The importance and awareness of the need to prioritise and build capacity around teacher wellbeing is growing, and it's great to see.
More time, more people, more strategy.
As we head down this path one thing I am very mindful of is making sure we offer and provide long-term strategies that are going to make a difference both personally and professionally.
Teacher wellbeing is a collective responsibility. We need to tackle it from both ends, both personally and professionally, on our own, and together.
This means making sure the time you give to teacher and staff wellbeing needs to be well thought out, and the strategies implemented allow both the everyday and workplace aspects to meet in the middle.
Yes, let's give time to teachers and staff to engage in PD and build their wellbeing literacy, knowledge, awareness, and capacity, but let's also build our awareness around what can be done at a whole school level to support teacher wellbeing.
We need to build a culture of seeking and speaking, start to ask questions regarding how we work and if it supports staff wellbeing, and be ready to make changes to ensure we have better ways of working, improved systems, structures, and processes, psychological safe working environments, and collaborative, engaged teams.
If we don't approach this from both ends, and instead offer 1-day PD's to build teacher wellbeing, without being prepared to tackle what contributes to stress factors in the first place, I am worried we will find ourselves having ticked a box, but not actually addressed systemic issues that need long-term, sustainable change.
Amy Green - The Wellness Strategy
Email: hello@amygreen.com.au
