Staff Wellbeing

As I was  sitting there last week nursing  my newly fractured ankle, I turned my attention to thoughts of staff well-being. Staff well-being is an interesting one. We know that in some parts of society there is the false perception  that teaching is an easy option, one of short working days and long holidays. The reality could not be further from the truth. Inevitably we reach the end of each half term battered and bruised from the relentless nature of the job,the ups and downs and from putting our hearts and souls into what we do.

This inevitably impacts on well-being, it can’t not do. So I suppose the question is about what we do to lessen the potentially negative impacts the job can have. How can we as a school support our staff,  but even more importantly how can we as human beings support each other? Every single member of staff has a role in setting the emotional temperature of an organisation.

I found this lovely example of a school that was putting staff well-being high on the agenda with it’s own Staff Well-Being Week. I’d be really interested to see how something along this lines would work with our staff community. Perhaps this could even be something led by our new Pastoral Support Team?

https://kaslangmead.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/staff-wellbeing-week/?utm_content=buffer27609&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

September 15, 2015September 15, 2015 by aeastwood71 1 Comment

Further thoughts re Pupil Premium

The Sutton Trust recently published a report on how fair it is to assess university applicants based on personal statements. Above is an excerpt from the full report looking at the issue of work experience. The full report can be found here:

Click to access JONESPERSONALSTATEMENTS-2.pdf

This further excerpt is even more thought provoking:

In many respects I found this quite demoralising. Whatever we do to close the gap, and by and large we are very effective at closing the gap for children from disadvantaged backgrounds at Greenways, the opportunities that economic prosperity in later life can offer can’t possibly be replicated for every child.

But then I snapped out of it and remembered why we do this job in the first place; because we will never give up on any child and on trying to help everyone t o be the best they can be.

Just because I have no idea how to solve this one doesn’t of course mean that there isn’t a solution out there to level this particular playing field.

September 15, 2015 by aeastwood71 Leave a comment