Why do teachers become teachers? A little while ago, we conducted some research and found that the top answer for why teachers join the profession is the opportunity to change lives and make a difference.
For the people in this profession, changing lives and making a difference is not all about teaching subject knowledge. Personally, when I think back to the conversations I remember with my teachers (all these years later!) none of them were about course material. They were about something much bigger – my stresses, anxieties and worries.
A large part of teachers’ jobs is to look out for their students. As we look at the challenges students face today – pressures of social media, concerns about the environment, not to mention the difficulties that COVID has brought with it – we could argue that both teachers and students are under more pressure than ever before.
Fortunately, as we saw from our research, and the beautiful stories we receive for the Dedicated Teacher Awards every year, teachers are amazing people and are meeting this challenge with positivity and enthusiasm! That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t do with some help. Which is why we have created this blog to highlight useful resources for looking after your students’, as well as your, wellbeing in school.
Identifying stress in your learners
A good place to start is by consciously looking for signs of stress in your learners. During the pandemic, we recorded a special Brighter Thinking Pod about how teachers can look after their students’ mental health and wellbeing.
In the episode, we spoke to Ros McLellan, a Lecturer in Teacher Education and Development / Pedagogical Innovation at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. We also spoke to Tamsin Ford, a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.
You can listen to the podcast in the link above and I urge you to have a look at the show notes. These contain helpful websites, questionnaires and resources for you and your students.
Teaching coping methods
Tamsin Ford also wrote a concise article about supporting students’ mental health. This includes advice on keeping up with the routine and managing anxiety.
One difficulty is knowing whether a student wants advice from their teacher about wellbeing. The great thing about this blog, is that it gives useful ideas and advice that you can bring into your classroom without disruption.
Mental health in schools during times of uncertainty
As I mentioned in the introduction, school years can sometimes be stressful on their own. The uncertainty that COVID-19 has brought with it has only added to students’ worries.
We talked to Head Teacher, Richard Morgan, and parent, Beth Borrett, during the pandemic about their experiences when helping children with the stresses of uncertainty. It’s interesting to get both a teacher and parent perspective when looking at things like remote learning, exam cancellation and motivation. We can highly recommend their chat in the link above.
In addition, Cambridge Assessment International Education recently teamed up with the emotional health practitioners, Flourish, to create a webinar to help teachers address some of these difficulties for their students. This webinar includes:
- Developing an awareness of the impact that COVID-19 is having on your students
- Understanding the possible thoughts, concerns and anxieties they may be having
- Identifying vulnerable groups
- Strategies to use as you continue to support your students
We can highly recommend Flourish’s YouTube channel, which is full of great videos on looking after young people’s mental health in school.
Advice from other teachers
At the Cambridge Panel, our online research community, teachers from all over the world support each other in looking after their students’ wellbeing and motivation.
We recently asked them for their tips on supporting students with emotional intelligence, wellbeing and motivation. In this blog, you can read all about their advice, as well as see highlights from our community webinar on the same subject.
Looking after teachers’ mental health and wellbeing
Last, but definitely not least, is looking after your own wellbeing. Even with the best will, you cannot help your students to overcome their problems if you are struggling. We spoke to Dr Rachel Morris, expert in resilience, to get her tips for teachers when looking after themselves and their teams.
In her blog, you’ll find 8 tips for managing your mental health and workload. These cover everything from identifying problems, to managing workload and being ‘more gazelle’. I encourage you to read her blog to find out what that last one means!
We also conducted wellbeing research with our teacher community. In this blog, teachers from around the world shared their experiences and advice to support one another with emotional intelligence and wellbeing.
Furthermore, they gave their top tips for getting through demotivated days. Because even though teachers are superheros, they are still have days where they feel demotivated, just like everyone else.
There to talk
Unfortunately, both adults and children often neglect mental health and wellbeing until things become unmanageable. This needn’t be the case though. Sometimes, spotting problems early and being there to talk to make the biggest difference to someone who is struggling.
Finally, if you are worried about your mental health, or the mental health of a student or colleague then look out for mental health charities and organisations in your area. These people do fantastic work and are there to help.
