This site is a go-to resource for insights and analysis on COVID-19. Here, The Conference Board of Canada brings you quick-read articles based on our multidisciplinary research. Each article gives you a fact-based understanding of the complex issues impacting you and your organization.
Also, be sure to check out The Conference Board of Canada’s Mental Health and COVID-19 Video Series.
A temporary hub of information and tools to help teachers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.
Also, be sure to check out the Teach from Home toolkit.
The effort to address COVID-19 is both extremely important for us all and poses a range of challenges for individuals and families as they respond to the demands of the situation. The situation is stressful for everyone and it is normal to be anxious and worried. This site is designed to provide information and suggestions about how best to cope in this difficult time.
The Global Education Coalition launched by UNESCO seeks to facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for children and youth during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption.
Investment in remote learning should both mitigate the immediate disruption caused by COVID-19 and establish approaches to develop more open and flexible education systems for the future.
In moments of uncertainty and concern, it’s not only about what leaders of organizations do but equally how they do it that matters.
In January 2020, ahead of the Lunar New Year and as health concerns were still growing, Deloitte conducted a survey in China of human capital policies and practices. The survey drew over 1,000 responses from enterprises operating in China, including a cross-section of private, foreign, and state-owned enterprises as well as not-for-profit organizations.The survey shows that from the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the immediate focus of employers has been on ensuring the health and safety of their employees
Drawing on lessons learned in prior crises, such as SARS, Deloitte offers practices and strategies for consideration.
Students may experience a range of emotions during the COVID-19 situation. As well, changes in routine, including time away from school, may create challenges for some students. We also understand that young people with pre-existing mental health problems may find their symptoms increasing in light of the current uncertainties.
School Mental Health Ontario compiled tips and resources to help answer questions you may have about how to support students during this time.
The purpose of this document, published by UNICEF, is to provide clear and actionable guidelines that will allow schools and other educational establishments to operate safely through prevention, early detection, and combating COVID-19. While these guidelines are specific to countries that have already confirmed the transmission of COVID-19, they are still relevant in all other contexts. Education can encourage students to become advocates for disease prevention and control at home, at school, and in their communities by enabling them to educate those around them on how to prevent the spread of virus. Maintaining safe school operations or reopening schools after a closure requires many considerations but, if done well, can promote public health.
With the unsettling disruptions of school closures and social distancing requirements, we will continue to update useful links to help you access the latest information from your provincial/territorial ministry of education.
Outbreak update from the Public Health Agency of Canada
Outbreak update from the World Health Organization
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
Guidance for COVID-19 prevention and control in childcare and schools.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
What is the current situation? Click here.
Are we finally waking up to the critical need for climate change action? Is it too late? As we finalized the articles for this issue, Australia was literally on fire, suffering devastating and possibly irreversible losses to habitat and wildlife, not to mention loss of human life and thousands of homes. And this is only one of several ecological debts that are coming past due.
If young people are worried and angry about the crisis that lies ahead for them, they have every right to be. They’ve been left holding the bag, and they know it. So how do we equip them to address these challenges in a positive way that doesn’t just create more anxiety and fear?
Environmental educators know that real action that has a real impact is the strongest antidote to feelings of helplessness and despair. That’s why, in this issue on environmental education, we wanted to stress approaches that involve students in action projects to mitigate environmental damage, and schools that “walk the walk” by reducing their own carbon footprint. We were interested in how schools are “greening up” through both education andaction.
There is plenty in this issue to inspire educators to take up the green torch. But what has stayed with me is a finding from the survey conducted by Lakehead University and Learning for a Sustainable Future, reported on in “Climate Change Education and the Canadian Classroom: Nearly half of Canadian students do not believe that human action will be effective in mitigating climate change. That’s a heavy weight for kids to carry. The authors say, “It is critically important, therefore, to target this group with climate change education that is action- and solutions-oriented to combat eco-anxiety and hopelessness.”
The articles in this issue show just what can be done when students are energized to act and school and board administrations are willing to step up and support them. From the EcoSchools Program that began in Toronto and is spreading across the country, to the eco-projects initiated and led by the students profiled by Alex Mlynek (web exclusive), to the work done by Brilliant Labs in Atlantic Canada to facilitate students’ innovative tech solutions supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, there is no shortage of green ideas in our schools. It is not such a big stretch to imagine that Canadian schools could join the ranks of those leading the way in sustainable living and environmental stewardship.
Photo: courtesy Laryssa Gorecki
First published in Education Canada, March 2020
Write to us!
We want to know what you think. Send your comments and article proposals to editor@edcan.ca – or join the conversation by using #EdCan on Twitter and Facebook.
Following government COVID-19 guidelines concerning large in-person events, we unfortunately have had no choice but to further postpone our Pan-Canadian Summit on K-12 Workplace Well-Being, which had originally been postponed to November 2-4, 2020.
Registrations will be fully refunded for all registrants by July 15, 2020.
We are still currently working on a new potential event date and venue in 2021 and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and remain committed to hosting a safe event when a better time will permit us to do so. We sincerely hope that you will be able to join us next year!
Since March, we’ve temporarily rebranded our Well at Work initiative to Well at Home to share our original evidence-based content and carefully curated external resources to support K-12 staff who are navigating working from home and preparing to return to school in September. We invite you to continue exploring our growing collection of podcasts, blog posts and magazine articles as well as the latest research resources, and a webinar series centred on elevating staff well-being and workplace morale. Stay tuned for more webinars to come!
If you have any recommendations for future webinar topics/presenters, feel free to reach out to Bineta Diallo at bdiallo@edcan.ca
Thank you for all of your support during this challenging time. We look forward to seeing you in 2021!
And at the front of these classes are teachers are grappling with their own issues – contending with the heavy demands of their day to day responsibilities and the stress of helping students who are struggling.
Teach Resiliency is an online portal and community of practice offering teachers simple-to-use strategies and tools to assess resilience needs and provide resources to promote and enhance teacher and student mental health. Teach Resiliency is designed to:
The Teach Resiliency site was created in partnership with a team of teachers, administrators, mental health professionals, researchers and students. This team developed tools and resources, created curated resource collections and collaborated with a team from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to design and build the website.
Stratégies pratiques pour améliorer le bien-être du personnel dans les écoles et les commissions scolaires au Canada.
Le bien-être du personnel d’écoles primaires et secondaires est une priorité dans les écoles et les conseils et commissions scolaires du Canada, et pourtant, le stress et l’épuisement professionnel ne cessent d’augmenter chez les surintendants*, directeurs d’école, enseignants et autres membres du personnel scolaire. Êtes-vous prêt à changer ce scénario et à découvrir COMMENT promouvoir un milieu de travail plus positif qui favorise le bien-être de l’ensemble du personnel?
À noter que l’événement se déroulera principalement en anglais. Certains ateliers seront bilingues.
Veuillez nous contacter si vous souhaitez ovtenir de l’aide pour vous inscrire au sommet.
Prix de pré-inscription (jusqu’au 13 mars 2020) |
MEMBRE ÉDCAN | NON-MEMBRE |
Conférence seulement (12 et 13 mai) | 350 $ | 400 $ |
Pré-conférence (11 mai) + conférence (12 et 13 mai) | 425 $ | 500 $ |
Prix régulier (après le 13 mars 2020) |
MEMBRE ÉDCAN | NON-MEMBRE |
Conference Only (May 12-13) | 400 $ | 450 $ |
Pré-conférence (11 mai) + conférence (12 et 13 mai) | 500 $ | 575 $ |
Vous ne savez pas si vous êtes membre? Consultez la liste de tous nos membres, ou contacter la responsable des adhésions au membership@edcan.ca OU 866-803-9549, poste 223.
Tarif de l’hôtel : 229 $ / nuit + taxes
Mark T. GreenbergAuteur, spécialiste international renommé de l’apprentissage socio-émotionnel et directeur-fondateur du Bennett Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development. |
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Kimberly Schonert-ReichlÉminente spécialiste de l’apprentissage socio-émotionnel et de l’éducation des enfants et des enseignants fondée sur l’empathie, la résilience et la pleine conscience. |
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Sue RoffeyAuteure et conférencière de renommée internationale, elle travaille sur une approche globale du bien-être du personnel d’écoles primaires et secondaires en Australie et au Royaume-Uni. |
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Susan RodgerLa plus éminente spécialiste au Canada en matière de stress, d’épuisement professionnel, de travail émotionnel, de fatigue de compassion et de résilience. |
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Katina PollockLa plus éminente spécialiste au Canada en matière d’intensification du travail et de bien-être des directeurs et directeurs adjoints d’écoles. |
Consultez la liste complète de nos conférenciers au www.edcansummit.ca/agenda
Cette expérience d’apprentissage sans précédent ne se termine pas avec les remarques de clôture. En plus d’allocutions et d’ateliers de qualité, ce sommet vous offre trois expériences novatrices visant à solidifier votre réseau et à faire profiter votre école, commission scolaire ou organisme de stratégies pratiques qui vous permettront d’entreprendre l’amélioration à long terme de votre milieu de travail.
Les bonnes idées ne resteront pas sur le papier. Apprenez à mettre en œuvre des stratégies efficaces de bien-être adaptées à votre milieu de travail grâce à des séances de coaching en petits groupes dirigés par des spécialistes en la matière.
Rien ne sert de réinventer la roue. Inspirez-vous de programmes novateurs qui font déjà du bien-être en milieu de travail une priorité absolue dans certaines écoles et commissions scolaires. Explorez à votre rythme ce salon des ressources et discutez avec des champions du bien-être au Canada.
Les idées ne sont bonnes que si elles sont adaptées aux réalités quotidiennes du personnel des écoles primaires et secondaires. Des sorties pédagogiques favoriseront l’apprentissage au-delà des murs du colloque en vous faisant connaître des écoles, commissions scolaires et collectivités de la région.
Photos : SquareSpace
Dr. Shirley R. Steinberg recognized for empowering educators and students to challenge media bias and misrepresentation
The EdCan Network is pleased to honour Dr. Shirley Steinberg—Professor of Critical Youth Studies at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education—as co-winner of the 2019 Whitworth Award for Career Education Research Excellence. This prestigious award recognizes Dr. Steinberg’s influential career as one of Canada’s leading scholars who have expanded media literacy into the field of critical pedagogy. Her work supports teachers and students to use and explore a wide variety of art forms, culture, and media—including hip-hop, commercial broadcasting, and new digital technologies—as a way to understand and question biases in the media and everyday life.
Dr. Shirley Steinberg has applied her critical approach to media studies, literacy, and drama to the global refugee crisis, which was used to explore how Islamic and Middle Eastern cultures are represented across the media, in advertising, and in schools. Most recently, Dr. Steinberg wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Elders’ Room, a collaborative project with Kainai First Nations High School students and counsellors. By bringing light to media bias and misrepresentation, Dr. Steinberg’s research encourages students to become agents of support, understanding, and change who challenge prejudices faced by ethnic minorities in Canada and beyond.
Understanding power dynamics, “how power works,” is also central to Dr. Steinberg’s work as a critical theorist, in understanding how and why inequality exists across people of different genders, races, classes, and other factors. She has a keen interest in conducting research and creating course curricula in which teachers engage television, theatre, art, music, and popular culture to guide students in questioning bias in the world around them. This contextual way of teaching simultaneously prompts educators to consider the impacts of their work beyond the classroom in ways that inspire students to confront economic, political, and social challenges in today’s world. This has redefined the teaching profession by repositioning educators as sources of large-scale change, and further drove her to the creation of The Freire International Project for Critical Cultural Community, Youth and Media Activism, The International Institute for Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Leadership, and previously, The Werklund Foundation Centre for Youth Leadership. These research-based projects offer educators a variety of research publications, films, and networking resources to help educators and community members to critically examine inequalities in society.
The Whitworth Award Selection Committee appreciated Dr. Steinberg’s lifelong dedication to expanding research in the field of critical pedagogy and media literacy studies, notably her mentorship of numerous emerging scholars and editing of over 600 books in the past 20 years. The Committee also lauded her unique approach to a form of research, “bricolage,” which tasks researchers to use a multi-layered, thick methodological approach which takes into account their own biases, different ways of interpretation, and leads to a more complex and socially-just understanding of the histories, cultures, and contexts of the communities, schools, and venues they research.
Dr. Shirley R. Steinberg shares the 2019 Whitworth Award with co-winner Dr. André P. Grace, recognized for his pioneering research and lifelong commitment to addressing the educational needs of sexual and gender minority youth in Canada.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT DR. SHIRLEY STEINBERG’S RESEARCH
Dr. André P. Grace recognized for profound impact in improving the lives of sexual and gender minority youth in Canada
The EdCan Network is pleased to honour Dr. André P. Grace—Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sexual and Gender Minority Studies at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education—as co-winner of the 2019 Whitworth Award for Career Education Research Excellence. This prestigious award recognizes Dr. Grace’s pioneering research and lifelong commitment to addressing the educational needs of sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth.
Advocacy and transforming practice are central to Dr. Grace’s work, grounded in the vision that SGM students in our schools and communities are a vulnerable population whose safety, security, well-being, and accommodation are still not fully guaranteed. In 2016, Dr. Grace’s extensive portfolio and years of research culminated in a milestone publication entitled Sexual and Gender Minorities in Canadian Education and Society (1969–2013): A National Handbook for K-12 Educators, which recognizes the powerful role of educators in advancing the inclusion of sexual and gender minorities in Canadian society. This publication includes a comprehensive overview of how we can further advance recognition and respectful accommodation of SGMs in education and beyond through policy and practice perspectives. Since 2002, Dr. Grace’s research as principal investigator studying sexual and gender minority students and teachers has been consistently funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The primary focus of this research is helping SGM youth grow into resilience with the support of teachers and other caring professionals such as counsellors and social workers.
Building on this momentum, Dr. Grace’s current ambitious portfolio includes studying how greater collaboration across research, policy, and practice can spark collective action across sectors including education, healthcare, social services, and justice in supporting sexual and gender minority youth to build resilience in the face of adversity. Dr. Grace has already conducted extensive prior research in this area, which can be found in the book Growing into Resilience: Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Canada, for professionals working with SGM youth and can be used in training courses for those working with vulnerable youth populations.
The Whitworth Award Selection Committee lauded Dr. Grace’s lifelong dedication to improving synergies among research, practice, and policy to improve the educational outcomes and life chances of sexual and gender minority youth in Canada – including his focus on equipping educators with practical tools and training resources to foster positive school cultures. The Committee was also impressed by Dr. Grace’s extensive on-the-ground work with SGM youth, which includes cofounding the Camp fYrefly summer leadership camp in 2004 and establishing the Community-Hope-Empowerment-Wellness or CHEW Project in 2014 to support homeless and street-involved SGM youth.
Dr. André P. Grace shares the 2019 Whitworth Award with co-winner Dr. Shirley R. Steinberg, recognized for an influential career as one of Canada’s leading scholars in critical literacy and media studies.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT DR. ANDRÉ P. GRACE’S RESEARCH
The Whitworth Award for Career Education Research Excellence was first presented in 1967, and was made possible through a generous financial donation by Dr. Fred Whitworth, a former Director of the Canadian Council for Research in Education. It has, since then, recognized individuals who have made a sustained and substantial contribution to educational research over a period of time.
There is a wealth of research that supports the claim that positive leaders have a positive impact on their organisations’ growth and improvement. Schools are no different.
In addition to confirming our intuitive beliefs about the impact a leader has on their group, research also suggests that positive leadership practices lead to individual benefits on one’s psychological health, emotional well-being, optimal brain function, improved interpersonal relationships, and learning. It goes without saying that schools gain by ensuring that their leaders are positive leaders.
Regardless of our perception of what makes a “good” leader, there is no doubt that such a leader must demonstrate competencies in several domains. But what are the competencies and practices demonstrated by leaders who are not only good but excellent?
Leaders capable of creating a positive school climate where everyone can be at their best share the characteristic of being able to establish strong interpersonal relationships.1 These leaders communicate sincerely, whether the message is positive or negative. They are respectful of others and their feedback is communicated in a constructive way without negative emotions. They have confidence in their staff and all school employees and support them during difficult times. Strong positive leaders don’t hesitate to recognize quality work and to value and promote such work in private and in public. They value long-term goals and have the ability to strategize in order to reach their goals. Their charisma gives confidence to their staff and allows them to mobilise and engage the school community. All this, plus they are open to everyone, exude enthusiasm, and have a good sense of humour. Wow, what a tall order!
Thankfully, what is common to these competencies and practices is that they are observable and therefore can be learned. The work of Cameron2 and the synthesis done by WMA Wellness3 show that positive leaders demonstrate competencies across five domains: leadership virtues, positive communication, energizing skills, motivational and knowledge skills, and operational tasks.
A key element of the Positive Workplace Framework is a questionnaire designed to evaluate the level of embeddedness of practices from each of the five aforementioned positive leadership domains.
Although positive leadership practices can apply to everyone in a school setting, the Positive Leadership Inventory (PLI) questionnaire describes practices that school leaders such as principals and vice-principals should demonstrate on a regular basis. The PLI assesses the presence of positive leadership practices associated with healthy and effective school environments. It provides school leaders with quantitative results on their strengths across the five positive leadership sub-domains. The PLI contains short, clear descriptions of 30 distinct leadership practices that can be expected to be observed in positive school environments. Each practice relates to one of the sub-domains described above. All school employees are asked to indicate how well each practice is reflective of their school environment using a 5-point Likert scale where 1 = Not at all, 3 = Sometimes, and 5 = Very often. It takes less than ten minutes to complete the PLI questionnaire online. All answers are anonymous and confidential.
The PLI report provides a profile of strong leadership practices (those practices that are very frequently demonstrated by leaders) and areas for development (those leadership practices requiring more promotion and capacity building). The report gives leaders empirical evidence which helps them prioritise the areas they wish to continue developing. To facilitate this development, the Positive Workplace Framework offers a suite of targeted resources for each of the leadership domains.
Results of the PLI’s rigorous psychometric validation study show that the PLI can be trusted to identify existing positive leadership practices. The results of the validation study are available.4
Schools that have the reputation of being “good schools” have leaders who excel in many areas. Implementing the Positive Workplace Framework (PWF) and its practices in daily routines allows leaders to create school environments where mental fitness and resiliency practices can be fully integrated. By integrating positive leadership practices guided by the results of the PLI, leaders can pursue their evidence-based professional development which benefits not only themselves but also their school.
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
Photo:
First published in Education Canada, December
1 J. P. Rolland, L’évaluation de la personnalité. Le modèle à cinq facteurs (Sprimont, Belgium: Mardaga, 2004).
2 K. Cameron, Positive Leadership: Tools and techniques that create extraordinary results (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2013).
3 WMA Wellness (2019). www.wmawellness.com
Work being done by the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS), in partnership with WellAhead, aims to increase awareness of the importance of well-being at the highest leadership levels, and to bring systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices for improved levels of wellness in an increasingly stressful job.
The old cliché, “It’s lonely at the top!” can be very true for school principals, superintendent/directors and other educational leaders. And while not all leadership personalities may present themselves as caregivers, in interviews that my colleague, Jim McLellan, and I conducted with more than 45 Superintendents and their teams in Alberta, they made it clear that they care much more about the wellness of their staff, students and communities than about their own personal wellness.
It’s common sense that leaders must be well in order for the organizations they lead to be well, whether that be schools or school systems. The metaphor of putting on the oxygen mask on oneself before others applies! Much work related to student wellness and mental well-being is underway in most Alberta school authorities (boards). What will it take to convince education leaders, school boards, politicians and society in general that education leader and staff wellness is worth making a priority?
As our many baby-boomer leaders near retirement, the supply of quality superintendents is decreasing, while the demand for such leaders, at a time when our schools are facing the highest levels of accountability and greatest standards, is increasing. The reality is that few education leaders are aspiring to principalship and superintendent/director positions. The work is too hard and too stressful. There are so many pressure points that the application pools for education leadership positions are now often very thin. So, what will it take to turn this around?
This is exactly what the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) are hoping to learn. The three main goals of this initiative include:
I was indeed fortunate to be involved in school leadership early in my teaching experience. I certainly did not aspire to such leadership as I considered my career options, while dreaming of making a difference to kids. I suppose leadership came more naturally before I made a decision to learn more about it.
As I moved to division office in Superintendent–type roles, it became clear that leadership was more challenging than ever. Teaching as a noble profession seemed to be on the decline with our society in general. The explosion of the Internet and social media complicated the work rather than simplifying it. Increasing expectations of what services schools should provide further complicated leadership roles at school and at the school authority levels. And more recently, the polarization of perspectives has increasingly added to the stress in educational environments. I have found this to be true in conversations about all kinds of issues, including priorities, budgets, transportation, buildings and education programs.
It can be difficult, for many reasons, to seek help when you need it. There is 360-degree pressure and role overload. You can never keep everyone happy.
In short, while we strive for child-centered and solution-based conversations, high emotions can hijack the agenda. As I also saw friends and family struggle with their own mental health, I wanted to learn more about mental health and wellness, have the autonomy to learn and apply what I learned and to be clear in my purpose to make a positive difference in even a broader way than I could as Superintendent of Schools. Managing key leadership positions, including principals and superintendents, is by its very nature lonely work. It can be difficult, for many reasons, to seek help when you need it. There is 360-degree pressure and role overload. You can never keep everyone happy.
The good news is that we know lots about what works and does not work in improving and sustaining mental well-being. There are a number of well-researched frameworks that clearly indicate there is no silver bullet. Rather, systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices are required in order to make a positive difference over time. Knowing this, where does one get started? Personal wellness? Student wellness? Staff wellness? Leadership wellness? Workplace wellness? Organizational wellness? YIKES! Leadership theory 101 makes it clear that those with the issues are in the best position to solve those issues. Thus the importance of systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices, including those partners who can add to the research knowledge and skills-based practices that will lead to improved wellness within any organization.
Some of the strategies of our work include:
Alberta is ripe for such work. There are already many resources available to contribute to such practices. The issue is that these resources and supports are not so well aligned to the perceived needs of the members of the College of Alberta Superintendents. The volume of research and strategies related to student mental well-being can be overwhelming, and there is very little in the research literature related to specific mental well-being practice for leaders. Some very strong support material is not that well known. Another important context is the work related to the fairly new Professional Practice Standards for Superintendents and School System Education Leaders in Alberta. Where the standards come to life for education leaders in the province is in the Leadership Quality Standard Practice Profiles. This is where we hope to embed exemplars of how leaders might best weld wellness and mental well-being with the leadership standards that make up our professional practice.
There are so many storms that leaders and educators in general face in their work each day. In The Dark Side of Educational Leadership,1 Polka and Litchka speak about the storm metaphor as it relates to the Superintendent role. Many of the case studies presented could also be very true for any educational leadership position. Their storm survival guide includes:
As a result of their interviews of 25 education leaders in Canada and the U.S. related to dealing with adversity, Patterson and Kelleher advocate for six practices that their interview data suggest make a significant difference in the mental well-being of leaders.2 There is a good deal of congruency between their findings and Polka and Litchka’s:
Granted, these steps sound easy, but are actually more challenging to achieve. I remain very hopeful and optimistic that the pathway to mental well-being lies in the elements of positive psychology. We are well aware of the importance of social, economic and human capital. Although psychological capital3 may be less known, there is much potential in learning and applying practices related to the fairly simple concepts of hope, efficacy, resiliency and optimism.
We generally know what works in improving mental well-being in a context of wellness. Working Together to Support Mental Health in Alberta Schools4 is an important resource that includes a multiple-partner, well-researched framework complete with background information, an assessment tool, six essential conditions of sustainable implementation practices and a basic planning guide to support the work. We also know it takes a minimum of 28 days and a concentrated effort to change practices and habits. Although the issues creating the landscape in which we work each day may be very complex, the practices to improved mental well-being within a culture of wellness can start very simply. If nothing else, start with drinking more water!
In their research with education leaders across North America, Polka and Litchka identified many trends related to decreased wellness, including:
photo: iStock and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
Notes:
You don’t need a pile of research studies to make an educated assumption that healthy employees who feel positive about their jobs will do more effective, productive work. (But the studies exist and some are cited in the pages to come.) And it shouldn’t take much convincing that an enthusiastic and emotionally healthy teacher will have a better impact on students than one that is stressed, exhausted, and/or overwhelmed. As a parent, you can bet I wanted the first teacher for my kids, not the second! Yet when competing priorities jostle for limited resources, staff well-being can get pushed so far to the back that it drops right out of sight.
We have a tendency to see well-being as solely a personal responsibility. If employees are struggling, they should go to the gym, get better organized, become more resilient or adaptable. But several of our authors dispute this assumption. Self-care, while important, only goes so far. Instead, our authors argue that occupational mental health, like physical health and safety, is a shared responsibility.
I’d love to think that all employers would try to protect their employees from toxic levels of occupational stress simply because they care about their staff. But let’s be realistic: staff well-being can too often be shrugged off as a “frill” or a strictly personal problem. That’s why we have to recognize that chronically overstressed educators come with a cost to the system. Sick days, stress leave, even leaving the profession are just the most visible impacts of employees who are unwell. An investment in employee well-being is an investment that pays off in reduced HR costs, increased performance, and ultimately increased student achievement.
All human service professions entail a certain amount of stress. But for those who are passionate about their calling, the work should also be deeply rewarding. That’s what Astrid Kendrick calls the “heartwork” of teaching. It’s what leads teachers and school leaders to go above and beyond, to bring the very best they have to their students (or staff), year after year. When that passion is crushed by relentless stress, she calls the resulting burnout “occupational heartbreak.” The articles in this special issue show some of the ways we can protect our educators’ heartwork, so they can be the committed, energetic, enthusiastic professionals our children need and deserve.
The EdCan Network has recently launched “Well at Work,” a research and public awareness campaign that calls on education leaders to make teacher and staff well-being a top priority. Check out Network Voices to find out more about this exciting initiative.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
Despite the fact that stress and burnout are on the rise among staff in Canadian K-12 education systems, investment to support their well-being isn’t keeping pace. As the leading independent national voice in Canadian K-12 education, EdCan is pleased to officially launch “Well at Work” – a new research and public awareness campaign that calls on education leaders to make teacher and staff well-being a top priority.
“The well-being of K-12 staff is a high priority for school districts across Canada. As Director of Education, I look forward to the learning from Well at Work to inform our Board’s focus on staff well-being,” says Denise Andre, Director of Education for the Ottawa Catholic School Board and EdCan Chair.
With 128 years of experience convening stakeholders from across the entire spectrum of Canadian K-12 public education, EdCan is hosting a series of national events to build a common vision for workplace well-being, including:
This free one-hour webinar presented insights gathered through a large-scale survey of educators and the general public on how to better frame the issue of teachers’ and principals’ well-being. Replay the webinar here: www.edcan.ca/workplacewebinar
This exclusive professional learning session brought together ministry and faculty of education representatives, directors of Education/CEOs, and other K-12 leaders from across Canada.
This gathering will bring together champions, changemakers, and key stakeholders from across the country to learn more about ways to advance workplace well-being in K-12 education.
Well at Work is all about giving schools and school districts the tools they need to improve working conditions for the long term, through amplifying educators’ stories and lived experiences that get to the heart of what well-being actually means and looks like at work.
For educators, schools, school districts, and ministries of education looking to take their first steps towards creating a healthier workplace, a growing collection of free resources are available for download at: www.edcan.ca/wellatwork.
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
When great ideas struggle to get off the ground, it may be because people are not ready to adopt them. The Idea Readiness tool helps you take the pulse of your school community to understand how they adopt ideas and tailor your approach accordingly.
Do you have a new idea to promote workplace wellness that you would love to try in your school community, but don’t know where to start? If so, the Idea Readiness Tool may be right for you. The Idea Readiness Tool was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Alberta in partnership with education sector workplace wellness professionals. The tool has the specific purpose of helping to guide the spread of new ideas within a school community.
The Idea Readiness Tool works with any idea, no matter how big or small.
The Idea Readiness Tool started with some previous research that we did on the diffusion of smoke-free bylaws. This work looked at how municipalities learned from the policies that other jurisdictions implemented. More specifically, we used the Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Theory to examine policy learning. This theory looks at the process of change for innovation. The theory follows a bell curve and suggests that as more people try out an innovation, the rate of adoption continues to build until it reaches a tipping point. At this point, the rate of adoption slows and less people are trying the innovation. Using this theory and our knowledge of smoke-free bylaw diffusion, we developed the Policy Readiness Tool. The Policy Readiness Tool is an evidence-based, validated tool that was created to support policy change specifically in municipal and organizational settings.
After we developed the Policy Readiness Tool, our partners at the Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan (ASEBP) reached out to us. While they liked the Policy Readiness Tool, they found the policy language did not resonate at all levels within a school community audience. They expressed a need for a tool specifically tailored for use in school settings, so together we modified the original Policy Readiness Tool to be more applicable to the unique needs of the school community.
The Tool involves three simple steps for you to follow.
This checklist will help you to identify how ready your school community is for the new idea you are thinking about. The checklist can do this by helping you determine what your group’s adoption style is.
Is your school community an innovator, majority or late adopter? Use the checklist to find out!
A couple of quick highlights about these three adoption styles:
Innovators: Are often the first to try out new ideas. They are adventurous and are not afraid to take risks, even with potential uncertainty.
Majority: Are deliberate as they take time to figure out if they want to try a new idea. They typically like to see other people try an idea before they dive in. They are of the philosophy that it is better to change as a group.
Late Adopters: Are often skeptical of new ideas and like to maintain the status quo. They like to wait for the majority group to adopt a new idea before taking it on themselves. In some cases, they may even require an organization-wide mandate to make the change.
Now that you have figured out the level of readiness of your school community (for this idea), it is time to lay out which strategies you want to use. The Tool provides a detailed list, based on level of readiness, of strategies that you can use.
Here are some sample strategies to use based on your school community’s adoption type.
Innovators:
Majority:
Late Adopter:
Accompanying all of the strategies are helpful school-specific resources to help you to move the new idea forward, such as:
Whether you are a teacher, support staff, administrator, parent, wellness champion, or anyone else interested in encouraging healthy school community development, the steps in the Idea Readiness Tool will support you in implementing your new idea. Find out how our partners at ASEBP use the Idea Readiness Tool with school districts in Alberta in the sidebar “From Idea to Action.”
How does the Idea Readiness Tool stand up to application in the real-world of education? The workplace wellness liaisons at the Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan (ASEBP) shared how they incorporate the Idea Readiness Tool into their work with school districts.
ASEBP’s top three reasons why the Idea Readiness Tool is worthwhile:
When we are excited about an idea we can quickly move from idea to action without stopping to assess how the readiness of others should impact our process to move an idea forward. Assessing readiness should happen before you start action planning and inform your action planning.
When we all use the same terminology and process, we can have a mutual understanding that will lead to success.
It is easy to lose motivation when we pitch an idea and it falls flat. The Tool has empowered wellness champions to learn that they could have pitched the idea in a way that aligned with their colleagues’ readiness to more effectively gain buy-in.
While working with a school district wanting to advance their mental health strategy, ASEBP workplace wellness liaisons facilitated a workshop to guide the district wellness committee through the Idea Readiness Tool in order to explore the idea of offering a training program to increase staff competence around mental health.
The committee completed the Tool’s checklist in two ways – once as if the committee itself was the school community they were bringing this idea back to, and again with the actual school community in mind. This exercise showed the committee that they were Innovators, while their school communities were a mix of Majority and Late Adopters. This was an “ah-ha” moment as they realized in the past, they had moved into action too quickly. With this realization and rise in motivation, the committee then began to explore the strategies outlined in the Tool to support working with a mix of the Majority and Late Adopters. They landed on providing evidence for all those impacted and connecting with leaders throughout the school district to provide more information, before moving forward with the training.
The committee attributed their success in implementing this idea to using the Idea Readiness Tool, developing a common language around readiness and being more deliberate in planning how to communicate their idea. Now, The Idea Readiness Tool has become part of their process from generating ideas to moving them into action.
The Idea Readiness Tool has proven to be a valuable tool to support the challenging yet important task of promoting healthy workplace environments within K-12 education.
The full Idea Readiness Tool is available in PDF format and online at www.ideareadinesstool.com. The website includes videos to explain what the Tool is and how it can be applied; the checklist; and the comprehensive list of strategies and resources. Or visit The Sandbox to spark new ideas and connect with other wellness champs!
Photo: iStock and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
Transforming Pedagogies Learn – Design – Innovate
Since the late 20th century, new understandings of learning have continued to emerge. These new understandings arise from the fields of neurology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and ecology. It is imperative that those responsible for optimum learning in a system understand the transformations to pedagogies that support and promote learning throughout the system. Partner Research Schools and Galileo Educational Network collaborate to bring this event alive.
A recent CBC-TV News series (October 24-25) featured hair-raising stories of violence, physical, psychological and sexual, inflicted on students in today’s schools (CBC Marketplace 2019). All of this came hard on the heels of the horrendous stabbing death of 14-year-old Devan Bracci-Selvey in front of Hamilton’s Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School.
Raising our consciousness about the dangers students face is much easier than grappling with why Canadian schools are falling short in addressing the chronic problem of violence, bullying, and sexual harassment. Twelve years after the groundbreaking January 2008 Toronto District School Board panel report1, The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety, it is hard to see much progress in ensuring student safety in schools.
School authorities from province-to-province, we learned, collect incident reports on student violence in vastly different ways, producing a crazy-quilt patchwork of data with far too many zero reports. Only two of the provinces, Ontario and Nova Scotia, require schools to share their school violence statistics with their education ministries. In the case of Ontario, that data was found to be incomplete and inaccurate. Given the paucity of reliable statistics, it was next-to-impossible to analyze this disturbing social trend in our schools.
To get to the bottom of the problem, CBC’s Marketplace commissioned a survey of 4,000 young people, ages 14 to 212, in September of this year, Nationwide, the results were startling: Two out of five (41 per cent) of boys reported being physically assaulted in high school; one in four girls (26 per cent) of girls experienced unwanted sexual contact at school; and one in four students first experienced sexual harassment or assault before Grade 7 in elementary grades.
Five key factors can be identified, based upon the CBC investigation and credible research on violence in schools.
Much of the school violence experienced by students is treated as isolated incidents or events where it requires time-consuming investigation to assign blame or responsibility. In the absence of required reporting, it goes unacknowledged and, all too often, swept under the rug.3, 4
Reporting of student violence incidents is expected or required, but not deemed a priority, unless or until a publicized incident hits the media and arouses parental unrest. School-by-school reports may be filed, as in Ontario, but oversight is weak or non-existent and zero reports are not questioned, even when it involved incidents featured in local media reports.5
School reports generated by principals and administrators normally under-report the actual school violence incidents, as revealed when compared with student-reported data. In American states, where student violence reporting is more established, data generated from the victims is incorporated into the official statistics.6
School administrators are protective of a school’s reputation and reluctant to report higher counts which might result in being labelled a “dangerous school” if their numbers are high or rising from year-to-year.7, 8
Educational oversight by elected school boards and district educational councils is woefully inadequate. In Manitoba, the provincial school boards association president Alan Campbell claims that maintaining “a safe learning environment” is the “no. 1 priority,” while public disclosure of data is non-existent and levels of sexual harassment and hateful name-calling are higher than any other province in Canada.9 Why elected boards do not insist upon full public disclosure is hard to fathom, especially when it’s their responsibility to identify critical needs and allocate district resources.
Much can be learned from American school research and critical analyses of Ontario’s violent statistics regulation implementation over the past eight years. UCLA Professor Ron Avi Astor has published more than 200 academic studies on violent behaviour in schools. In the CBC-TV News investigation, he confirmed that Canada has no real system at all for collecting data10, exemplified by uneven provincial policies, lack of consistent definitions for offenses, varying collection systems, and inaccurate/incomplete statistics.
One of Canada’s leading experts on children’s mental health and violence prevention, University of Ottawa Education professor Tracy Vaillancourt points out that weaknesses in violent-incident and cyberbullying reporting undermine the effectiveness of school safety and prevention programs.11, 12 Acknowledging and measuring the problem is a critical first step in combatting bullying, cyberbullying and sexual harassment in schools.
Ontario deserves credit for requiring mandatory reporting, but the system does not stand up to close scrutiny. Most recent data documented 2,124 violent incidents in 2018-19, averaging more than 10 incidents province-wide each day.13 It simply does not stack up because 18 of Ontario’s 76 school boards have reported zero incidents for several years, eight show radical variations from year to year, and four boards are in non-compliance having failed to file reports for some years. While the CBC survey documented serious levels of violent incidents, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of Ontario schools reported zero incidents over the previous year.
Negligence in reporting and underreporting simply compound the problem. When the violence statistics go unreported or are full of zeros, it becomes guesswork in allocating resources, not just funds but counsellors, psychologists, and social workers to rectify school problems with student behaviour.
Endnotes
1 Julian Falconer, Peggy Edwards and Linda MacKinnon (2008). The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety. Panel Report to Toronto District School Board. Toronto: Toronto District School Board, 4 January 2008. https://www.falconers.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Safety-Vol.-1.pdf
2 CBC News Marketplace (2019). School Violence, 24-25 October 2019. David Common, Anu Singh and Caitlin Taylor, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/school-violence-marketplace-1.5224865 and https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-school-violence-sexual-violence-1.5329520
3 Julian Falconer, Peggy Edwards and Linda MacKinnon (2008). The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety. Panel Report to Toronto District School Board. Toronto: Toronto District School Board, 4 January 2008. https://www.falconers.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Safety-Vol.-1.pdf
4 Shawn Jeffords (2015). Ontario’s school violence statistics criticized for inaccuracy. Toronto Sun, 31 January 2015.
5 CBC News Marketplace (2019). School Violence, 24-25 October 2019. David Common, Anu Singh and Caitlin Taylor, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/school-violence-marketplace-1.5224865 and https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-school-violence-sexual-violence-1.5329520
6 Ron Avi Astor, Nancy Guerra and Richard Van Acker (2010). How can we improve school safety research? Educational Researcher, Vol. 39, No. 1, 69-78.
7 ibid
8 Valerie Ouellet and Caitlin Taylor (2019). Why so much student violence still goes unreported. CBC News, 24 October 2014.
9 Jacques Marcoux (2019). Student-on-student sexual violence highest in Prairies, CB national survey finds. CBC News, 24 October 2019.
10 Valerie Ouellet and Caitlin Taylor (2019). Why so much student violence still goes unreported. CBC News, 24 October 2014.
11 Tracy Vaillancourt, Robert Faris and Faye Mishra (2016). Cyberbullying in Children and Youth: Implications for Health and Clinical Practice. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry (19 December 2016), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0706743716684791
12 CBC News Marketplace (2019). School Violence, 24-25 October 2019. David Common, Anu Singh and Caitlin Taylor, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/school-violence-marketplace-1.5224865 and https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-school-violence-sexual-violence-1.5329520
13 Valerie Ouellet and Caitlin Taylor (2019). Why so much student violence still goes unreported. CBC News, 24 October 2014.