Overcoming challenges to educator wellbeing

Ashleigh Burns

Hello and thank you for joining us today for Overcoming challenges to educating wellbeing. My name is Ashleigh Burns and I'm the Be You Consultant for Victoria and Tasmania. I started working as a secondary English teacher and then went on to complete further study to become a guidance officer working in secondary schools in Queensland. With me today is Jen Berthold, the Be You Clinical Lead for Victoria and Tasmania.

Jen Berthold

I'm a psychologist and I've been with the Be You team for the last four and a half years. I started my career as an educator in primary schools, and then retrained as a psychologist about 15 years ago and have worked in private practise and headspace centres before coming to Be You.

Ashleigh Burns

Thanks Jen. So, this session is appropriate for school educators and leaders. Taking a look at trends in ongoing and emerging challenges to staff wellbeing in current post-pandemic world context, and exploring Be You supports that empower educators and their learning communities to flourish. So, before we begin today, I’d like to do an Acknowledgement of Country. I’d like to Acknowledge that I'm meeting on the Land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present. Today we have people joining us from all over the country so it would be wonderful if people could share their own Acknowledgement by putting the name of the Country that they’re in, in the chat.

So, in today’s session we aim to provide a safe space to discuss information around personal wellbeing. As part of making a virtual safe space, please consider confidentiality and privacy throughout the sessions when using the chat box. We’d also love to hear from you throughout the session, so please feel free to participate through the chat and the poles that will be made available to you. The image that you see on the screen has contact details for Beyond Blue, headspace, and a number of other services that you might find useful should you need to reach out for some external support. We acknowledge that each of us come to this session potentially juggling many different things and we're all really busy, so we thank you for making the time to join this session and learn more about your wellbeing. We hope that you will come away from this session feeling empowered and try some new strategies but also highlight the strategies that are probably already working really well for you.

So, for those of you who don't know about Be You or haven't been to one of that Virtual Conferences before, Be You is a national mental health initiative for educators and the organiser of this conference led by Beyond Blue in partnership with Early Childhood Australia and headspace. Be You is completely free and it's available to every educator, early learning service, and school in Australia. Be You aims to empower educators to support children and young people’s social and emotional wellbeing and their own mental health. It aims to offer educators online professional learning, fact sheets, webinars, and other resources. We also offer communities tools and processes to implement a whole learning community approach to mental health and wellbeing.

The discussions throughout this conference will highlight Be You resources, tools and professional learning to show you how Be You can support a whole school and whole service approach to mental health. If you’re interested in finding a bit more about Be You, check out the website which will be in the chat box.

So, in today’s session we're going to be covering the following things. Firstly, how educator wellbeing impacts student wellbeing. Then we’re going to explore the trends in ongoing and emerging challenges to educating wellbeing. We will look at the Be You Educator Wellbeing Guide which is designed to empower a whole school approach, to promote educator wellbeing and then also look at the Be You educator wellbeing resources to improve individual wellbeing in the post-pandemic world.

So, when looking at the impact of educator wellbeing on student wellbeing, it's really important to note that teachers play a crucial role in students’ life. In fact, the research shows that well, consistently shows, that teachers are the most important in school factor contributing to student success, satisfaction, and achievement. As teachers, you’re not only expected to teach students with academic skills, but you're also expected to teach skills that encompass social, emotional and even ethical behaviours. So, levels of teacher’s wellbeing may influence the effectiveness of teacher’s ability to perform these various roles.

So, it goes without saying then that learner wellbeing is supported and strengthened by educator wellbeing. Student wellbeing is the other half of quality teaching, so it's important to create conditions for student and educator wellbeing. Building strong and supportive relationships with teachers allows students to feel safer and more secure within the, in the school setting. And it's in this environment that students are more likely to connect with peers, feel more confident, and achieve better educational outcomes.

So, why does educator wellbeing matter? Well, the expectations we currently have on teachers are complex. They’re expected to perform new tasks, respond to student’s individual differences, work collaboratively with parents, adapt to the new technological and digital demands and the list probably goes on. But not only are the expectations of teachers rising, the working conditions and the classroom processes are also changing. Teachers are now reporting that they are overwhelmed and overloaded with non-teaching activities, especially administrative tasks. So, it's in these working conditions that can lead to a stressful working environment which affects teacher’s motivation, their self-efficacy, and their job commitment. And when this happens this impacts the educational system as a whole including students learning outcomes. So, if teachers are stressed or burnt out, they’re more likely that they're going to struggle to operate effectively in their class, in the classroom and the quality of instruction is going to be impacted. So, creating a healthy workplace for educators is a shared responsibility and it goes beyond self-care. And a starting point though is looking at having a sense of self-awareness, of where we sit on the continuum of mental health.

So, before we begin today it's important that we have a shared understanding on what we mean by mental health. According to the World Health Organisation, ‘mental health is a state of wellbeing in which every individual realises his or her own potential and can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.’ The range of experiences relating to mental health can sit along a continuum, and when we're looking at the mental health continuum, we can probably compare it to how we think about physical health. So, for instance we might recognise that we might have spent time across the range of physical health and that this can be changeable, and this isn’t unusual. So, the same goes with mental health. It's not fixed and it's not a static entity. It can also fluctuate according to a wide range of factors and in the way that individuals experience these changes, will look very different from each person. So, when we look at the continuum of mental health, sometimes it can be helpful to ask ourselves questions. Like how does it feel like, how does it look when I'm flourishing? How can I be more mindful of recognising where I am on the mental health continuum? And what might I notice in myself if I am struggling? And using this continuum, when do I actually need to tap in to appropriate supports?

So, when looking at the ongoing and emerging challenges to educator wellbeing, there's some interesting data that has come out in a number of surveys and reports. So, in 2018 the OECD's teacher and learning international survey reported that approximately three quarters of Australian educators said their job negatively impacted their mental health, which is huge. And then following on from that, in 2021 a survey of 571 educators across Australia so it’s 80% said that they work life balance was either less than ideal or non-existent. So, excessive workload for teachers is commonly being identified as a major factor to teacher’s wellbeing. So, it goes without saying then that teaching is probably one of the most stressful professions in the world. But as Consultants, some of the other stresses that we are hearing from teachers include but are not limited to: school systems becoming a bit more bureaucratic, expectations on teachers to manage difficult student behaviour, a lack of planning time and, and fewer resources but I'd love to do a poll now to see what you're currently experiencing.

So, I’d love for you to contribute your thoughts on the current challenges to educating wellbeing that you and your colleagues are facing, and it'd be really interesting to see if it is similar to what the research says and also what we are seeing as Consultants.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, I might pop onto the next slide while we’re waiting for those results to come through.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah perfect.

Jen Berthold

Awesome, thanks Ashleigh. So, what trends are we seeing in schools? So, we are seeing delays in student social and emotional learning, resulting in behaviour issues, conflicts not being resolved as easily among students, difficulties concentrating and focusing in the classroom. We are seeing changes in parent and carer behaviour; we’re having more polarised behaviours. More parents at both ends. Some more involved anxious and demanding about need, the needs of this their children, and others just exhausted and disconnected and ready just handover back to the school all responsibility. We're also seeing trends in staffing, across the board not just in education, there's been the great resignation where people, after being trapped at home during COVID just wanting changes in life and so people jumping ship and trying to find new careers. So that's resulted in us having an increase in less experienced leadership within schools, an increase in less experienced staff looking to leadership for guidance, and just less relief teachers available across the country when people call in sick and those relief teachers are needed, or when we want to send people off for training there's not the staff there to fill in for them when they're not at school. Which has really resulted in a lot of unfilled positions and then also we're seeing across the board, more staff and students becoming unwell because our immune systems kind of, are having to kick back into gear following COVID, now that we're back out in the world catching all the germs everybody has. We were in our little bubbles at home for a while and now you know our immune systems need to build back up.

So, we might jump back to the poll results now if we can. Wonderful, thank you so much for sharing. We’re seeing a really high number of people putting into the pole that student behaviour is one of the challenges to educator wellbeing that a lot of people are encountering. The next highest one there.

 

Ashleigh Burns

Staffing shortages and then competing demands on time.

Jen Berthold

Yeah.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah.

Jen Berthold

Yep, and wonderful thank you very much. So, it's really good to see that, or helpful I think to see that, we're all in this boat together. It's a stressful place to be but you're not alone. Hopefully that’s something you’re getting from this.

So, it's it's common knowledge, it's well documented in in the media that COVID-19 pandemic has been a disaster for communities across the world. And so looking at the phases of this disaster and what we know about disaster recovery in communities is really helpful for us at this point. So, probably all of us have moved through the honeymoon phase, post the COVID-19 pandemic, where our wellbeing improved cause we were excited about being able to get back out and travel and gather again in our communities. And then possibly we’re finding ourselves in that space of disillusionment, or you know down at the bottom of the trough, or hopefully starting to work back up through the grief about you know what we've missed out on over the last few years. We may, you know a lot of people talk about, let's just get back to normal. What were,, where were we with our wellbeing pre-disaster and that's great, it would be great if we can get back there but it would be even better if we can create a new normal, that brings our wellbeing up better than it was before the pandemic. And that would be post-traumatic growth. So, post-traumatic growth occurs when our reconstructed new normal is at a higher level of flourishing than our pre-disaster level or our pre-disaster position on the mental health continuum, that Ashleigh showed us earlier. And a large body of research shows that when we go through traumatic events, epigenetic changes can be triggered, and they can be passed onto future generations that's one of the ways that we pass on intergenerational trauma. But there is a growing body of research that shows that changing our mindsets and our behavioural habits can reverse these trauma triggers epigenetic changes can be triggered and they can be passed onto future generations. That’s one of the ways that we pass on intergenerational trauma. But there is a growing body of research that shows that changing our mindsets and our behavioural habits can reverse these trauma triggers, epigentic changes and prevent further intergenerational transmission of trauma impacts.

So, if we can reconstruct this new normal that is post-traumatic growth for each of us as individuals, and for our communities, where you know that post-traumatic growth means that we we've discovered through this disaster that we can lean on our support networks, that we can come together as communities, that our support systems work, and that we individually do have the resilience to come back from things that were really difficult. That way of thinking, that real strong core belief that you know we can get through tough things together, is what we’re talking about when we talk about post-traumatic growth.

Some of the things that really contribute to that post-traumatic growth include interconnectedness, interconnected wellbeing, and we're going to have a look at what that means for our communities.

So, the human limbic system allows us to feel the emotions of people we perceive as similar to us. So, if you're watching a movie and you're feeling the emotions of the characters, it's probably because they remind you of yourself or someone close to you. And in the past, this meant that when a predator attacked our flock our fight or flight response could get us to safety, even without having witnessed the threat ourselves. But what that means in our school communities, is that colleagues and students pick up how we are feeling even if we would rather that they didn't. And they share our emotions, when we feel stressed, they feel stressed, when we feel calm, we can help others to feel calm. So, your individual wellbeing, as Ashleigh shared earlier, is really interdependent on the wellbeing of your colleagues, and as previously identified, student wellbeing as interdependent on your wellbeing. So, as a result educator wellbeing has to be planned for at a whole school level. It's not something that an individual can really do on their own.

So, we’re really going to be talking about some of the ways that Be You can support your school to empower a whole school approach to promoting educator wellbeing.

Each learning community is at a different point in their cycle of continuous improvement relating to educate wellbeing. Some schools already have a plan in place and are reviewing their progress and implementing further strategies. Some schools have lots of good things happening that promote educator wellbeing, but they haven't really taken stock of them, recorded them into a plan, and taken steps to ensure that cycle of continuous improvement happens into the future.

We're going to skip now. The Be You Educator Wellbeing Guide is something that's recently been released on the Be You website and your Be You Consultant can support your school leadership teams to begin to use this resource to take a planned whole school approach to promoting educator wellbeing. A whole school approach needs to start with gathering information about exec, pardon me, about existing strengths and opportunities for growth. And educators need to have voice and choice in the development of any whole school approach to educator wellbeing, it needs to be a joint effort.

Alright we are now going to skip across to speak to Lisa Haughey.

Ashleigh Burns

So, I would like to welcome Lisa Haughey, the Deputy Principal from St Francis of Assisi Primary School in Tarneit, Victoria.

Lisa Haughey

Thanks for having me.

Ashleigh Burns

No worries, thank you for coming Lisa. So Lisa would you tell us a bit about yourself and why you've chosen to join us today.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah sure, so I'm a Deputy Principal as you mentioned at St Francis of Assisi in Tarneit, and I feel very lucky to be able to come here. I've worked with Be You previously and had an amazing experience and I'd love to be able to come and share that with people and hopefully you're able to take away some of the things that our school is currently doing, or hoping to do.

Ashleigh Burns

Amazing thank you so much for, for being here. So, I’d like to start off with probably acknowledging what challenges to educator wellbeing have you noticed at your school?

Lisa Haughey

I think this is something that probably we’ve all noticed and it's time, it's finding the time to be able to address this and acknowledge this. Schools have competing priorities, and there is always something that we need to do and finding the time I think is really important. It shows our staff that we obviously do really care about it, in amongst everything else that is required of us as educators. For us it was also identifying what our starting point is for our staff. So, knowing that people are coming on this journey at different points. There are people that work together, as we are a school, working in teams, some of them know each other, some of them are new to each other. So, understanding where we were at a school and what our starting point was.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, that's a really good point as well. Like you need to acknowledge where you're at, so you know how far you’ve got to go, or to be able to make practical steps to actually implement a whole school approach.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, that's true. We also had to understand, not each of our staff but knowing that our staff are all at different stages of understanding their own wellbeing and self-awareness as well.

Ashleigh Burns

So how have you started your whole school approach to educator wellbeing?

Lisa Haughey

So, we decided to dedicate a day at the end of term one to this. So, we looked at rolling out the Be You plan for educators, and for that what we did is we worked really closely with our Consultant in the Be You team. And we wanted it to be around self-awareness and then also understanding each other on, as our team. So, we worked through the Be You plan and that helped us plan a whole day where staff got to know each other better, and then we moved into team activities and it really just…

Ashleigh Burns

Amazing.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, it really emphasised where we wanted to go and where else school was planning to go for the rest of the year.

Ashleigh Burns

And did you find, did you get some good feedback from staff during that process of you know, how they were feeling and what they wanted to see more of?

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, we got a great response from our staff both on the day, throughout the holidays, and also when we came back to school. We’ve opened it up to staff and asked them what they’d like to see moving forward, and it's been great to hear the responses and great that staff are already taking things on themselves. So, understanding it doesn't just lie with us as leaders that it is as we say a whole school approach…

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, definitely.

Lisa Haughey

And something that you know, we all can take charge in.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, it trickles down. Yeah definitely. So, looking at Be You. How did your Be You Consultant support your whole school approach? You know during this process.

Lisa Haughey

Sure, so I was really lucky to meet my Be You Consultant at the beginning of this year and her name is Jesse. And once we decided as a school that this was what we wanted to do with our day, I connected with Jesse, we had various zoom meetings, and I just said to Jesse this is what our plan is, what, where can you take us? And Jesse was amazing. She was amazing in her emails, her phone calls. There is, as you know, an amazing amount of resources on your website and I think for us as educators it's understanding where exactly to go to. So, Jesse amazing in saying OK, this is your focus for the day have a look at these resources. As well as saying OK, moving forward here are some resources that you can, can continue to share with your staff, your students, as well as your community for them to understand where you're going with this is a whole school approach. As well as that, Jesse also helped us afterwards check in with how we went on the day, and we've created a plan as a school of where we would like to go moving forward. We were really clear that we didn't want this to just, just to be a one-off day for staff. That we really wanted to make sure that we saw out the whole year but also then moving into the future. So Jesse's been great and saying OK, we started off with this day where are we going to go after this.

Ashleigh Burns

Amazing, so the staff can see it's actually a priority.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, correct.

Ashleigh Burns

And that there's some progress moving forward. I think you made a really interesting point there as well, about the Consultant helping you find and navigate the, the suite of resources that are available. Because you like you were saying before, schools are so busy and you have competing, competing priorities so just having that time and having someone there to be, to point you to where the resources are so that you can take them, use them as you will, sounds really helpful.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, and I think the other thing was because it is evidence based and research based, that makes a really big difference. We don't have the education in that, so to know that what we’re sharing with staff, obviously is really valid, it is up to date research was really helpful.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, amazing. So, I'm going to pass it onto, is there? OK sorry about that. So…

Jen Berthold

Sorry we’ll continue.

Ashleigh Burns

So, what resources in particular assisted your whole school approach to educator wellbeing?

Lisa Haughey

So, we started the day with their, our, Be You wellbeing plan for educators and that really framed our day. So, we used that throughout the day. We’d start with a little bit of evidence-based information, then we’d go through part of the plan. Our team shared their experiences, all their responses and then we kept doing that throughout the plan for the day. So, that was really an important part of our days, that really framed our day. We used a lot of evidence-based articles that Jesse sent us that was on the Be You website. There was a great infographic and poster that helped staff that we could use again further on from that day where staff could go, or for staff could find support if they or someone in their team needed that support. And then also the links to the other resources that were out there. There was the Black Dog Institute, as well as headspace, Beyond Blue so just the website is amazing. You know and just taking the time to go through it and see what's out there I think is really important.

Ashleigh Burns

And I think it's true, it there is so much evidence base and amazing resources available and it's, it's not about reinventing the wheel, isn't it? It's just about knowing where to go and how you can make use of what's already there which is great, it sounds like your school’s done a really great job of doing that. So, what advice would you like to offer other schools wanting to begin a whole school approach to educator wellbeing?

Lisa Haughey

So, I think always whenever we start the whole school approach, we need leadership to be on board. And that's where I think we’re really lucky at our school. Our leaders are really on board. We understand that a whole school approach is whole school - it's not just our teachers, it's our learning support staff, it's our admin staff, it’s our maintenance staff. So, we involved everyone on this day and it's something we’ve been able to reflect on since that day which has been lovely. We’ve shared a few laughs.

I think the other really important thing, we touched on this before, is asking for staff input and feedback. We have within our school we have 50 staff members. There is a range and a wealth of knowledge out there and sometimes I think we believe that it lies with the leaders to start things, it is not the case. We had, I had staff who emailed me over the holidays, they made posters, they laminated them put them up on our stuff toilet doors. We've got displays that are going up in the school. People have given us ideas of little activities that we can do as a school, really short sharp activities that again throughout the year show that we really care, and you know we need that staff wellbeing to be at that level for us to be able to be the best educators for our students.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, amazing it sounds like this day has really like mobilised the expertise that, you know, is in your school and, and really improving moral as well.

Lisa Haughey

Yeah, no it’s been great. We’re very, very lucky.

Jen Berthold

Did we want to jump to the Q&A? Were there any questions for Lisa?

Ashleigh Burns

So, did you use any survey or other tools to see the baseline of staff wellbeing?

Lisa Haughey

Jessie has pointed us to the survey. We're actually rolling that out this term. So, for us we had quite a short timeline to be able to get our day ready. So, for us it was the overall, it was the wellbeing plan that guided our day but now that we've done that our plan is this term to use the survey to then see where we can move to next from there.

Ashleigh Burns

That’ll be amazing. So, there was one before, this one's a good one. How did you overcome any leadership challenges, for example if leadership didn’t that mental health and wellbeing was a priority? How did you get past that?

Lisa Haughey

Luckily, I'll be honest with you, that really wasn't an issue for us. Again, we did come back to that issue of time and we mapped out our year, and we looked at during our professional learning days what they would look like. And as a team, again I think we were really lucky in our leaders acknowledging, we are coming out of a post-pandemic world, we are in an incredibly stressful job and if we are not flourishing, then we can't give fully of ourselves to our whole communitybecause as you know, we don't just, it's not just about the children in our environment it is also about our families. So, it's so much more than that.

Jen Berthold

And we will come back around to talk next about just educator wellbeing for individuals who are here who maybe don't have that leadership support to have a whole school approach.

Ashleigh Burns

Another good question to is, does this cost schools anything to setup?

Lisa Haughey

We did not pay a cent and I think that's what so amazing about Be You, absolutely nothing. So, we were very, very lucky all that we paid for as a school is we just did some activities with our staff.

 

 

Ashleigh Burns

Yep.

Lisa Haughey

But to roll out anything from Be You, all of that was free which is amazing.

Ashleigh Burns

Yep, and like you said before too, it is evidence-based. There is so much there, it's just about knowing where to get it and how to use it. And as the Consultant we're not there to tell you how to do your job, it's just more of a sounding board to be like, this is kind of what you could do, take with it as you will and tailor it to your specific context and your setting.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, beautiful.

Ashleigh Burns

Amazing, thank you so much Lisa.

Lisa Haughey

Thank you.

Ashleigh Burns

I’m just going to pass it onto Jen now.

Jen Berthold

Thanks, so as Lisa was speaking, we’ve seen a couple of slides about educator wellbeing tools on the Be You website. So, there is a whole wellbeing page for you, for educators, and on that there are links to all sorts of different evidence-based apps and resources that are not Be You resources, that are available out there for your wellbeing. Additionally, the Be You educator wellbeing plan for educators is something that you as an individual can take and work on yourself, or you could invite one or two of your colleagues to sit down with you and work on these as well and share them with one another.

So, Lisa mentioned that it was used within their whole school educator wellbeing day but what's within that plan are prompts for you to reflect on your own self-care. Things like self-awareness, you know, where do you carry, or what are the signs for you maybe in your body and all your physiology, or maybe in your thought processes that indicate to you that maybe you're getting a bit wobbly, or that you're getting towards that struggling end of the continuum. It also prompts you to think about what are your strengths? What are those things that you’re good at in your role as an educator that, where you really get into a sense of flow, where you lose track of time because you’re just really in there doing your job and enjoying it. Maybe it's when you're working with students, maybe when, when your marking essays. It's you know, where is that for you and putting those strengths down, and then thinking about where you can celebrate those. You know give yourself a little pat on the back, or say to your colleague, ‘I had a great buzz when I was doing that activity with my class,’ or, and then how you can increase the amount of time that you're feeling that at work by finding those moments to do more of that. Also within there, are things like really reflecting on who are your support people who you can go to when you're feeling a bit wobbly, and say, hey I'm having a bit of a rough patch here can we have a cup of tea, or a chat, or go for a walk around the oval? You know, or what are those strategies you can access at work while, you know, you're in between lessons, while the kids are working, or in those small moments that recharge you, or help you regroup when you're a bit wobbly. So, so that educator wellbeing plan is great for an individual to use, even better if you can find a buddy on your team that you can both do it and then share that with one another, around what you can do to support me, and what I can do to support you. Even better if there's a whole school day to work on that together but not necessary, it can be used by just an individual or a few people together.

So, that very much within that plan there is that breaks down self-care into these three spaces. So, that self-awareness of your body talk or your habits of thoughts. Some of you may, may have heard of unhelpful thinking styles. So, when you’re getting into very negative thought patterns around, everyone's out to get me or you know everything's really hard, or the body talklike do you hold it in the tension of your jaw, or do you find yourself holding, yeah, your arms folded more when you’re getting a bit defensive and then what are those strategies? They might be a little mantras, like keep calm and carry on. Everybody has their own or it might be, three deep breaths or something else that helps you. And then really thinking about you know, as educators we’re really good at giving support to others but it can be really hard to ask for help, and it can be even harder to accept it when it's offered. So, just thinking about you know, how do you, how graceful are you at accepting help and how do you communicate to others what actually is helpful for you?

So, wonderful, so you know we have talked a bit about what strengths you bring to your work, what skills do you get, engage in routinely that where, you get into that sense of flow, and where do you find meaning in your work? Why did you choose to get into the, into this role in the first place? When we get into the bunkers, you know, through COVID we were really really pivoting and working hard to just keep up and keep our kids engaged and work out how to do our job. But really when you take a moment to be able to step out of that and look back and reflect why did you get into this in the first place, you know, and where can you reconnect with that meeting again in your work. Do you want to write that down and put it up, you know on the wall in your classroom, or stick it on your desk somewhere in a little picture frame to remind you why you're there. And it might be a picture, or it might be words but just something to remind you in those tough moments that you're here for a reason. And then also you know, where do you get a sense of accomplishment? How do you track your success? Is it just tied up in NAPLAN scores or are the other things that help you to measure your success. Is it those moments when you see you know, that click over of I understand a new concept in a student in your class or when little Johnny comes in looking really glum and then you know, your welcome into the classroom brings a smile to his face, or when you see that little withdrawn child that didn't really have too many friends and you've done a lot of work to help them learn some social skills and build a connection with others, and you see them walking out into the playground arm-in-arm was a few other students. And what are those little goals you're setting yourself that you can then go yes, yes I've done that you know, I contributed to that, I made that happen and how do you give yourself a pat on the back or share that little sense of celebration with your colleagues.

All really important things in building your wellbeing and these are things that you can do yourself or you know, yourself and a buddy, that you don't require the whole school to be on board with, but you know, if you can get that whole school thing happening that's great. Spread the movement, encourage others to join in.

So, we are going to go to the live Q&A now before we jump to this bit, I think I've missed possibly, hang on. I would love to hear from the live Q&A, where you're finding enjoyment at work.

Love that.

Ashleigh Burns

Yep.

Jen Berthold

Comes back from a sense of purpose…

Ashleigh Burns

And acknowledging that you make difference. Yes.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, beautiful.

Ashleigh Burns

Seeing students show agency in the learning and showing pride in their accomplishments.

Jen Berthold

Yeah.

Ashleigh Burns

There's nothing better.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, that’s lovely. I'm going to put you on the spot Lisa. Could you share maybe that, you know, how people in your school maybe share that sense of purpose and, and you know is that something that you've done yet or might do at your school?

Lisa Haughey

Not yet but that's definitely, you know, a next step for us. I just had something where we asked our staff, you know, yeah what do, what’s your sense of purpose when you come to school. And some people said, well for me it's interacting with others and connecting with others.

Ashleigh Burns

Relationships.

Lisa Haughey

And we just we simply spoke about, we spoke about something we take for granted, I think. Every morning at school where when we walk in the door and everyone says hello to each other and they said for some of us, who live at home, that's the first hello, the first verbal hello they get in the morning. So, that connection not only with each other but with our students and with our families.

Ashleigh Burns

And how important it is too, particularly when it was taken away from us a mask for a, for such a long period of time to be able to readjust to just to get, to getting that back is great.

Jen Berthold

Definitely. Some of the other things we’re seeing popping up - connecting with students and empowering them to find solutions, seeing students enjoying their learning, the sense of community, connection with colleagues, yeah, yeah a lot of the same things popping up there thank you so much.

Ashleigh Burns

Themes between relationships, community, connection

Jen Berthold

Yes. Meaning, purpose.

Ashleigh Burns

Which is all, you know part of our…

Jen Berthold

Yeah.

Ashleigh Burns

Such an important part of our wellbeing.

Jen Berthold

Very much so. So then, we're coming closer to the end but we would love, if there were. No, let's just go to this part. Really challenge you to think about, you know, this changing habits. Sometimes we want to change the world. Sometimes we want to, you know, really have huge impacts across our school and sometimes trying to make big change is sustainable but you can change one habit you know, if you can change one habit, build it into practise and then next week make another little change to your habits. And each week shift your habits and the habits of the people around you by the ripple effects, it can be really powerful.

So, leading a whole school approach to educator wellbeing in your school, may or may not be within your locus of control but it's certainly within your sphere of influence, to make small changes towards that whole school educator wellbeing. It's much easier to make one small change at a time, rather than try to get that big change off the ground, and every small change of habit that you make has that ripple effect amongst your students, your colleagues, your family, and your friends. So, something else that we know from the research is that if you say something out loud or write it down, you're more likely to follow through with it. So, we're really inviting all of you to write in the chat one change of habit that you might make to improve educator wellbeing in your school community. Just one small thing that you might do. Maybe you're going to go and have a look at the educator wellbeing plan, maybe you're going to go and fill it out, maybe you’re going to go and share it with someone else, maybe you're just going to stop and take those three deep breaths, you know, every now and then through your workday.

Yeah we’d love to go to the Q&A and just see what small changes you're thinking you might take in your…

Ashleigh Burns

Boundaries. Have a lunch break.

Jen Berthold

Yeah.

Lisa Haughey

It’s an important one.

Ashleigh Burns

That is such a big one, I think, yeah. Not having lunch breaks, boundaries. Boundaries, you know around even like emails and when you stop working…

Jen Berthold

Yeah.

Ashleigh Burns

At night-time.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, trying not to take work home.

Ashleigh Burns and Lisa Haughey

Yeah.

Jen Berthold

Like, to a certain extent, having a moment during at, you know a time at which you turn off from work and think about recharging your batteries or connecting with your family or your pet or just you know, unwinding…

Ashleigh Burns and Lisa Haughey

Yep.

Jen Berthold

And let it work go for the evening.

Ashleigh Burns

Going for a walk outside the school building for at least 10 minutes yes.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, yeah. Pause and breathe. Certainly that, providing opportunities to people to give you a little bit of thanks and accepting it gracefully…

Lisa Haughey

Yeah.

Jen Berthold

You know or sharing with them what you’re doing so they have the opportunity to thank you. Yeah, trying to focus on and reinforce the positive things that are happening. Yep.

Ashleigh Burns

That’s really good.

Jen Berthold

Just carving out those little gratitude moments in your day.

Ashleigh Burns

Particularly when things are feeling very overwhelming, to stop and pause and think, ok it's not all bad but what are some things I can control and things that are going well, can be really helpful and make you more resilient.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, absolutely. Making sure to acknowledge achievements, that is really, really important.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah, I love this one too. A clear finish time on Friday’s.

Jen Berthold

Definitely on Friday’s.

Ashleigh Burns

Yeah.

Jen Berthold

Don’t let it creep into Saturday.

Ashleigh Burns

No.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, absolutely and you know, and some of that can be making time to thank your colleague or point out to your colleague some of their little achievements too. You know, if you start doing that you'll start to receive what you're putting out.

Ashleigh Burns

Yes, yeah definitely. Cause I think when we are overwhelmed, and we’re you know, we're feeling overloaded we’re just thinking what's the next thing, what's the next thing and not really taking stock of how far we’ve come or how much were actually doing so.

Jen Berthold

And it is really easy to get task focused and forget about the importance of the relationships.

Ashleigh Burns

So, by doing that to other people it makes you maybe stop and think, OK what am I doing as well so.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, might circle back, hadn't planned to talk about this but boundaries are really important and how we assert them. So, you know just being able to really politely say to somebody who might need you to do some right now, that, thank you for coming to me about that and it's definitely important to me, and right now I need to just do this. So can we come back to that a bit later. To make sure that you do get your toilet break in, your cup of tea when you need it, and you don't get hijacked in the hallway to do something else. Or telling a young person in your care that, I really care about you and the playground teacher, and you know, the playground duty teachers over there, could you go talk to them or come and see me after recess. I actually just need to go and do this now but you're very important to me and I will come back to you about that.

Lisa Haughey

It’s that modelling too, isn’t it. Modelling that to someone, right now may not be the right time for me but I care about that, will circle back to it.

Jen Berthold

That's right yeah.

Ashleigh Burns

Definitely.

Jen Berthold

Yeah, beautiful. So, please do, if you're in a leadership position or you can get your leadership on board, register your whole community with Be You. We encourage you to keep up to date with the resources, and the events coming up, and get onto our social media channels as well to alerted when those things are coming up. If you’re looking for resources to support your school, the link back to those educator wellbeing resources and the Be You website should be in the discussion forum for you. And yep, there it, will be more events coming up online.

So, thank you so much for attending our session today and we hope many of us, of you will join Ashleigh and I for the panel discussion later on today. Thanks so much Lisa for coming in.

Lisa Haughey

Thank you both.

Ashleigh Burns

Thanks so much Lisa, thank you everyone.

End of transcript.