Improving whole school wellbeing

Sometimes just changing an old habit, or taking on a new routine, can have a significant impact on our wellbeing

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Open View Education

Here are some steps that school leaders and staff can take to cultivate positive mental wellbeing.

Keep emails in their place

Smartphones allow us to check our emails anywhere, at anytime and this can be convenient and useful. However, it makes it far too easy to develop the habit of checking our emails outside of working hours. To prevent emails sneaking into our time off, try removing work email account from your smartphone.

It can also be useful to change our mindset around emails. Rather than ‘checking’ emails, think in terms of ‘processing’ emails. Only open your email account when you are in a situation where you can reply and deal with what you have received.

Create a welcoming staff room

Teaching can be a challenging and overwhelming job so having a staff room that is inviting and comfortable, allowing people the opportunity to recharge during the day, can be transformative.

The way a staff room is laid out can also encourage positive interaction between people, and foster connections. Keeping the space clear, and having a communal area where staff can easily sit and eat together, can be hugely beneficial.

Use mindfulness

Starting a simple mindfulness practice can be transformative to our wellbeing. Many people try mindfulness but find it challenging to keep it up as a regular habit – here are some tips.

Start small, and keep it regular. You could try ‘mini mindfulness’ – the next time you have a brief moment to yourself – it could be at the interval between one meeting and the next, or when you arrive at a location in your car – close your eyes and take three deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

This simple habit of ‘resetting’ before starting the next segment of our day can give us a boost of energy and provides an easy way to integrate mindfulness into our everyday lives.

Step out of the tunnel

When we face a tight deadline, or we have a lot of commitments to juggle, we tend to focus solely on the outcome of ‘getting things done’; this experience of having too little time to complete a task can put us into a mental state of ‘tunnelling’ in which we focus solely on reaching a single outcome.

Being in the state of ‘tunnelling’ can cause us to neglect other areas of our life and, if we are in this state of mind for long periods of time certain areas of our personal life may suffer. If you find yourself in this state take a moment to step out of the tunnel and reconsider your goals.