How can I ensure the well-being of staff in our school?
Q: Many of your ideas have formed the basis of transforming our former 'failing' school and building self esteem, positive behaviour and a 'can do' ethos. I am now concerned about the staff and looking for ways of ensuring their well-being. What should I be doing to ensure this?
Jenny: You are absolutely right to be concerned! We believe that raising staff self-esteem and morale is the key to unlocking a school’s potential. If you look at my model – staff morale is given top priority and on our training days, we devote a lot of time to team-building. I suggest to all headteachers that they need to establish circle time for some staff meetings. It is essential that the same ethos that teachers are trying to promote in their classrooms ie. valuing, empathy and problem solving permeate selected staff meetings that carry the theme of "what can we do to cheer ourselves up". Once staff get used to sitting in a circle with a round of "One thing that went well this week" and/or "one thing I need help with" - if the ground-rules have been established first with all the staff and are kept to - then the ethos becomes safe enough to explore more fragile issues such as 'how we can find different ways of responding to children' - 'building relationships' - 'supporting each other without being judgmental' etc etc I don't initially say to staff that we are using these meetings "to do team-building" as this puts them off and raises to much alarm. Initially we structure staff meetings with specific topics.
In Turn Your School Round pages 48 - 71 - I concentrate on circle meetings for staff. If these were run in the safe structured way that I suggest they would create a safe foundation on which to build other staff meetings where there is no agenda and it is about feelings. All research shows that teachers with low self-esteem can fall in to the usual low self-esteem patterns of nagging, irritability etc - teachers with sound self-esteem (and that doesn't mean that they are arrogant or 'pushy' - it just means that they keep life in perspective and don't get overwhelmed by difficult days) are then able to find the energy to boost the self-esteem of others. If we don't look after ourselves, or we fail to treat each other with respect - teachers will begin to burn out - you can't keep on 'giving out' if you don't 'put back in'. What we say on our courses is that we must be careful with the language we use with each other. As language can build courage and energy or it can demoralise with its flinty sharpness. I hope that this helps.
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