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• The Idea Readiness Tool

  December 4, 2019 9:14 PM Comments Off on The Idea Readiness Tool

  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.

  A new idea might be a new process, practice, initiative or policy – as long as it is new to your group. Some examples of ideas that you could try within your school community to promote workplace wellness include:

  At the district level:

  • create a district workplace wellness committee
  • recruit and support wellness champions to plan collaborative learning events
  • implement a district-wide policy to support employee well-being
  • create a nutrition policy for food and drink options provided during meetings and staff events.

  At the school level:

  • set up a collaboration area to promote social connection
  • start an after-work yoga class
  • promote active transportation by creating a bike storage area
  • arrange walking meetings for staff to encourage physical activity.

  The Idea Readiness Tool works with any idea, no matter how big or small.

  

  How and why did we develop the Idea Readiness Tool?

  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.

  

  So what is the Idea Readiness Tool and how can it help me?

  The Tool involves three simple steps for you to follow.

  1. Complete a quick 10-question checklist.

  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.

  2. Identify strategies to apply in your school community.

  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:

  • Present the idea in a way that sparks the school community’s innovative spirit.
  • Identify a wellness champion in the school community to help carry the idea forward.

  Majority:

  • Emphasize that other schools, similar to theirs, are adopting the idea (specific examples are helpful too).
  • Look for incentives to help the school community adopt the new idea, such as awards and funding.

  Late Adopter:

  • Find evidence that shows the positive outcomes the idea can have for a school community.
  • Build relationships with school administrators to gain support for your idea.

  3. Use the resources to help carry out the strategies.

  Accompanying all of the strategies are helpful school-specific resources to help you to move the new idea forward, such as:

  • Alberta Health Services’ guide Healthy Eating in Schools: Policy recommendations
  • Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan’s blog The Sandbox: Your space for healthy school recommendations
  • Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health’s Positive Mental Health Toolkit.

  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.”

  What should I keep in mind when using the Idea Readiness Tool?

  • There is not a good or bad adopter type. Every adopter type has its own strengths and weaknesses.
  • Your school community may be at a different level of readiness for each new idea. It is important to come back to the checklist for each new idea, and identify new strategies and resources to support that idea.
  • A new idea can be anything (e.g. a process, practice, policy or initiative) as long as it is considered new by the group thinking about its adoption.
  • The checklist can be completed individually or as a group.

  From Idea to Action: Bringing the Idea Readiness Tool to life

  by Patricia Tallon

  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:

  1. Moving from Why to How

  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.

  2. Common Language

  When we all use the same terminology and process, we can have a mutual understanding that will lead to success.

  3. Staying Motivated

  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.

  The Tool in Action

  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.

   

   

  Find out more

  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

• Nunavik’s Compassionate Schools

  9:09 PM Comments Off on Nunavik’s Compassionate Schools

  Nunavik’s Kativik Ilisarniliriniq school board launched the Compassionate Schools initiative to better support its students, who experience disparities in health and well-being. Elements of the program include training in understanding trauma, Restorative Practice, and a universal system of Positive Behaviour Interventions and Support (PBIS).

  Kativik Ilisarniliriniq is a school board located in Nunavik, a remote region in northern Quebec. Inuit, who have inhabited the region for thousands of years, live in 14 small fly-in villages spaced along the Hudson and Ungava coasts.

  The project aims at facilitating the social, emotional and academic success of students, while simultaneously educating teachers and staff on the impacts of trauma on the brain; it also seeks to provide maximum support to teachers.

  The region’s legacy of colonization includes residential schools, forced relocations to the high Arctic, sled dog slaughters and the Sixties Scoop,¹ yet it suffers from an extreme paucity of resources to help people heal from the impacts of intergenerational trauma. As a result, the current generation of children experiences disparities in health and well-being.

  Members of the region’s school board, Kativik Ilisarniliriniq (KI), wanted to find a solution to the resulting challenges they saw students facing. Inspired by schools in Washington that had dealt with similar challenges, KI launched Compassionate Schools as a pilot project in three of its 17 schools in 2012.

  

  The project aims at facilitating the social, emotional and academic success of students, while simultaneously educating teachers and staff on the impacts of trauma on the brain; it also seeks to provide maximum support to teachers. Each school adapts the approach to its home community so as to establish a positive, safe, consistent and predictable framework that is culturally relevant. Schools receive training as well as individual support from a dedicated coach on staff. A travelling regional pedagogical counsellor also visits regularly to encourage reflective practices and build skills in improving class climate, student engagement, and support for students with challenging behaviours.

  The progressive implementation of the Compassionate Schools framework reached an important milestone in 2017. That year, all 17 schools had received training on teaching practices that take into account the trauma that may affect some students, and were introduced to the design of a universal system of Positive Behaviour Interventions and Support (PBIS), which creates a consistent intervention approach throughout the entire school. All schools additionally received training in Restorative Practices, an approach that helps facilitate relationships and trust. Schools use these as a foundation for responding to wrongdoing in a way that promotes community outreach, empathy and accountability.

  The foundation of PBIS is universal prevention for all students and staff. Examples include teaching behavioural expectations school-wide as well as adopting school-wide approaches to recognizing positive behaviours. Teachers play a major role at this tier as they build relationships with students that can break down the self-doubt, hopelessness, fear, and barriers against trust that can plague students who have experienced trauma. By having clear, consistently taught expectations with frequent feedback, teaching students self-regulation skills, providing calm areas, and striving to identify and meet the needs behind students’ behaviours, teachers and other staff are able to create environments that are psychologically safe for students; as a result, they can feel confident to take the risks necessary to grow and succeed.

  Early interventions are introduced for at-risk students who do not respond to the universal prevention. “Check-in Check-out” is one such intervention that involves pairing students with a trusted mentor who provides daily encouragement and support. Goals are set using a progress report with specific co-constructed objectives for which the student receives feedback throughout the day from each teacher. To date, school teams from 15 of our schools have received training on team processes and interventions for at-risk students.

  While previously Compassionate Schools Services was a stand-alone project, it has recently merged with Complementary Services. This department is responsible for special education, student counseling and psychological services, as well as a wide variety of other support services. The new department, Complementary and Compassionate Services, led by Tunu Napartuk, will be well positioned to ensure a continuum of academic, mental health and special education services at all levels of prevention and intervention, using a common framework.

  With the integration of the Compassionate Schools approach into the delivery of special education and psychological services to students, we are proud to see the school board at the forefront of some of the best practices identified by recent Canadian and international research.

  

  Inside the Harmony Room

  By Jenny McManus

  The beat of the drum brings the group together around the carpet. We celebrate the morning improvising an ayaya song to notice the subtle changes in nature – like the sun shining brighter through our window – to recognize students’ effort and achievement, and to strengthen their memory recall. Beaming with pride, the students clap out the number of stars they earned that morning as tokens for following expectations based on our school values of respect (susutsaniq), unity (tatiqatigiiniq), harmony (saimautiniq), and vision (tukimuatsianiq).

  Every morning, we remind ourselves to listen openly, stick together, be peaceful, and dream big with posters on the wall that we made together, hand gestures that silently redirect, and smaller cards to flip to indicate unexpected behaviour. Each student has a colour on the wall for displaying their names, stars and evidence of learning. In the Saimautivik, or Harmony Room, they find a sense of belonging that nurtures friendships, empathy, and growth.

  

  The Saimautivik is a social and emotional learning space at Pitakallak School in Kuujjuaq. Spearheaded by Jenny McManus, the Compassionate School teacher, it provides a home base for a nurture group, social skills groups, and extracurricular activities. Nurture groups are inclusive interventions for students that the Boxall profile (an online assessment tool) identifies as having delays in social, emotional, or behavioural development and who are struggling to flourish in the regular classroom environment. The Saimautivik brings together teachers and support staff to provide evidence-based practices to support our students in need and experiment with new directions in learning.

  As a traditional Inuit value, harmony brings peace between people, agreement between ideas, and understanding in place of conflict. A classroom can be warm and inviting, with comfortable spaces for gathering and calming down, tables for sharing meals or collaborative projects, and nooks for using hands-on materials. The Saimautivik’s bright colours invite play and creativity, yet its organization supports the daily routines and serious, focused study.

  Using tools that Compassionate Schools and Complementary Services promote the targeted interventions are supporting growth and change on a school-wide level.

  Through the security of routine and predictability, caring adults who model positive relationships, clearly and mutually defined expectations, food sharing, opportunities for hands-on and paper-based numeracy and literacy, and engaging activities that are developmentally appropriate, the students make great gains in their development in a short period of time. Using tools that Compassionate Schools and Complementary Services promote, such as the Zones of Regulation and other trauma-informed approaches, the targeted interventions are supporting growth and change on a school-wide level.

  Teachers, families, and the students themselves share stories of increased confidence, wider social circles, and greater academic achievement. Since the introduction of the intervention halfway through this school year, behavioural referrals have been reduced by half.

  Rejected furniture and random supplies used to accumulate in this unused classroom; students would hide there when escaping their responsibilities. Now a place for healing and learning, it challenges the traditional concept of a classroom and the role of a teacher.

   

  Find out more

  Join our team! Visit www.kativik.qc.ca to view current job openings!

   

  photo: Jenny McManus

  First published in Education Canada, December 2019

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  Notes

  1 The “Sixties Scoop” refers to the large-scale removal or “scooping” of Indigenous children from their homes, communities and families of birth. This practice took place during the late 1950s until the early 1980s and it has affected Inuit communities. The physical and emotional separation from their birth families also left many adoptees with a sense of lost cultural identity, which continues to affect adults and Indigenous communities to this day.

• Better Together

  9:04 PM Comments Off on Better Together

  With wellness becoming so mainstream and direct links connecting employee wellness to productivity, why are so many educators experiencing chronic fatigue, stress-related illnesses, feeling overwhelmed or unwell – or even leaving the profession? Roth argues that we cannot expect teachers to implement health and wellness programs without support: everyone, at all levels in the education sector needs to buy in.

  Every time I walk into a classroom, I find myself in absolute awe of the teacher. I’m amazed at how they accomplish their long list of daily tasks, manage 25-30 students, deal with student emotions and behaviours, and complete the math lesson they planned the night before. Educators today are faced with ever-expanding To-Do lists and frequently the expectation that they do more with fewer resources. No longer are teachers “just” responsible for instructing academic content. Educators are now required to teach emotional regulation and social skills, while managing the diverse learning needs in classrooms that exceed the optimal number for student achievement of 18 students per teacher. They also work with students from incredibly diverse backgrounds and those with challenges related to socio-economic status, physical challenges and mental health issues.

  I can’t help but wonder: Who’s taking care of educators who do so much for others every day? Whose responsibility is it to care for teachers, nurture healthy schools and classrooms and ensure that everyone in the education sector is supported in their health and wellness endeavours?

  Like most rewarding challenges in life, I would say it takes a village.

  The case for wellness

  Workplace wellness has been part of the daily vernacular in every career sector for quite some time. Extensive research on employee health and wellness clearly demonstrates that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. And honestly, it seems like a fairly simple premise. If we are feeling good and taking care of our own needs, then we’ll be able to provide a quality product or service. With wellness becoming so mainstream and direct links connecting employee wellness to productivity, why are so many educators experiencing chronic fatigue, stress-related illnesses, or lack of job satisfaction? Why are so many feeling overwhelmed or unwell?¹ Why are many leaving the profession in search of new careers? It’s easy to find ideas on self-care in this information age, so why aren’t teachers doing a better job of wellness?

  We simply cannot expect teachers to implement health and wellness programs without support. When I work with teachers, they easily list what to do in the classroom to meet the needs of their students, but figuring out what they need for their personal well-being is not as simple. Upon asking a teacher what she did for her own self-care routine, she became tearful on the realization that she’d been focused on the needs of others and had completely lost sight of what she needed. Without encouragement and permission to put personal wellness on the agenda, many teachers find themselves in the same situation.

  This is why we need a big-picture team approach to teacher wellness. Many of the issues that create stress in the workplace are systemic challenges that educators have very little control over. In order for wellness initiatives to take root and grow, everyone, at all levels in the education sector, needs to buy in.

  In business sectors, health and wellness programs have been in place for several years and companies such as Google and Delta Hotels know that investing in these initiatives benefits the bottom line with increased productivity, lower absenteeism, improved employee satisfaction and reduced employee benefit costs. In education, there are unique challenges impacting wellness initiatives. Increasing workloads, funding limitations, insufficient support personnel, population and demographic diversity of school communities, rigid work hours, reduced autonomy, difficulty seeing improvement in one’s teaching abilities and increased pressure to demonstrate improved outcomes are factors leading to burnout.

  The most important component for supporting teacher wellness is funding – and not just throwing money into an account labelled “Teacher Wellness” but taking a critical look at class size and composition, support for students with special needs, and ensuring we are implementing best-practice policies at every available opportunity. Best practice policies allow teachers to build a classroom community where students grow, thrive, and learn. Budgets are always tight, but the excuse that there isn’t enough money is hard to justify when extensive research shows that the return on investment can be significant. A 2010 review published by the Harvard Business Review stated that well-run comprehensive wellness programs could offer up to a 6 to 1 return on investment.² This may seem too good to be true – but even more conservative data illustrates a returned 3.80 dollars in health care savings for every dollar invested.³

  

  Cost reduction is only one of the benefits achieved by implementing wellness initiatives in school divisions. You can measure absenteeism due to stress leaves and sick days, but there are many other factors that are harder to measure. What are the effects of increased stability in the classroom, which would have a positive impact on individual student mental health and learning? Encouraging and supporting mindfulness strategies reduces stress and improves prosocial behaviours, which translates into less time dealing with behaviour management and increased time on instructional learning. In a data-driven world, measuring these outcomes can be challenging, but critical to supporting health initiatives.

  Although Occupational Health and Safety measures have historically focused on physical injuries, psychological harm related to the job are included in some provincial and territorial Occupational Health and Safety Acts, which places responsibility on employers to take action to support their employees’ mental health and well-being. Mental health initiatives are in the early stages of development in many divisions, and unfortunately there continue to be individuals at all levels of management who continue to view mental health and wellness programs as “fluff.”

  Levels of leadership

  Allocating funds and prioritizing employee wellness programs are first steps, but if we truly want wellness initiatives to take hold, involvement at all levels of a school division is critical. A culture of wellness from the top leaders throughout all levels of employees is necessary to promote engagement and commitment. This requires a significant cultural shift, where an organization begins to emphasize employee well-being not just as a standalone program, but in all policies, programs, procedures, and behaviours. I was pleased, for example, to see more focus on the Mental Health Matters campaign and the hiring of a Wellness Consultant by my school division this year, demonstrating a willingness to support their employees’ well-being.

  After years of working with many administrative and support teams, I’m often able to tell quite quickly if leaders place emphasis on their own personal wellness and that of their staff. How many principals send out emails to their staff after 6 p.m. at night or on weekends? This one small act sets the expectation that work is always on. Buy-in by the senior leaders is essential. When senior leadership shows that wellness is a priority, they become role models for work-life balance, resulting in more successful wellness programming.⁴

  School administrators, principals and vice principals play a critical role in creating a culture of wellness. They set the tone for the school community and by placing an emphasis on teacher wellness, and they can create opportunities for daily wellness to occur. This can happen by modeling a good work-life balance, setting a wellness goal for the school, encouraging time boundaries for work activities, building wellness strategies into the day-to-day schedules of the school, and collaborating with their staff members to find out what people are needing. A whole-school mindfulness five-minute session each day, walking programs over the lunch hour, and encouragement to have a life outside of work provide options to infuse wellness into the workday.

  There is a momentum or trickle-down effect of wellness. When teachers are focused on wellness and supported by funders, employers, administrators and their colleagues, health and wellness spreads to the classroom. Students learn to embrace wellness strategies and to integrate personal wellness earlier in their lives.

  Personal responsibility: this is our life

  The great Canadian poet and musician Gord Downie wrote “No dress rehearsal, this is our life.” Personal wellness comes from within and we have an individual responsibility to prioritize our own health and well-being. While it’s true that there need to be systemic changes, continuing to point blame at others or the system places us in the role of victim. In reality, you are the CEO of your life. Start by fostering self-awareness of what nourishes you physically and emotionally so you can ensure those activities make it to the top of your To-Do list. Understand Us, a mental health initiative and non-profit organization, created the “Share your Recipe” campaign to encourage individuals to talk openly about their “ingredients” for mental health.⁵ I like the analogy of creating your own personalized recipe for mental and physical wellness. Think about what might work for you and commit to pursuing those things that bring you nourishment. Consider working with other professionals such as physicians, therapists, and counsellors for additional support. Look to your professional associations and colleagues for ideas. The resources are out there, but the responsibility falls to each of us to prioritize our well-being and get what we need to feel better.

  

  Better together

  If we want healthy, happy, and productive teachers who are able to focus on and support the learning needs of their students, make positive gains in literacy, improve on-time graduation rates, and create safe schools and innovative classrooms, we need to work together to mitigate the challenges. It’s a process that requires funding, continuous work and commitment by government, school boards, school divisions, school administrators and teachers.

  It’s time for that cultural shift to happen. Embracing wellness and focusing on mental health for teachers will benefit everyone. Let’s work together to give our teachers and our students the support they need for a life full of learning and the pursuit of happiness.

   

  Photo: iStock and Adobe Stock

  First published in Education Canada, December 2019

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  1 Bernie Froese-Germain, Work-Life Balance and the Canadian Teaching Profession (Canadian Teachers Federation: July, 2014).

  2 Leonard L. Berry, Ann M. Mirabito, and William B. Baun, “What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs,” Harvard Business Review 88, no. 12 (2010): 104-112.

  3 Soeren Mattke, H. H. Liu, J. P. Caloyeras, et al., Workplace Wellness Programs Study: Final report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2013).www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR254.html

  4 Berry, Mirabito, and Baun, “What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs,” 106.

  5 “Share your Recipe,” Understandus.ca. https://understandus.ca/uu-initiatives/syr

• Teaching and Learning While Grieving: Lifting the curtain on grief to better support educators and students experiencing loss

  November 27, 2019 3:15 PM Comments Off on Teaching and Learning While Grieving: Lifting the curtain on grief to better support educators and students experiencing loss

  Building strong relationships with students is a necessary part of being a good teacher, yet having the strength to be vulnerable and authentic in these teacher-student relationships often requires that educators repress their true emotions — like anger, fatigue, or frustration — in favour of more “workplace appropriate” emotions. When we think about an emotion as complex as grief, which is rarely discussed in schools, it can be easy to understand why it can be so burdening for teachers to constantly keep a smile on while masking how they truly feel. 

  

  Nine months ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Because she was generally healthy and active, I was naively convinced that she would live to see her 100th birthday. Even as my mother’s health deteriorated and my family duties piled up, I continued teaching at universities and middle schools all while continuing forth presenting my research on ‘emotional labor’ at various conferences. 

  I thought I had been doing just fine at handling all of the stress — whether that be from accompanying my mom to radiation treatment appointments and emergency trips to the hospital, or the overall experience of witnessing my mom gradually lose her independence. Then, one day, while teaching a lesson on poetry during one of my summer school classes, my eyes had unexpectedly filled with tears as I presented a metaphor from the song “The Bridge” by Chris de Burgh. 

  

  To my horror, I had broken a “workplace appropriate” rule as I silently wept while the song played. Fortunately, the song was over four minutes long, and I could use my long hair to shield my face while I tried to wipe away my tears without anyone noticing. By the time the song had ended, I was able to compose myself and make a silly joke about sad love songs while carrying forward with my discussion on poetry.

  My students were clearly uncomfortable during what must have been an awkward moment seeing their teacher cry. They ignored my outburst, kept their heads down, and carried on jotting down notes. I had told them earlier in the week about my mother’s cancer, yet the incident was never discussed and we continued with the lesson like nothing had happened. 

  Why there’s an emotional silence around grief in the classroom

  ‘Grief’ is described in the 2012 Encyclopedia of Human Behavior as the emotional response to bereavement — the loss of a significant person. The process of grieving is often described as a series of stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — as first defined by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969. More recently, grief has been described as being a more complex and nuanced response to loss, rather than merely moving through a series of stages.

  

  The experience of grief can result in many physical and psychological symptoms including sleep deprivation, appetite changes, changes in energy levels, physical pain or discomfort, using prescription or other drugs, and increased risk of illness. While most grieving people experience these to varying degrees, symptoms will ease over time. Nevertheless, depending on the suddenness or severity of the loss, these symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. 

  Grief is a taboo subject in western schools that’s rarely discussed openly between educators and students. Grieving is very common in childhood, where it’s been estimated that before the age of sixteen, 1 in 20 students in the United States will experience the loss of a parent. 

  

  Discussion on how to help students who are grieving is currently not a priority in pre-service teacher education programs or within school curricula. Classroom lessons about death, dying, grief, and grieving remain a gap in teaching and learning. This silence might stem from a fear of death and dying, or concern that talking about these subjects could trigger unmanageable emotional outbursts from students or staff. Unfortunately, grief continues to be perceived as a private and individual process that doesn’t require school-wide intervention. 

  How to work towards unsilencing grief in the classroom

  There are key ways to surface discussions on supporting children, youth, and adults with the common human experience of grief. 

  Support for students 

  Given the probability that one or more students in every classroom is experiencing grief, educators should become more aware of the psychological and physical symptoms that are associated with it. Grieving children and youth can display a variety of behaviours including inattention, self-blame, clinginess to parents or staff, and overreaction or underreaction to emotional triggers, the latter of which could be misdiagnosed as learning problems. Staff in schools should be made aware of a student who has had a significant loss in their life so that they can be better prepared to assist and support them appropriately. Resources such as After a Loved One Dies by the New York Foundation provide caregivers with suggestions on how to support children who are experiencing the loss of someone who has passed away.  

  Additionally, educators should be aware that this loss of a friend or loved one can have a devastating impact on the student’s home life. 

  

  The student is likely surrounded by grieving adults who may be unable to fully support them. Daily mundane tasks, such as getting ready for school, catching the school bus on time, completing homework assignments, and making healthy lunches, can fall by the wayside due to this disruption in the student’s primary care network. Furthermore, the child or youth may not be getting the emotional support that they need and may be afraid to upset the adults around them by speaking of their own distress. 

  

  Support for colleagues

  As I’ve gone about presenting my research on emotional labor, I’ve heard one dominant comment from educators: “There’s no crying in teaching!” As class sizes become larger and time is spread thinner for teachers, school leaders, educational assistants, and psychologists across more and more students, even less time is available during the school day for grieving adults to express their emotions in their everyday work. 

  Most adults describe grief as something that they eventually come to tolerate, but they nonetheless carry the memory of their loss with them in their daily work. For educators who have experienced loss, often the unspoken rule is that they should just “get on with it” once the immediate crisis of death has passed. Grieving educators are not given the time, space, or relational support that they need during their workday to be the caring, calm adults that students need in the classroom.

  Instead of seeking the end of grief, supportive adults can help fellow colleagues work through it by understanding and adjusting to their expression of the physical and psychological symptoms of grief. Most adults have different ways of expressing their emotions and may do so through physical exercise, writing, speaking, or singing loudly in their car. Rather than moving straight to the common advice of “You need to talk to someone!”, ask “What do you need right now to release how you’re feeling?” or “Do you have the time, space, or relational support that you need to deal with your grief?”

  

  The months-long process of witnessing my mother’s life drain away has opened my eyes to the need for educators to both give and be given space to have conversations about grief in schools. Even as a 47-year old woman, I have felt unprepared to cope with the heavy sadness and broken heart generated by losing my mother, even as I feel gratitude for her long life and legacy of love and support. Schools are a community of support for children, youth, and adults who have lost a significant person in their life. As such, educators have a responsibility to lift the curtain on grief and grieving in the classroom.

  References and Additional Information

  Kennedy, C., Keeffe, M., Gardner, F., & Farrelly, C. (2017). Making death, compassion and partnership ‘part of life’ in school communities. Pastoral Care in Education, 35(2), 111-123.

  Hochschild, A. (2012). The managed heart commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Kendrick, Astrid Helene. (2018). Inspiring Change: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology Exploring the Lived Experience with Emotional Labor by Female Health Champions Implementing Comprehensive School Health Reforms. Werklund School of Education.

  Kendrick, A. (2018). Let go of toxic workplace ’emotional labour’ in 2019. The Canadian Press, p. The Canadian Press, Dec 20, 2018.

  Kennedy, C., Keeffe, M., Gardner, F., & Farrelly, C. (2017). Making death, compassion and partnership ‘part of life’ in school communities. Pastoral Care in Education, 35(2), 111-123.

  Schonfeld D.J. & Demaria T. (2016) Supporting the Grieving Child and Family. Pediatrics 138(3). AAP committee on psychosocial aspects of child and family health, disaster preparedness advisory council.

  Strobe, M. & Strobe, W. (2012). Grief and Bereavement. Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/books/encyclopedia-of-human-behavior/ramachandran/978-0-12-375000-6

   

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• Leading despite your job title

  10:22 AM Comments Off on Leading despite your job title

  If you had to describe the culture of your school, what would you say? If the students, parents, or staff in your school community were asked to describe your school’s culture, what would THEY say? And what’s the impact of this culture on the well-being of your staff?

  The term “school culture” refers to our beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and ways of doing things, including the quality of the relationships that are developed between colleagues and with students. Culture is often based on both written rules (i.e. a code of conduct) and unwritten rules (i.e. how staff believe they should act and behave, or what behaviour they think is expected of them).

  

  Whether we like it or not, even if our intentions don’t change as we transition towards a leadership role within a school, our job title often leads us to become blocked off from certain channels of information that we may have previously had access to.

  Ed Catmull, author of the book Creativity Inc., explains it like this: “As my position changed, people became more careful how they spoke and acted in my presence. I don’t think my actions changed in a way that prompted this; my position did. And what this meant was that things I’d once been privy to became increasingly unavailable to me.”

  Ed Catmull goes on to say that many new leaders often make the mistake of assuming that their access to these information channels hasn’t changed. He calls this phenomenon “The Hidden”: a blind spot that escapes our field of perception. Ed’s words remind me of the importance of being continually and intentionally looking for these so-called “blind spots.”

  Think about it – what are the implications for school culture and staff well-being if you aren’t aware of your team’s challenges, interpersonal strains, and how your team is coping with work demands? In my estimation, the implications would likely be disastrous. As school leaders, we are stewards of culture and well-being, and so it’s up to us to raise the atmosphere and lead the change that we’d like to see. But how do we stay connected to the “true pulse” of our school culture? In other words, how do we stay constantly in the know about how staff are truly feeling in the workplace, despite our job title?

  

  As a principal myself, I’ve been practicing two winning approaches to ensure that I’m in the loop with how staff are actually living out the culture that we seek to build, while opening up channels of information and communication. The first approach targets staff personal growth, while the second approach targets staff collective development and team spirit.

  Approach #1: Monthly individual meetings

  During the school year, I invite each of my staff to optional monthly coaching meetings, which usually take around 15-to-30 minutes. Meeting dates are selected in advance and marked down in our calendars. In short, we make these meetings a priority.

  During these meetings, we set goals and discuss pedagogy or any other subject that has an impact on their personal and professional growth. In short, these conversations allow us to get to know each other better.

  

  Above all, these meetings provide me with vital information that allows me to help maintain the well-being of my staff members, while allowing me to know where they’re at in terms of classroom pedagogy or other projects they’re undertaking throughout the school year.

  Approach #2: Scrum-style team meetings

  Instead of holding traditional monthly staff meetings, we organize “Scrum” meetings every two weeks. The goals of these meetings include sharing successful practices, keeping informed, promoting peer support, building team spirit, and ensuring positive mental health.

  

  Here are five key elements of our Scrum-style team meetings:

  1. Members must stand during the meeting

  2. Each person is invited to answer three questions:

  • What’s something new that I did, or something that worked well, that I could share with the team?
  • What am I going to do that could be helpful to the team?
  • What do I need?

  3. Each person has up to three minutes to share their thoughts

  4. A “Scrum Master” is designated to lead the meeting

  5. A timekeeper is designated to ensure each person gets their three minutes to share.

  These meetings not only allow us to learn about what each person does in their respective roles, but also grants us the opportunity to celebrate successes, offer support, ask questions, get to know each other, and laugh together. At the end of each meeting, people often stay behind to continue on the conversation, and leave with a smile on their face including a sense of satisfaction and pride in knowing that they have an important place on our team. It’s a really fantastic experience!

  

  Maintaining a culture of staff well-being starts with you.

  We all have a responsibility in helping maintain a positive school culture. But as in all workplaces, there are times when things go less-than-well and negativity can infiltrate itself into our culture.

  How do you respond in these less-than-well situations?

  A. Do you become easily bogged down with the negative? Is your first reaction to complain or to judge, or to react strongly on your emotions?

  OR

  B. Are you quick to stomp down the negative? Do you demonstrate empathy by offering help or solutions instead of judgment? Do you take the time to listen carefully so as to truly understand the situation, rather than merely provide answers?

  Let’s take a few moments to think about this – do you find yourself mostly acting like A or like B? When faced with change or challenge, what position do you adopt – one that is more creative or one that is reactive?

  Personally, I always strive to adopt a creative position when faced with challenges. When I allow my growth mentality to take the lead, this gives way to positivity and optimism, which in turn feeds my creativity and allows me to arrive at new solutions. Choosing to be creative has an invaluable and positive impact on well-being, and leads to increased confidence, hope, and energy – all of which keep our “bucket full.”

  

  Building and maintaining a positive school culture starts with you, the school leader. Each person has the power to choose how they’ll react in a given situation. This reaction has an incredible influence on the overall school atmosphere, including the well-being of yourself and of those around you. That’s why it’s so important to never lose sight of the influence we have as leaders each and every day through the words we speak and the actions we undertake.

   

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• Building a Positive Staff Culture

  8:22 AM Comments Off on Building a Positive Staff Culture

  

  A positive school culture makes work and school fun, supportive, and purposeful. But how do you get there? This principal shares his learning about building school culture that is strengths-based, collaborative, innovative and focused, and grounded on the values of trust, happiness, curiosity and care.

  During my 20 years as an educator, I have been part of school staffs who could not talk, would not talk, and even should not talk to each other. I have also worked and learned alongside school staffs who have embraced a positive school culture – one that makes work and school fun, supportive, and purposeful. So how have some staffs created this positive culture while others struggle to get there? This is a question that I have focused on for the past five years as a school principal.

  Culture is hard to see but we can always feel it; it is the vibe of a school – the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours that exist within a school staff. In any organization, we continually strive to make positive change; however, as Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” so before we can tackle real change, we need to work as a staff to create a positive school culture. How do we do this?

  At the previous school where I worked as principal, our staff focused on building a positive staff culture for four years. Our goal was to achieve this, not through isolated team-building activities, but in the way we actually did our work together as a staff of educators.

  In one of our first staff meetings, I introduced a collaborative activity and it flopped miserably. When I attempted to encourage more focused conversation, one of our respected veteran teachers stated, “We don’t know how to do this.” I tried rephrasing the instructions for the activity but he interrupted and said, “No, we don’t really know how to talk like this.”

  This was such a turning point in our staff meeting culture, as it was clear we needed to start from there and first build trust, safety, and support. We could not dive into the real work until we established a place where this deeper dialogue could occur.

  We started with creating some norms or commitments for our staff meetings and collaborative time (Hat tip to Cale Birk for the idea). The staff came up with the list below:

  1. The topics will be relevant to what we do (and what we want to do) at our school.

  2. We will be flexible and willing to try new things and ideas.

  3. We will share the successes happening at our school.

  4. We will create strategies to provide equitable opportunities for each of us to share our voice (and not be dominated by a few).

  5. We will acknowledge that a sense of humour is important and will embrace opportunities for light-hearted dialogue.

  6. We will stay on topic and stick to the agenda.

  7. We will have a clear timeline for implementation of ideas.

  8. There will be a clear purpose to the discussion and agenda items.

  9. We will encourage others for their ideas and ask others for clarification, comments, ideas and suggestions.

  10. We will provide time for grade-level collaboration.

  11. We will always make time for getting together and having small group discussions.

  12. We will respect that some may prefer to listen and reflect.

  This set of commitments guided our behaviours and helped create staff meetings that felt safe enough to have the “real” conversations that often only take place in the parking lots and staff rooms. Prior to a discussion that might have some opposing views, we always reviewed and reminded ourselves of these commitments.

  We also discussed the attributes of an effective staff culture. Staff shared their experiences with positive and negative cultures. They then captured words to describe a positive culture and we put them into a Wordle (See Figure 1; thanks to Suzanne Hoffman for the idea).

  Figure 1: Staff description of a positive culture

  

  Through our work as a staff, as well as my learning at previous schools, I came up with what I believe are the Four Pillars of a Positive School Staff Culture. They are:

  • Strengths-based

  • Collaborative

  • Innovative

  • Focused

  I am sure there are other attributes that could be used but these four have been most effective for the schools where I have worked. As you can see in Figure 2, these four pillars are also based on the core values of trust, happiness, curiosity, and care. These values weave their way through the pillars and without them, the pillars can crumble.

  Figure 2: A Positive Organizational Culture

  

  The four pillars

  A STRENGTHS-BASED culture is one that believes that every staff member has strengths that can benefit the school as a whole. Feedback with staff always starts with strengths (character and skills), staff members are given the opportunity to determine their strengths (reflections and/or the ¹), and each staff member is encouraged to use these strengths in their important work with students. Research from the (CLC) in 2002² shared that one of the most effective ways to bring out the best in your employees is to start with strengths. Performance and engagement is significantly increased when feedback and evaluation focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses. On staff surveys, many staff reported that with the focus on strengths, they felt more motivated, safer to be themselves, happier and healthier overall at school. A healthier, happier staff who feel safe and motivated can accomplish so much more with their students and for the school community.

  “As leaders, we often make the mistake of listening to a problem and then jumping to solve it by ourselves.”

  A COLLABORATIVE culture believes “the smartest person in the room is the room itself” (David Weinberger). Staff tap into each others’ strengths and engage in respectful, reflective dialogue to drive professional learning and create positive change. Trust is a huge part of a collaborative culture, and truly listening to others is essential to building trust. Polarizing statements and unwillingness to meet people where they are at will create a challenge to collaboration. By avoiding binary thinking, embracing the “grey areas” and listening to others’ perspectives, we grow as individuals and as a collaborative staff.

  As leaders, we often make the mistake of listening to a problem and then jumping to solve it by ourselves. As a new principal, I had a teacher share a concern with me. Within minutes, I was busy shifting support schedules and trying to solve the problem. I bounced into her classroom to share what I had done, and she grew quite frustrated. She said, “I came to you so you could understand where I was at and so we could come up with solutions together. These solutions don’t really work for me and they will definitely negatively affect other teachers.” I was caught off guard by this feedback but so thankful, as I learned that my job is not to solve problems, but to work with staff to develop effective solutions together.

  An INNOVATIVE culture is one in which educators feel safe to take risks, think critically and creatively, and implement new ideas with support. It moves from the question, “Can we….” to the question, “How can we…” The CLC’s research found that encouraging autonomy and risk-taking is another way to bring out the best in employees. An innovative culture is not necessarily always doing new things; it is one that understands the research around what is effective and is willing to try new ideas to help meet school goals. As Chip and Dan Heath tell us in their book Switch, we need to shrink the change. We need not always aspire for huge risks and changes, rather, we should encourage incremental changes that can be tried for a period of time to see if there is a positive impact. An important role for principals is to find the resources (time, materials, etc.) to support the innovative work of staff, so that good educators can become great educators.

  A few years ago, inspired by Daniel Pink’s book Drive, I offered staff a “FedEx Prep,” which meant that I would provide an extra prep period for six weeks so a staff member could take an idea and put it into practice. The only caveat was that they had to “deliver” – sharing with staff the idea they had implemented and observing the results over the school year. We had teachers work individually and collaboratively to implement ideas in areas such as outdoor education (a school garden), technology (blogging with primaries to help with writing skills), and self-regulation (a teacher and a special education assistant redesigned their classroom and introduced tools to help students be in a more effective learning state). By providing a small amount of time and a few resources, we were able to encourage innovation at our school.

  A FOCUSED culture is one that knows the key areas of growth that the school is working on, as well as the strategies that can have the largest impact. With so many ideas, policies, and procedures being sent our way, principals and school leaders need to be good filters and keep the staff focused on their vision and mission. There are many “shiny new” ideas out there that look and sound great but they may not help your school on its journey. One question we have used to focus is, “What problem are we trying to solve?” If the new idea is not helping us with the problems (or areas of growth) we are working on, we can set them aside until a later date. By having a laser-like focus on clear goals and clearly defined problems the staff is working on, you can filter and prioritize what’s most important for your school.

  The four core values

  Four important values guide our behaviours and our journey toward a positive school culture. To embody any of these well, we must slow down. In a fast-paced world, this is even more important!

  TRUST: At the heart of trust is communication. It is so important for us all to talk less and listen more. In author Mark Goulston’s words, we need to spend more time being interested and less time trying to be interesting. As formal school leaders, we must also be as transparent as possible to make sure that people understand why decisions are made and/or have all the information they need to make decisions. Another important way to build trust is to walk the talk; if we say we will do something … do it.

  Building trust takes time. When I first arrived at my previous school, I posted a sign-up schedule to meet with every staff member to learn more about them and how I could best support them. After a week, not a single staff member had signed up. When I followed up privately with a few people, it was shared that everyone assumed it was an interview and they were nervous to meet with me. This was far from the goal! But the staff didn’t trust me yet. I met with a few individuals informally and then shared that this was the type of conversation I hoped to have in the scheduled times. After that, others started to sign up and they soon realized it was a positive opportunity. Within a few months, I had met with the entire staff.

  “We can still work incredibly hard to support students while also encouraging happiness with staff.”

  HAPPINESS: I always knew happiness was important but until I moved to my current school at Shortreed Community Elementary, I had no idea the impact that a staff can have on each others’ happiness. By having a sense of humour, taking the time to slow down and be there for each other (in good times and bad), and by showing gratitude, we can create a much more positive school staff culture. Going to work each day where people are happy fuels others and makes the difficult work we do much more enjoyable.

  Within my first week at Shortreed, I knew it was a place with a sense of humour. I had worked many hours planning my first assembly to welcome everyone back in September. I wanted to share a bit about me and a slideshow from the first week. Little did I know that the staff had their own plans. Our Youth Care Worker had asked each class to prank me by coming to the assembly and literally sitting wherever they wanted – anywhere and everywhere. As the students entered the gym, my face started to go red at the chaos. Then the whistle blew and all students, with huge grins, quietly moved to their appropriate spots. It was a reminder to not take ourselves so seriously, to have fun and create some happiness in the school. We can still work incredibly hard to support students while also encouraging happiness with staff.

  CURIOSITY: We cannot grow as a school unless we are curious. By seeing challenges as opportunities that we can be curious about, we can then collaborate and work together to meet them. By being curious and ensuring we are asking the right questions, we continually grow as educators, learners, leaders, and people.

  CARE: People need to feel like they belong and they matter. Small acts of caring can go a long way to building a positive culture and community of care. At my current school, our mantra is, “You BELONG here.” This drive to create a sense of belonging is not only for students but also for our families and staff. We need to lead with an ethic of care and model to our staff that we support and look out for one another.

   

  As an educator, I have come to realize that building (and maintaining) a positive staff culture takes time. By slowing down, focusing on the four values of trust, happiness, curiosity, and care while also keeping the four pillars of strengths-based, collaborative, innovative and focused cultures at the heart of what we do, we can help create a positive school staff culture.

  I am thankful to have observed the incredible power of a positive culture. When we all work together to build and maintain this, we feel healthier at school and at home, more motivated and inspired in the important work we do, and because of this, we also see improved results in the achievement and success in our students.

   

  Illustration: Diana Pham

  First published in Education Canada, December 2019

  ---

  1 The VIA Survey is a free survey of character strengths in the world:

  2 Corporate Leadership Council, Building the High-Performance Workforce: A quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of performance management strategies (Washington, D.C.: 2002).

• Self-Reg Isn’t Just for Kids

  November 14, 2019 11:13 AM Comments Off on Self-Reg Isn’t Just for Kids

• Francophone Principals: What unique challenges do they face?

  November 8, 2019 3:37 PM Comments Off on Francophone Principals: What unique challenges do they face?

  Francophone principals in linguistic minority schools encounter unique challenges because of the cultural and linguistic significance of francophone public school systems to their communities. Although francophone principals in Ontario report high job satisfaction (79.2%), there is an urgent need to promote a highly qualified teacher workforce, enhance cultural and linguistic security, and create safe workplaces.

  HERE ARE 4 CHALLENGES FACED BY FRANCOPHONE PRINCIPALS

  1. Substitute teacher shortage:

  • Francophone principals report often or always (88.3%) having difficulty finding qualified French-language substitute teachers. This also means that teacher absenteeism is a significant challenge, with principals having to fill-in for classes.

  2. Pressure from PAL:

  • 54.9% of francophone principals report that their work often or always reflects the direction of Ontario’s Aménagement Linguistique Policy (PAL), which aims to improve how francophone language and culture are being lived out by young people. 
  • While essential, francophone principals find that this policy creates pressure to recruit and retain francophone students, including additional tasks (that English-language schools don’t have), coupled with not enough time or resources to implement it.

  3.  Work safety:

  • Francophone principals report being harassed (e.g. verbally, psychologically) by various stakeholders including parents or guardians, students, teachers, senior officials, other school staff, substitute teachers, other principals, vice-principals, and trustees. 
  • Principals indicate that if they were harassed, it would most likely be by a parent or guardian (60.1%), and if physically assaulted it would most likely be by a student (34.6%).

  4. Emotionally draining situations: 

  • Francophone principals report spending more time on student well-being than any other activity (e.g. staff well-being, French-language services, professional learning). Student mental health, discipline, and cyberbullying often or always place principals in emotionally draining situations.
  • Francophone principals also report spending more time working with parents than other activities (e.g. attending to staff, managing student discipline, participating in student activities).

  Professional associations, school districts, and policymakers can play a powerful role in addressing the challenges faced by francophone principals. To ease recruitment pressures on principals, professional associations can work more closely with regulatory bodies and initial teacher education programs to increase the number of qualified French-language teachers. School districts can also lead continued professional support on the PAL that better recognizes the importance of principals in implementation. To address harassment and assault, the education sector can work more intentionally to promote principals’ health and safety. Above all, acknowledging the unique challenges of francophone school leaders can allow them to lead more effectively as key drivers of language and culture. 

  Additional Resource Information

  Read the full survey report here:

  Pollock, K., & Wang, F. (2019). Principals’ work in Ontario’s French-language education systems. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-ADFO-EnglishReport-Final-V10.pdf

  References

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2014). The future of the principalship in Canada. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/
  The%20Future%20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017a). The Canadian school leader: Global forces and future prospects. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-101-13%20Canadian%20School%20Leader.pdf

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017b). A national study on the impact of electronic communication on Canadian school leaders. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-104%20A%20National%20Study%20of%20the%20Impact%20of%20
  Electronic%20Communication%20on%20Canadian%20School%20Leaders.pdf

  Berger, M. J. (2017). French-language education in Ontario: A fresh perspective on leadership practices: Final report. Toronto, ON: The Ontario Institute for Education leadership & The Ontario Ministry of Education. 

  Langlois, L., & Lapointe, C. (2007). Ethical leadership in Canadian school organizations: Tensions and possibilities. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 35(2), 247–260.

   

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• Work Intensification: How the Role of School Leaders is Changing

  November 7, 2019 4:44 PM Comments Off on Work Intensification: How the Role of School Leaders is Changing

  The majority of principals (91.8%) and vice-principals (83.4%) in Ontario believe their job makes a meaningful difference in their school community, and they overwhelmingly find their school a good place to work. However, school leaders are grappling with longer hours, increasing demands, and higher workloads than ever before, which is threatening principal recruitment, retention, and job performance. 

  Here are 5 ways the role of principals and vice-principals is changing

  1. Longer hours:

  • Like school leaders across the globe, Ontario principals work long hours and often feel pressured to do so. 
  • Work often extends beyond the school office due to advances in technology through email, social media, and mobile devices, with principals regularly bringing work home and working late evenings to meet higher workloads. On average, principals spend 11 hours and vice-principals spend 9 hours reading and writing emails per week. 
  • On average, principals work 59 hours per week and vice-principals work 54.5 hours per week. 

  2. Work pace increasing:

  • 60.3% of principals and 44.4% of vice-principals in Ontario agree that the pace of their work is too fast. 

  3. Fewer resources: 

  • Only 38.3% of Ontario principals feel they have the resources they need to do their job effectively (e.g. HR, training to address student or staff mental health concerns, PD on effective relationship building, other colleagues to go to for support).

  4. Same day-to-day work– only more: 

  • Both principals and vice-principals continue to engage in the same kinds of tasks as they did in the past, but the volume of this work has increased (e.g. increased paperwork).

  5. Additional work: 

  • In addition to their usual work of leading a school, both principals and vice-principals are taking on additional kinds of work. 
  • For example, in addition to leadership and management tasks, school leaders are now also responsible for attending to and supporting students’ and teachers’ well-being, which involves increased program development and delivery, additional meetings, and additional pressures to best manage already limited time and funding.

  When these five factors are continually present and school leaders have no downtime to catch up on work or to recover both physically and emotionally from daily work stress, this is called “work intensification.” Work intensification involves managing condensed timelines and a simultaneous increase in the volume and complexity of tasks, activities, and other work demands. As effective school leaders are key to high-performing schools and healthy school environments, work intensification not only threatens school leader recruitment and retention, but also the well-being and performance of both staff and students. 

  Additional Resource Information

  Pollock, K. (with Wang, F. & Hauseman, D. C.). (2017). The changing nature of vice-principals’ work: Final report. Retrieved from: http://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-opc-vp-report-final.pdf

  Pollock, K. (with Hauseman, D. C.). (2015). Principals’ work in contemporary times: Final report. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/OME-Report-Principals-Work-Contemporary-Times.pdf

  Pollock, K. (with Wang, F. & Hauseman, D. C.). (2014). The changing nature of principals’ work: Final report. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/OPC-Principals-Work-Report.pdf

  Pollock, K., & Wang, F. (2019, March). Le travail des directions d’école au sein des systèmes d’éducation de langue française en Ontario. Récupéré de: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-ADFO-Report-Revised-Final.pdf 

  Pollock, K., & Wang, F. (2019 March). Principals’ work in Ontario’s French-language education systems. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-ADFO-EnglishReport-Final-V10.pdf

  References

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2014). The future of the principalship in Canada. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/The%20Future
  %20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017a). The Canadian school leader: Global forces and future prospects. Retrieved from:https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-101-13%20Canadian%20School%20Leader.pdf

   Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017b). A national study on the impact of electronic communication on Canadian school leaders. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-104%20A%20National%20Study%20of%20the%20Impact%20of%20Electronic%20Communication%
  20on%20Canadian%20School%20Leaders.pdf

  Lim, L., & Pollock, K. (2018). Secondary principal perspectives: How work intensification impacts their vice-principals. OPC Register, 20(3) 22–26.

  Ontario Principals’ Council. (2017). International Symposium White Paper: Principal work–life balance and well-being matters. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/PrincipalWellBeing-17-FINAL-with-Acknowledgement-1.pdf 

  Pollock, K. (2017, September). Healthy principals, healthy schools: Supporting principals’ well-being. EdCan Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.edcan.ca/articles/healthy-principals-healthy-schools/

  Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, C. (2017). Vice-principals’ work: More than being an instructional leader. OPC Register, 19(3), 20–24.

  Pollock, K., & Hauseman, D. C. (2018). The use of e-mail and principals’ work: A double-edged sword. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1–12 .

  Pollock, K. (2016). Principals’ work in Ontario, Canada: Changing demographics, advancements in informational communication technology and health and well-being. Journal of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management, 44(3), 55–74.

  Riley, P. (2016). The Australian principal occupational health, safety and wellbeing survey. Strathfield, Australia: Institute for Positive Psychology & Education. Retrieved from: http://www.principalhealth.org/au/2016_Report_AU_FINAL.pdf

  Wang, F., Pollock, K., & Hauseman, C. (2018). School principals’ job satisfaction: The effects of work intensification. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 185, 73–90.

   

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• How Can Education Systems Support Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Well-Being?

  4:42 PM Comments Off on How Can Education Systems Support Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Well-Being?

  Principals and vice-principals often sacrifice their own happiness and well-being to support their staff and students. Many school leaders report working long hours, skipping lunch, feeling isolated in their roles, and being unable to spend time with friends and family because of intense and expanding workloads. The toll of these demands can leave school leaders feeling emotionally and physically exhausted. 

  HERE ARE PROVEN STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT PRINCIPALS’ AND VICE-PRINCIPALS’ WELL-BEING

  PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS can advocate for:

  1. Ongoing professional development (PD) that reflects the realities of being a school leader.  
  2. Coaching or mentoring specifically designed for principals and vice-principals that supports both their professional and personal well-being.
  3. Health assessment tools that allow principals and vice-principals to develop long-term health plans.
  4. Telephone support lines that offer confidential guidance from experienced school leaders, legal representatives, and healthcare professionals. 

  SCHOOL DISTRICTS can:

  1. Develop PD that provides strategies for principals and vice-principals to support their own well-being. 
  2. Promote healthy work environments overall for all members of the school community. 
  3. Negotiate employee health benefits that support school leaders’ well-being and encourage them to be used fully. Health services (e.g. massage therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractic therapy, and professional counseling) or benefits that promote healthy living (e.g. nutrition services, gym memberships) are especially effective. 
  4. Develop realistic expectations around remote work and using email beyond office hours. 

  POLICYMAKERS can:

  1. Consider ways to position school leaders for success by focusing on their priorities as leaders of learning (e.g. by delegating, reducing, and eliminating workload). 
  2. Clarify expectations on how school leaders should be involved in implementing new and ongoing initiatives (e.g. those related to mental health, cyberbullying, technology leadership).
  3. Assess options to reduce the time principals and vice-principals spend on lunch and yard duty. There is ongoing tension between being on duty to supervise students and attending to other time-sensitive issues, which means principals can have difficulty fully engaging in either task.
  4. Encourage school leaders to hire highly qualified teachers who are suited to the local school context. This can be achieved by promoting teacher professionalism (e.g. specialized knowledge and skills, long-term and well-resourced teacher PD). 

  To maximize efficiency and prevent overlap between initiatives, professional associations, school districts, and policymakers can align these strategies to better support the well-being of school leaders and school communities as a whole.

  Additional Resource Information

  Pollock, K. (with Wang, F. & Hauseman, D. C.). (2017). The changing nature of vice-principals’ work: Final report. Retrieved from: http://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-opc-vp-report-final.pdf

  Pollock, K. (with Hauseman, D. C.). (2015). Principals’ work in contemporary times: Final report. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/OME-Report-Principals-Work-Contemporary-Times.pdf

  Pollock, K. (with Wang, F. & Hauseman, D. C.). (2014). The changing nature of principals’ work: Final report. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/OPC-Principals-Work-Report.pdf

  Pollock, K. et Wang, F. (2019). Le travail des directions d’école au sein des systèmes d’éducation de langue française en Ontario. Repéré à : https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-ADFO-Report-Revised-Final.pdf 

  Pollock, K., & Wang, F. (2019). Principals’ work in Ontario’s French-language education systems. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/pollock-ADFO-EnglishReport-Final-V10.pdf

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2014). The future of the principalship in Canada. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/The%20
  Future%20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf

  References

  Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017a). The Canadian school leader: Global forces and future prospects. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-101-13%
  20Canadian%20School%20Leader.pdf

   Alberta Teachers’ Association [ATA]. (2017b). A national study on the impact of electronic communication on Canadian school leaders. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/COOR-104%20A%20National%20Study%20of%20the%20Impact%20of%20Electronic%20Communication%20on%
  20Canadian%20School%20Leaders.pdf

  Lim, L., & Pollock, K. (2018). Secondary principal perspectives: How work intensification impacts their vice-principals. OPC Register, 20(3) 22–26.

  Ontario Principals’ Council. (2017). International Symposium White Paper: Principal work–life balance and well-being matters. Retrieved from: https://www.edu.uwo.ca/faculty-profiles/docs/other/pollock/PrincipalWellBeing-17-FINAL-with-Acknowledgement-1.pdf 

  Pollock, K. (2017, September). Healthy principals, healthy schools: Supporting principals’ well-being. EdCan Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.edcan.ca/articles/healthy-principals-healthy-schools/

  Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, C. (2017). Vice-principals’ work: More than being an instructional leader. OPC Register, 19(3), 20–24.

  Pollock, K., & Hauseman, D. C. (2018). The use of e-mail and principals’ work: A double-edged sword. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1–12 .

  Pollock, K. (2016). Principals’ work in Ontario, Canada: Changing demographics, advancements in informational communication technology and health and well-being. Journal of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management, 44(3), 55–74.

  Riley, P. (2016). The Australian principal occupational health, safety and wellbeing survey., Strathfield, Australia: Institute for Positive Psychology & Education. Retrieved from: http://www.principalhealth.org/au/2016_Report_AU_FINAL.pdf

  Wang, F., Pollock, K., & Hauseman, C. (2018). School principals’ job satisfaction: The effects of work intensification. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 185, 73–90.

   

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• 3 Steps to Districtwide Staff Well-Being

  October 21, 2019 3:02 PM Comments Off on 3 Steps to Districtwide Staff Well-Being

• Beyond the Cone of Silence

  2:51 PM Comments Off on Beyond the Cone of Silence

• So you want me to talk?

  2:43 PM Comments Off on So you want me to talk?

• What does it mean to change “the system?”

  2:41 PM Comments Off on What does it mean to change “the system?”

• My Back-to-School Educator Resiliency Story

  September 24, 2019 10:57 AM Comments Off on My Back-to-School Educator Resiliency Story

  Now that September is here, educators are back to school.  We can quickly forget that we’ve had two months to recharge as we fall back into the daily school routine as summertime slips out the door and we re-enter into our classrooms. 

  It’s amazing how swiftly everything piles upon us as educators. There are big ideas and new curriculums to understand, new assessment strategies, new ways of learning and teaching with an Indigenous lens, new social-emotional language to support our ever-changing and ever-challenging student body, and always new pedagogy that can be implemented. Not to mention the planning, marking, and meetings that are a part of our every thought throughout the school year. Sometimes it feels as though there’s never enough time, energy, and space to get through everything.        

  As educators, we often work through a lens of scarcity because we have felt the pinch of financial loss, the strain of our oversized classrooms, the demanding needs of each individual student, and the political climate frequently shifting to and from supporting teachers. 

  And because of all of this, educators across Canada are tired. 

  My name is Lisa. I’m a high school counsellor and trained secondary PE and English teacher. I also wear other hats. I’m a mindfulness instructor who teaches a program (Mindfulness for Educators) that first seeks to support an embodied mindfulness practice for educators before then teaching the practice to our students. I also teach an eight-week course called Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). I have an emerging company called AWE – (Awaken Wellbeing for Educators) where I run day and weekend retreats enabling educators to nourish themselves. Most importantly, I’m a mom to two beautiful kids who remind me to practice patience and kindness daily. 

  

  Trying to maintain life and its many roles – including finding ways to meet everyone’s needs, including my own – can be really challenging.

  I know first-hand what burnout feels like: it’s panic attacks, it’s the resentment of students and colleagues, it’s physical pain, it’s being on the verge of crying and not knowing why, and it’s feeling edgy and frustrated without reason.
  

  This year the World Health Organization officially added burnout as a legitimate medical diagnosis. This allows medical providers to diagnose burnout if individuals meet the following symptoms:

  1. Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
  2. Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
  3. Reduced professional efficacy

  Like in many other high-stress occupations, educators are burning out quickly. We need to find ways to repair and awaken our resiliency so that we can continue to do the work that we love: teach kids, ask questions, and inspire change.

  My burnout started when I learned that I had an autoimmune disease. Ongoing pain can be debilitating, it can be exhausting. For me, learning to optimize my well-being became a priority.  As educators, putting ourselves first can be a challenge. But in order for us to sustain our well-being in schools, we have to make this a priority.

  Through a few small adjustments and behavioural modifications, I was able to sustain my well-being so that I could continue doing the work that I love.

  I came up with a mantra that supports my well-being: Go slow. Stay present. Trust.

  Go slow.

  In a world where “being busy” is glorified and there’s a never-ending “to-do” list, the idea of going slow seems counterintuitive. We go quickly because we think we may get more opportunities, more money, more school supplies, better students, and so on.  Fearing the scarcity of time drives us to move faster and do more.

  

  But I’ve started to see the fallacy. In fact, there is more to go around than ever.  We live in a world of abundance. When we go slow we start to recognize all of the opportunities, the gifts, and the learning that is available to us.

  

  I like to think of this era in education as a slow down education movement. We have time to get to know our kids, to get to know our colleagues, to get to know ourselves. When we slow down we see more. We’re enabling ourselves not to hurry. It’s giving ourselves the opposite of an over-glorified busyness and, instead, giving ourselves permission to take our time, to learn slowly, to teach slowly.
  

  When we go slow, we become more aware. This has been the first part of my ongoing resiliency building.
  

  Stay present.
  

  Learning to be present is a gift that few of us were taught. When we slow down, we start to build our awareness: we see more, we smell more, we hear and we listen more.
  

  Life pulls us in so many directions. One of the reasons why burnout happened in my life, other than physical illness, is this feeling of being pulled: everyone and everything needed my attention, and so I gave everyone and everything my attention all at the same time. I was left with no energy for myself. 

  I learned that we can’t do it all.  Life is not a computer screen with many tabs open as we multitask and try to complete everything all at the same time.  In fact, it’s the opposite. Life is more like a symphony: everything can’t be loud at the same time or the music doesn’t sound lovely.  Sometimes you need to turn down the horns so you can hear the strings. 

  When I gave myself permission to stay present these things happened: when I was at school I was fully present with my students, when I was teaching mindfulness I was fully teaching mindfulness, when I was leading retreats I was just leading retreats, and when I was home with my kids I was completely spending time with my kids. 

  Learning to be present is the opposite of multitasking. It’s called monotasking. It means doing one thing at a time. It also means prioritizing the things that are important to us. We can’t do everything, but we can do some things really well. One of those things that we need to learn to do well as teachers is to prioritize our well-being.

  Giving ourselves permission to practice self-care compassion and well-being doesn’t come naturally for many of us. For many teachers, we’re really good at caring for others.

  

  But putting ourselves first is a really difficult priority.
  

  What does self-care look like for you? Only YOU can answer that question. But here are some ideas: find a mindfulness class, learn more about self-compassion, go on a retreat, try a yoga class, do more of what you love and learn to say NO to all the extra stuff.

  Trust.

  Rebuilding resiliency can be challenging, especially when we are depleted and we’re not sure how to awaken our well-being when there seems to be little energy or time to do so. I rebuilt my resiliency and I took the time to go slow and be present, but the most impactful piece for me was learning to trust. 

  Trust in myself, trust in my family, trust in my students, trust in my colleagues, trust in the community and in the culture that would support me.

  

  And most importantly, to trust myself in the process of expanding my mindful self-compassion practice. I learned to talk to myself, to treat myself as I would treat my best friend or a student that I loved: with care, tenderness, kindness, and love. I learned to ask myself the quintessential question of mindful self-compassion: “What do I really need right now?” And I learned to answer honestly.

  

  Because I was slowing down and becoming more present, I could hear what I needed:

  • More exercise and healthy food 
  • Time with friends, a date with my partner, or a dance party with my kids
  • Space to meditate
  • Less pressure on myself to be perfect

  The biggest part of learning to trust was leaning into the vulnerability that came with it.  “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity,” explains author and professor Brene Brown “It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” 

  When I gave myself permission to go slow, stay present, and trust, I opened up a world of vulnerability and connection—and this has been one of the greatest pathways into my resiliency building. 

  Let’s talk about educator resiliency. Let’s bring the discussion to the foreground. Let’s remind people that if we want our students to be well, we need our teachers to be healthy, present, open, and well.  As educators, we model and inspire our youth and when we do it from a place of kindness and compassion, we will all grow to be healthier and happier human beings.

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  Photo: Adobe Stock

   

• Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken

  10:56 AM Comments Off on Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken

  This blog post is part of a two-part series on teacher moms.
  Missed out on part 1? Turn back here. 

  ---

  If you’ve ever written a major academic paper like a thesis or dissertation, you’ll know how painstaking it can be to summarize years of your life’s work into a snappy elevator pitch when all you have is mere minutes to convince people why you’re worth their time. But my PhD dissertation was a completely different story. When I think about the numerous women I’ve met over the course of my research – women who are juggling the demands of being both a mom at home and a teacher in the classroom – it’s pretty simple to sum up my 400-page dissertation in just eight words. Being a teacher mom is, quite frankly, “like being pecked to death by a chicken.”

  

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  WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE PECKED TO DEATH BY A CHICKEN

  

  A peck or two from a chicken is annoying but it won’t kill you. Similarly, teachers and other caregiving professionals are typically able to manage a few demands on their time and energy without losing their cool. But when demands pile up and begin shooting from left-right-and-centre, teacher moms are likely to burnout – just like how getting pecked by a chicken a thousand times over will likely leave you dead. 

  Teachers regularly work with children who are experiencing stress and trauma at home. Emotional pain and distress have no boundaries, and teachers – out of necessity and out of their heart for children – inevitably serve as emotional caregivers on top of the usual demands of schooling, like instruction and lesson planning. When students express their social and emotional needs through disruptive behaviour, an entire lesson – if not an entire day – can get derailed. Although teachers play a crucial role in the lives of students experiencing trauma, they’re also at high risk themselves of second-hand traumatic stress where working alongside and listening to the experiences of distressed students can actually damage their own mental health and well-being. 

  

  TEACHERS AND CAREGIVERS AGREE – WE ARE BEING PECKED TO DEATH BY CHICKENS

  Let’s not forget that teachers are also held to standards of practice that dictate how they’re expected to express their emotions. While in the classroom, it’s frequently expected that teachers suppress how they truly feel – either by hiding behind a “workplace appropriate” façade, or by literally attempting to change their emotions altogether by, for instance, filtering their frustrations into acts of kindness as they work alongside a struggling student. Given the energy required to control how they feel, combined with other demands including meeting tight deadlines, strained interpersonal relationships, and other pressures from outside the workplace, it’s no wonder that teachers often feel overwhelmed and depleted. 

  

  It’s also no wonder that the metaphor “a death by a thousand pecks” resonates so strongly with teacher moms and other caregiving professionals, many of whom have told me point-blank that caring for other people often leaves them drained and irritated long after they’ve left the workplace and rejoined their families. I’ve also heard stories from brilliant scientists about how they, too, return home after long days at the lab only to find that they’d much rather be left alone in solitude. Simply put, caregivers know what it’s like to be continuously pecked – and sometimes obliterated – by a chicken. 

  

  Even parents who aren’t typically considered “caregiving professionals” are required to tend to other people’s well-being while at work, where they’re expected to be cautiously considerate of other people’s feelings in their communications. Caring is almost always about “the other” – another person or even an idea – that we view as having some sort of potential or possibility for growth and development. This means that we are all caregivers in some way regardless of the job or role we may find ourselves in. Conversely, this also means that “caring” should be valued in the workplace and viewed as a demand worthy of professional development, support, and additional resources just as any other demand.    

  ‘WORK-LIFE BALANCE’ ISN’T ENOUGH TO SUPPORT TEACHER MOMS AND OTHER CAREGIVING PROFESSIONALS

  We often talk about maintaining “balance” between home and work, but I believe there’s a more appropriate term that truly encapsulates what it’s like to successfully manage our personal and professional responsibilities – and that’s “equilibrium.” 

  

  Work-life balance is like tinkering with a weighing scale where our personal life is on one side and our work life is on the other. We’re constantly striving to adjust and readjust how much weight we’re putting on either side so that one part of our lives doesn’t tip over and crash. “Balance” also implies that the different parts of our lives can be separated like different drawers of a wardrobe. The reality is that how we feel in our personal lives can impact how we feel in our professional lives, and vice-versa. For caregivers especially, we can’t expect teachers to “shut off” the care they have for their students just because they’ve left the schoolgrounds. In other words, there is no perfect balance. 

  

  Equilibrium, on the other hand, allows for some flexibility where new demands and additional stress create mere shifts in our lives rather than a total collapse. It means accepting, for example, that the amount of time, energy, and focus we dedicate to certain aspects of our lives will constantly change depending on what our priorities are or where our attention is most needed at a given point in time. In other words, teacher moms can prioritize caring for their own children without ceasing to care deeply for their students who are suffering from difficult personal circumstances – they may just accept that they can’t do it all, that they can’t do it alone, and that not every challenge or problem requires their fixing.  

  In brief, teacher moms and caregiving professionals who set boundaries, accept their limitations, and build up their resilience are able to absorb stress rather than take it on completely. As care is so inherent to being a teacher, schools can better support teacher moms by investing in the caring aspects of the profession and encouraging resilience training on the job. 

  ---

  This blog post is part of a two-part series on teacher moms. 

  Missed out on part 1? Turn back here. 

   

  Dr. Shirley Giroux’s Ph.D. dissertation is entitled, “Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken: Resilience and Work-Family Equilibrium in Teacher/Mothers.”  Check out a recap on her research here.

  Author note: All of the teachers who participated in my research self-identified as cisgender female. Except for limiting my sample to female teachers, this lack of diversity was not intentional.

   Photos: Adobe Stock 

   

   

• Teacher moms are doing it all

  10:56 AM Comments Off on Teacher moms are doing it all

  RESEARCH IN BRIEF

  In news that will surprise no educators, teaching is challenging work. Besides planning for and facilitating student learning, there are a number of other demands on teachers’ time and energy, many of which — like volunteering for a staff committee, staying in at lunch to help a student, or providing students with flexible options to demonstrate their knowledge — can seem small or unnoticeable on their own. However, when demands like these begin to add up, teachers may feel that they have too many demands on their time or that their efforts are not being recognized or appreciated, which can then contribute to impaired health.

  It‘s partly because of these potential negative consequences that I called my Ph.D. dissertation “Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken.” While a single peck (or demand) might be tolerable, an amassment could lead to impaired health, and it’s often an accumulation of relatively small things that wear down a person’s resilience.

  As part of my research, I had 182 female teachers in B.C. complete a survey to see whether there are any differences between women who are both moms and teachers, in comparison to female teachers who don’t have kids. Most helpful to my research were the group discussions I led, where these teachers were able to meet and share what were often emotional stories alongside their colleagues about the ups and downs of managing family and work. I specifically wanted to find out whether an “increased burden of care” (i.e. the pressures of being a caregiver both at school and at home) was hurting the well-being of teacher moms, and what they were doing to remain resilient through it all.

  WHAT WE MEAN BY “RESILIENCE”

  But what exactly do we mean when we talk about “resilience,” and what seems to make the biggest difference for teachers? Resilience is well-backed by research as key to sustaining teachers’ well-being, and it mainly refers to things that enable them to continue teaching despite the challenging conditions they may find themselves in. There are typically three factors that contribute to resilience:

  1. Personal factors: a person’s skills, abilities, and personality
  2. Contextual factors: a person’s environment, such as their workplace, and how this influences their ability to stay healthy
  3. Interactional factors: the stress of dealing with other people

  HOW FEMALE TEACHERS COPE WITH SCHOOL AND FAMILY DEMANDS

  By helping teachers better understand resilience and how their emotions affect their health and their work — and by being supported to build their resilience while at school — teachers can potentially improve their well-being, health, and quality of life, while also promoting a healthy learning environment where they role model resilience strategies among their students and colleagues.

  In general, I found that teachers have similar challenges regardless of whether or not they were moms, and that they seem to use similar resilience strategies to support themselves as caregivers both inside and outside of school. The majority of teachers I surveyed shared stories clearly describing the ways that so many women are able to sustain themselves while working with people all day and simultaneously raising their own children. For those women who weren’t raising children of their own, they described how they worked through challenging circumstances in their professional or personal lives. Through recounting their lived experiences, I learned six key things about how female teachers manage to stay afloat and stay resilient:

  1. Being aware of their emotions. By being able to stay aware of their emotions and work through them in positive ways, teachers are able to support their own resilience and help their students learn to do the same. For example, instead of suppressing their emotions (e.g. keeping a smile on when they’re angry), teachers who are able to acknowledge and deal with their emotions in appropriate ways tend to be more resilient.
  2. Working with people. This can actually pose a challenge to teachers’ resilience, mostly because of the emotion and care that’s required. However, it can also be an important source of resilience where teachers have healthy relationships with their colleagues and therefore find their work more meaningful and enjoyable.
  3. Perspective. This means being able to look at the “whole picture” and see things in appropriate proportion to other demands. Teachers talked about reframing problems to focus on things that they’re able to control or on things about their work that give them a sense of meaning or purpose.
  4. Staying healthy. This includes taking part in activities or behaviours that help maintain physical health (e.g. exercise, healthy eating, and avoiding substance abuse).
  5. Time. While this is often outside a teachers’ control, time can be a source of resilience when it allows teachers to do their work without feeling rushed or otherwise lacking the opportunity to invest deeply in their relationships and interests.
  6. Family. Having strong and supportive family relations was very important to those teachers who were fortunate enough to have access to them.

  “Relationships” was also a keyword that teachers used — whether or not they were moms — when talking about how they’re able to sustain their work and home responsibilities. For teacher moms in particular, maintaining relationships and reaching out to other people seemed to become a more important resilience strategy as their children got older.

   HOW SCHOOLS CAN HELP EASE THE PRESSURE

  Research has shown that relationships are crucial to resilience, and I’ve seen this in my own observations where teachers were overwhelmingly receptive to filling-in my survey and, most notably, actively taking part in our group discussions. I’m therefore proposing that teachers be provided with more opportunities to build relationships with each other, and I’m convinced that similar group discussions that allow teachers to talk openly about their stories, express their emotions, and share strategies could be valuable in supporting teachers’ resilience.

  It has often been said that teachers bear the brunt of criticism in our modern area of accountability. They receive pressure from administrators, parents, and society to increase student achievement while, in many cases, receiving fewer resources to do so. By providing even a small opportunity for teachers to meet and work through emotional stories alongside their colleagues, it’s clear that there’s potential for similar meetings to be useful in enhancing teacher well-being while creating a dedicated support network in schools.

  To avoid teachers having to find ways to do this themselves, these meetings should ideally be done at a systems level so that the caring and emotional aspects of teaching can be supported just as any other aspect of teaching is covered in ongoing professional development. Alternatively, if we only focus on promoting resilience strategies for individual teachers and don’t allow for this sharing to happen in a group setting, we will potentially neglect the bigger picture of the demands that teachers face as caregivers — at home, at work, and in between.

   

   

  Dr. Shirley Giroux’s Ph.D. dissertation is entitled, “Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken: Resilience and Work-Family Equilibrium in Teacher/Mothers.”

  Author note: All of the teachers who participated in my research self-identified as cisgender female. Except for limiting my sample to female teachers, this lack of diversity was not intentional.

  References and Further Reading

  Brunetti, G. (2006). Resilience under fire: Perspectives on the work of experienced, inner city high school teachers in the United States. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 812-825. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.027

  Bullogh, Jr., R. V., & Hall-Kenyon, K. M. (2011). The call to teach and teacher hopefulness. Teacher Development, 15, 127-140. doi:10.1080/13664530.2011.571488

  Cinamon, R. G., & Rich, Y. (2002). Gender differences in the importance of work and family roles: Implications for work-family conflict. Sex Roles, 47, 531-541. doi:10.1177/0894845309345849

  Cinamon, R. G., & Rich, Y. (2005a). Reducing teachers’ work-family conflict. Journal of Career Development, 32, 91-103. doi:10.1177/0894845305277044

  Davydov, D. M., Stewart, R., Ritchie, K., & Chaudieu, I. (2010). Resilience and mental health. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 479-495. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.003

  Day, C., & Gu, Q. (2014). Resilient teachers, resilient schools: Building and sustaining quality in testing times. London, UK: Routledge.

  Day, C., & Kington, A. (2008). Identity, well-being and effectiveness: The emotional contexts of teaching. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 16, 7-23. doi:10.1080/14681360701877743

  Day, C., Kington, A., Stobart, G., & Sammons, P. (2006). The personal and professional selves of teachers: Stable and unstable identities. British Educational Research Journal, 32, 601-616. doi:10.1080/01411920600775316

  Day, C., Stobart, G., Sammons, P., Kington, A., Gu, Q., Smees, R., & Mujitaba, T. (2006). Variations in teachers’ work, lives and effectiveness. Final report for the VITAE Project, DfES. Retrieved from dera.ioe.ac.uk/6405/1/rr743.pdf

  Doney, P. A. (2013). Fostering resilience: A necessary skill for teacher retention. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24, 645-664. doi:10.1007/s10972-012-9324-x

  Ebersöhn, L. (2014). Teacher resilience: Theorizing resilience and poverty. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20, 568-594. doi:10.1080/13540602.2014.937960

  Gu, Q. (2018). (Re)conceptualizing teacher resilience: A socio-ecological approach to understanding teachers’ professional worlds. In M. Wosnitza, F. Peixoto, S. Beltman, & C. F. Mansfield (Eds.), Resilience in Education (pp. 13-33). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76690-4_2

  Gu, Q., & Day, C. (2007). Teachers resilience: A necessary condition for effectiveness. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 1302-1316. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.006

  Hansen, D. (1995). The call to teach. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

  Hansen, D. T. (1994). Teaching and the sense of vocation. Educational Theory, 44, 259-275. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5446.1994.00259.x

  Herman, K. C., Hickmon-Rosa, J., & Reinke, W. M. (2018). Empirically derived profiles of teacher stress, burnout, self-efficacy, and coping and associated student outcomes. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 20, 90-100. doi:10.1177/1098300717732066

  Howard, S., & Johnson, B. (2004). Resilient teachers: Resisting stress and burnout. Social Psychology of Education, 7, 399-429. doi:10.1007/s11218-004-0975-0

  Le Cornu, R. (2013). Building early career teacher resilience: The role of relationships. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol38/iss4/1

  Lindström, B., & Eriksson, M. (2011). From health education to healthy learning: Implementing salutogenesis in educational science. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 39(Suppl 6), 85-92. doi:10.1177/1403494810393560

  Luthar, S. S., & Ciciolla, L. (2015). Who mothers mommy? Factors that contribute to mothers’ well-being. Developmental Psychology, 51, 1812-1823. doi:10.1037/dev0000051

  Mansfield, C. F., Beltman, S., Price, A., & McConney, A. (2012). “Don’t sweat the small stuff:” Understanding teacher resilience at the chalkface. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28, 357-367. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.11.001

  Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

  Reivich, K., & Shatté, A. (2002). The resilience factor. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

  Schwarze, J., & Wosnitza, M. (2018). How does apprentice resilience work? In M. Wosnitza, F. Peixoto, S. Beltman, & C. F. Mansfield (Eds.), Resilience in Education (pp. 35-51). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi:10.1007/97

• How to Awaken Well-Being for Educators

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  More and more educators are realizing the importance of taking the time to invest in their well-being, and they’re starting to prioritize self-care for both personal and professional development. Practicing self-compassion is the ultimate act of self-care and, as educators, this means prioritizing our own well-being and learning to treat ourselves kindly in times of stress and overwhelm. This allows us to be our best selves, and therefore positions us to better support our students and develop meaningful relationships with them. 

  Over several years, I researched, observed, and brainstormed, and I came up with a solution – the AWE method, short for “Awaken Well-Being for Educators.” AWE takes you through the ABC’s of reclaiming and reviving your joy in teaching. Through this method, I help organizations and individual teachers create school and classroom environments based on resiliency, self-compassion, and self-awareness. AWE is unique because it creates a “ripple effect of well-being” by putting educators first. Educators develop healthy habits for themselves, and then go on to develop healthy habits to use or emulate among their families and in their classrooms. 

  The AWE method walks you through the WHY, the HOW, and the WHAT of educator well-being and, if followed consistently, will allow you to take charge of how you respond under pressure. While educators may have little control over their working conditions, they can nevertheless be role models who inspire those around them to invest in creating a positive and supportive school environment where everyone looks after their own well-being and that of their colleagues. 

  
  WHY educator well-being is important.

  Do you often feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and weary at the end of the school day?

  Do you find yourself counting down the days to every long weekend, holiday or break in your very busy week?

  When is the last time you gave yourself permission to pause and ask yourself, “What can I do to truly care for myself?” 

  The first step in building up our well-being is understanding why self-compassion – being kinder to ourselves – is important in bringing back well-being into any area of our school, classroom, or personal life.   

  Self-compassion entails being mindful, or more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This allows us to pause and pinpoint what’s stressing us out, and therefore better control how we respond to other people and other things that are happening around us. This can be challenging, especially since our nervous system is trained to execute a “fight or flight” type of response – to become stressed or to avoid difficult situations rather than ignore them, accept them, or respond tactfully. In short, when we’re not paying attention to how we feel, we’re less able to manage our stress, which leads us to become overwhelmed, sick or – ultimately – burnt out. 

  Embodying the HOW of educator well-being.

  Below is an exercise called the “Self-Compassion Break,” which you can try right now to practice being more aware and kinder to yourself in times of stress. This exercise can be found in the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) course, and is backed by research conducted by Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.

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  Self-Compassion Break

  Think of a situation in your life that’s difficult and causing you stress. Call the situation to mind, and take stock of whether you begin feeling physically stressed or emotionally upset. Now, say to yourself… 

  1. “This is a moment of suffering”
     That’s practicing mindfulness. Other options include:
     
     • “This hurts”
     • “Ouch”
     • “This is stress”
  2. “Suffering is a part of life”
     That’s realizing that suffering is a normal human experience. Other options include:
     • “Other people feel this way”
     • “I’m not alone”
     • “We all struggle in our lives”

     Next, put your hands over your heart, and feel their warmth and gentle touch on your chest. Now, say to yourself…

  3. “May I be kind to myself”
     You can also ask yourself, “What do I need to hear right now to express kindness to myself?” Use a phrase that speaks to you in your particular situation, such as:

  • “May I give myself the compassion that I need”
  • “May I learn to accept myself as I am”
  • “May I forgive myself”
  • “May I be strong” 
  • “May I be patient” 

  This “Self-Compassion Break” can be used at any time – day or night – and will help you to pause and reflect on how you are thinking and feeling. By practicing these types of exercises, you can begin to meet difficult situations with self-compassion, and be strategic in how you approach your relationships with colleagues, students, and other people you interact with at work.

  ---

  
  WHAT we need to do to awaken educator well-being.

  To truly support our well-being, we need to take stock of the strengths and values that embody being well, which I call… 

  “The Seven C’s of Wellbeing” 

  Courage. According to author and professor Brene Brown, “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” If we want to make well-being a priority for ourselves and within our school communities, then we need to take a step of courage by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and ask for help when we need it. 

  

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  Curiosity. Educators these days are in love with leading inquiry-based projects with their students. Let’s flip the script by practicing inquiry on ourselves where we ask, “What do I REALLY need right now?” Self-care doesn’t necessarily mean having a glass of wine or taking a bubble bath; rather, it’s often deeper and something that takes discipline. Let’s get curious about what we really need to stay well, such as more love and connection, time in nature, or space to connect spiritually. 

  ---

  Community. This one’s relatively simple: find a team of supporters, friends, a coach, or a mentor whom you can ask for help. We don’t need to care for our well-being all on our own. In actuality, it’s important to collaborate and build community, and motivate and support each other. Educators rarely have enough time to do this, but it’s important to make this a priority as much as possible. 

  

  ---

  Clear Your Way. We need to let go of the expectation that we can do it all. We can’t. We can only do one or two things well at a given time. To improve our well-being, we need to learn to set boundaries, realize that “less is more,” and practice “going slow to move fast.” When we let go of this expectation, we also let go of things that don’t contribute to our well-being, such as low priority things on our to-do lists, unhealthy relationships, and the list goes on.   

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  Cultivating Care. Give yourself permission to care for yourself. As I’ve mentioned, when we do this in a kind and loving way, we’re better able to care for other people – including our students.   

  

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  Creating Culture. As educators, we create space for our students (and our colleagues) to feel valued and authentic. When we prioritize well-being as part of our culture – how we do things and how we say things – our actions and words become contagious and we inspire others to do the same. 

  ---

  Compassion. Lastly, be kind to yourself, and show yourself the compassion that you would to those entrusted in your care. 

  
  The Takeaway

  Educators are also caregivers, and they often suffer as a result of the emotional investment they put into ensuring other people’s well-being. They’re exhausted and can often feel undervalued in today’s culture. As professionals – and as human beings – what educators want is to be seen, heard, valued, and understood. We want to feel like we’re giving back to our schools in a meaningful and purposeful way, as well as having an impact in the lives of each of our students. While improving working conditions is a long-term effort that can be difficult for one person to change, everyone can play a role in changing how they think, speak, and act each day, and the AWE method is a great way for you to start taking your first steps regardless of the situation you may find yourself in. 

   

   

  Connect with Lisa to learn how to awaken the wellbeing of educators in your school’s culture by practicing the ABCs!  Find Lisa at www.lisabaylis.com  to learn more about upcoming workshops and retreats that she offers, or to have her speak with your staff and school.  And look for her book in the spring that dives deeper into this method

  Photo: Adobe Stock

• The Life of Teacher Moms

  10:56 AM Comments Off on The Life of Teacher Moms

  This blog post is part of a two-part series on teacher moms. 

  Ready for Part 2? Continue here. 

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  Upon coming to the end of my maternity leave after having my first child, I found myself torn between my love for teaching and my desire to be there for my newborn son. I had set my aspirations on obtaining a new teaching position close to home and in my hometown, which eventually narrowed me down to two choices: pursue a part-time continuing contract in my preferred teaching area (secondary science), or a full-time continuing contract in a less preferred yet still enticing subject.

  I DEBATED TEACHING PART-TIME TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF BEING A MOTHER AND A TEACHER

  

  The decision seemed pretty obvious at first—what early career teacher would turn down a full-time continuing contract in her hometown, especially in a large school district the size of New Brunswick? I remember going to a colleague’s retirement party and excitedly telling people how I would be taking on this new, full-time adventure in the same school where I had completed my teaching practicum only three years earlier. Yet someone at the party suggested that I might be better off taking the part-time gig to allow me extra time with my new baby boy. From that moment forward, a seed had been planted that got me thinking about my long-term professional goals and how this could fit alongside the demands of motherhood. The year I’d spent at home with my son was indeed gratifying and wonderful in many ways, yet at the same time I didn’t find it stimulating to be home alone all day while my husband was out working. I left the house regularly and had a great circle of friends, yet I missed teaching and having conversations with my colleagues about the ups and downs of teaching.

  

  I eventually took the leap and decided to take the part-time job. It probably had something to do with the chronic scarcity of available childcare spots, or the enticement of being able to teach science all the time. Or, maybe that friend at the party had an influence on me. Whatever the reason, I was fortunate enough to be able to choose to teach a full slate of science courses part-time at the school district’s adult education centre for the next seven years. The decision to take on this “smaller” job is something I’ve never regretted.

  I WAS HUNGRY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TEACHER MOMS AND HOW THEY SEEMINGLY “DO IT ALL”

  

  Ultimately, this experience of choosing between my family and my professional goals brought about some fundamental shifts in how I viewed my career. I had an aching desire to dig deeper, which led me to pursue Ph.D. research into the lived experiences of women who were simultaneously teaching and raising children of their own. Working part-time and in a setting that didn’t require the immense prep work and grading that are typically part of a teacher’s workload, I was able to leave work at work and spend my time at home being truly present with my son and — three years later — with my youngest daughter. I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity and security, thanks to my husband’s work, to work part-time. Yet, even without the additional strain of a “typical” teaching job, I nevertheless found it stressful and exhausting to meet the demands of my family.

  ---

  So I seriously wondered: How are teacher moms who are working full-time hours able to work with children all day and then come home to once again “work with” their own children (in different but no less challenging ways) — without getting overwhelmed by it all? And, on the flipside: How are female teachers without children managing their work responsibilities, and do they have different demands to attend to?

  

  ---

  I began having conversations with colleagues at our children’s birthday parties to see if I could identify any common themes in how these women, who were seemingly “doing it all,” were able to stay afloat. All of my teacher friends seemed to feel that they were neither working nor parenting to the best of their abilities. They felt like they were “sucking at everything all the time” and that they were likely the only ones having this experience, yet they continued to be able to somehow continue on in their multiple roles. How was it that so many teacher moms were feeling like they were inadequate, yet found it within themselves to keep going, to keep teaching despite continuous demands on their time and resources? In other words, how is it that so many women are able to care for children all day and all night without losing their s***?

  

  I REALIZED THERE’S A LOT TO LEARN FROM FEMALE TEACHERS ABOUT RESILIENCE — AND MUCH MORE WE CAN DO TO SUPPORT THEM AT SCHOOL

  I used my research to look at whether there are any differences between the stress levels, resilience strategies, and work-life equilibrium routines (i.e. being able to meet demands at work and at home) of teacher moms versus female teachers without kids. The simple verdict — not really. It turns out that maintaining your well-being as a teacher requires similar strategies regardless of whether or not you’re a parent. In fact, teachers’ well-being seems to depend on things like maintaining healthy relationships, keeping perspective, and taking part in healthy activities like regular exercise.

  But I’m still left with larger questions about working conditions and demands under which teachers continue to operate:

  • As people who work in so-called “caring professions” like nurses, social workers, and teachers are prone to burnout, how can schools and school districts support the caring and emotional aspects of teaching just as any other aspect of the profession that’s covered in ongoing professional development and/or occupational health?
  • What can school systems do to help support teacher well-being at a systemic level through things like policies, continuous professional development, and district-wide action plans, so that we’re not putting full responsibility on teachers to sustain their own well-being?

  I hope that by sparking and engaging in discussions around these questions, we might one day better recognize and support teachers’ work-life equilibrium.

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  This blog post is part of a two-part series on teacher moms. 

  Ready for Part 2? Continue here.

  Dr. Shirley Giroux’s Ph.D. dissertation is entitled, “Like Being Pecked to Death by a Chicken: Resilience and Work-Family Equilibrium in Teacher/Mothers.”  Check out a recap on her research here.

  Author note: All of the teachers who participated in my research self-identified as cisgender female. Except for limiting my sample to female teachers, this lack of diversity was not intentional

  Photos: Adobe Stock

• Downtime for principals?

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