking to identify the tasks and activities we do that add little value or provide little impact, seeking to cease these or spend less time on them.   Now this is a difficult process as anything which has been added has been added for a reason however not all reasons are equal and the impact and value of all tasks and activities are also not equal.   And this is what is hard in comparing tasks and identifying which are worthwhile to continue and which can be ceased or reduced, while acknowledging that ceasing any tasks will result in a negative impact; Remember we started a task for a positive reason, so ceasing or reducing time on it can only reverse this; a negative impact.   But we need to start to reverse the culture of addition before we reach a tipping point, before the workload crisis goes beyond where it already is.

In terms of the difficult task of prioritisation I always come back to values;   A schools values should help guide on identifying that which is important and which adds value, therefore helping in identifying the things it might be possible to cease doing.    And if not ceasing doing things it should help in identifying priorities and allocation of resources so rather than stopping something, we may simply do less of it. These are the difficult discussions which need to happen, identifying how to divide up the limited resources available, and what areas or tasks cannot be done, should not be done, or will see less resources to make way for other things.

In schools and colleges we want to do the best for our students but maybe in seeking to do so we need to recognise that best does not mean perfect as this simply isnt possible;   the resources, the staff, the time, etc will never be sufficient to be perfect.   Therefore do we need to become comfortable with “good enough”?    I feel as a manager of an IT support function that this is the right thing to do although equally as an educator I am uncomfortable with it from a student and a learning point of view, where I would want to deliver the best possible learning experience.    But maybe the discomfort is unavoidable, and better to work with good enough than to try to be perfect across too many areas of education, the pastoral, academic, wellbeing, health, fitness, etc, such that we fall significantly short of even good across all of them.  

The above is a bit of a rambling chain of thoughts but in terms of sharing my thoughts, concerns and ideas, hopefully it is Good Enough!

Some wellbeing thoughts

Following on from my post from a week or so ago, when I was sharing feeling a little bit low, I thought I would share some thoughts on wellbeing.  I note I am currently in a slightly better place than I was having re-established some positive habits such as reading and running plus being a bit more conscious of and seeking to better manage my mood.

So what is wellbeing?    I think this is key to establish what it is as it is multifaceted involving taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental health.  I found a diagram which talked of deep health including physical, emotional, mental, environmental, relational and existential elements which might be a useful model.  But the key, no matter the model used is that the elements are all inter-related.   I remember reading about an experiment where researchers asked their subjects to hold a pencil in their mouth with some asked to have the pencil length wise, thereby forcing a smile, or endwise, so forcing a kind of frown.   When they asked how the individuals felt those who had the pencil length wise, which forced their mouth to assume the shape of a smile, provided more positive responses than those who held the pencil endwise.   Also when I think about my running, if I am not in a good place mentally or emotionally, I struggle and tend to run slower, while when I have a good run I generally feel better.   So basically physical events can impact on emotions rather than always being the other way around, and vice versa; e.g. you feel good so you are more inclined to smile, or you smile/laugh and feel better.   Physical, emotional and mental are inter-related.   And here in lies the challenge in wellbeing, it involves a number of inter-related facets so managing your own wellbeing isn’t easy.  

My recent challenges highlight this.   If your mood isn’t in a good place you are likely to feel less happy and emotionally drained which means you are less inclined to smile, which reinforces feeling emotionally drained.  Being drained you are then less likely to engage in physical exercise, so become less active and healthy, with this in turn likely to result in more emotional negativity.  Basically its a negative spiral.

A positive spiral is also possible where you get into a habit of physical exercise, which makes you feel more emotionally positive and balanced, leading to more smiles and laughs, which in turn make you feel better.   You are also more likely to engage with other people and social contact with this again leading to more emotional positivity.

The above positive and negative examples are however extreme and the reality is we spend a lot of our time in a delicate balance.   We might have the physical exercise bit sorted with regular runs which makes you feel good and healthy but due to limited time you are not challenging yourself mentally through reading for example, which therefore has a negative emotional toll as you are aware of the lack of reading.   So you allocate more time to reading but then find you are spending less time with family or on exercise, so feel better for the intellectual challenge but feel worse of for the reduction in social contact and in exercise.    We want our wellbeing to be rather stable albeit positive but the reality is it is a constant rollercoaster in need of monitoring and management.  

Ideally you hope to have positive wellbeing but the reality is that your wellbeing will fluctuate with your efforts, successes/failures, with interactions with others and with local and even national events, among other factors. You will have occasional negative spirals and positive one. The reality is far less even than we would like as I have tried to indicate in the below diagram:

So what are some of the things we might consider in seeking to manage our own wellbeing:

  • Exercise regularly: Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your physical and mental health. Regular exercise can help reduce stress, boost your mood, and improve your overall health.
  • Eat a balanced and healthy diet: Eating a balanced and nutritious diet can help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce your risk of chronic diseases, and improve your energy levels.  Note: Balance includes some enjoyable food and drink where I count my Irn Bru as part of this equation.
  • Get enough sleep: Getting enough sleep is essential for your mental and physical health. Aim for at least seven to eight hours of sleep each night.
  • Manage stress: Stress can have a negative impact on your physical and mental health. We also need to note that challenge, or good stress exists and is an important part of our wellbeing in the need to feel successfully.    We therefore need to seek out challenge and things which push us to achieve while finding healthy ways to manage negative stress, such as through meditation, yoga, or deep breathing, or whatever you find works for you personally.  
  • Connect with others: Social support is crucial for maintaining good mental health. Spend time with family and friends, join a club or group, or volunteer in your community.
  • Practice self-care: Self-care involves doing things that make you feel good, such as taking a warm bath, reading a book, or going for a walk. Make time for self-care activities each day.
  • Seek help when needed: If you’re struggling with your mental health, don’t hesitate to seek professional help. Talk to your doctor, a mental health professional, or a trusted friend or family member.

Remember, managing personal wellbeing is a process that requires consistent effort and self-awareness. By taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental health, you can lead a happier and more fulfilling life but I think we also need to accept that things are not always positive and that we therefore need to manage the negative when it arises.

Wellbeing, like so many things in life, is messy and cant be distilled into a simple list.

A difficult month

It’s been a bit of a difficult last month or so, so thought I would share some brief thoughts in the hope that writing things down and sharing may help.     First of all there was BETT-lag.   The end of March included the BETT conference which for me was a very busy series of days, of attending panel discussions, visiting stands, meetings and catching up with many EdTech friends.   So, it was useful and enjoyable but also very tiring especially when you factor in the long travel times from Somerset to the Excel in London.   Thankfully the end of BETT coincided with the end of term so I had high hopes for being able to recover over the Easter break.

Around the same time my fitness efforts and running had hit a bit of a roadblock with limited distance covered in both March and April.   The fact I couldn’t get into a routine and regular running habit was depressing and with each opportunity for running missed it made me feel all the more negative.     Additionally, my reading habit had also taken a nosedive partially through a lack of motivation, similar to my running, but also through a lack of interest in the book I am currently reading but combined with a reluctance to just put the book down, to give up, and move on to another book.

March had also seen me take on a number of projects including creating some webinar content and recording a regular weekly podcast among other things.   It was good to be busy and led me to feeling a sense of achievement, however it meant that by the end of the month, and the BETT conference, I was already tired and the event, plus the post-event BETT-Lag were still to come.   And then there was the void left once the activities had been concluded and no longer occupied my time.

And next was the kicker, when initially I started feeling a bit of a cold part way through the Easter break, the time I planned to use to try and relax and recover.  Getting hold of a covid test, I decided to test and low and behold it came back positive.    What followed wasn’t that much worse than a cold however I found myself lacking in any real energy which led me to achieving very little in terms of the long list of things I wanted to get done.     The tiredness, lack of achievement, lack of running or reading, all left me feeling negative and downright depressed at times.

Mental health isn’t a simple thing.   It isn’t something which can be solved by a simple “wellbeing activity”.   It is about physical fitness and activity, about mental activity, about feeling a sense of achievement, feeling well, feeling suitably challenged but not feeling stressed or over worked or overly tired.   It’s a delicate balance and one which I don’t think I have sufficiently managed over the last few months.    My hope is I can use the new term as a new start and better address the need for balance.  But for now am just going to relax and enjoy the weekend before the new term begins.