Who are we looking after if we don’t look after ourselves? Helen Kinsey-Wightman At a social occasion recently I was speaking with a well respected primary school principal about the increase in high school students seeking support for anxiety within school and the lack of resources outside of school to support all but the most seriously affected students. She empathised and talked about the increased use of the word ‘anxiety’ in parent dialogue with primary school teachers, ‘Oh, he/she gets very anxious and can’t do that’ and hence, in her opinion, the rise of the word in the vocabularies of young children. She added that she now has a 5 year old in her school with a formal diagnosis of anxiety. As school leaders, the challenges we face in our work are enormous and the responsibility we feel towards students who live in physically or emotionally unsafe situations places a heavy burden on us. Whilst, for the first time in the last decade, I feel confident that the government has a commitment to improve the wellbeing of our young people, the resources – both human
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and financial – needed to do so are enormous and the solutions are complex. I was sitting in the office of our Head of Guidance this week when there was a knock at the door – she answered it and a young woman handed her 6 razor blades, telling her, ‘I need you to have these.’ The Guidance Counsellor praised her decision making and closed the door. The matter of factness of the exchange made it clear this is a scenario that happens frequently and when she opened her drawer to store the razors safely, the contents would have made Sweeny Todd envious. We talked briefly about the role of Guidance staff in looking after the wellbeing of a growing number of anxious, unwell students who frequently talk about suicidal thoughts and sometimes act on them. Part of the role is giving these students the support they need without burdening teachers with too much detailed knowledge about the challenges they are going through, so that they can do their job effectively in the classroom. In order to help guidance counsellors to deal with the challenging situations they find themselves in, they have supervision – a regular session where they are able to talk confidentially to a counsellor’s counsellor about the issues they have been dealing with and their own responses. When I talk to our Head of Guidance about the benefits for her, she describes feeling physically lighter after supervision and talks about having someone who asks really good questions to help her to think more effectively. This year our Principal has supported our Senior Leadership Team to have a coach/mentor/supervisor to support us in working through the often complicated and challenging situations we face in our leadership. I chose a social work supervision model and the difference it has made has been amazing. I have been able to safely share the moments where I may feel I have failed a student or a teacher by making a poorly thought through decision. I have talked through the impacts my workload has on my personal life. I have talked about the concerns I have for students who leave our school in the midst of personal or family crises. I have also been supported to think through ways to work with staff who struggle with change but have changes they need to make to their practice in order to be competent and successful as teachers. Throughout, my supervisor has asked me good questions about why I feel that way – what the thinking was that led to particular decisions and has suggested models I could use to understand processes such as change, grief and competence. The range of challenges we deal with in our work is unlikely to diminish. In order to be effective role models and to achieve longevity in the career we love, we each have a responsibility to look after ourselves and our leadership teams, to ensure that we are not sacrificing our own wellbeing, as we attempt to meet the increasingly complex needs of the staff and students in our care.
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Education ready. University ready. Work ready. Ready for the world. At Cambridge International, we believe in an education that takes your students further. That’s why Cambridge Primary has been designed to help give younger learners aged 5 to 11 years a strong foundation to achieve in education, examinations, work, and life. To learn more, visit cambridgeinternational.org/primary