CHAPTER 1
All about well-being
Well-being: the state of being comfortable, healthy or happy
(The New Oxford Dictionary of English)
As a teacher, you are expending your energy educating, dealing with, caring for, nurturing and encouraging young people. At some level at least, you know that this is worthwhile even when the job feels overwhelming and the balance of your life needs attention. In fact, this knowledge probably has a good deal to do with why you went into the profession in the first place. Teachers often feelâknowâthat investing this energy, time and attention in pupils will bring them closer to achieving their potential. But the bottom line is that the job, and all it entails, can both sustain you and exhaust you.
If the job does exhaust you, is that just too bad? If you canât stand the pace of classroom life, should you simply leave? Is that it? Not quite! We donât live in a barbarian society where a âsurvival of the fittestâ mentality prevails. We know that âresultsâ, and all the connotations a word like that carries in our world, are dependent on a wide variety of factors, and that those who do not have a sense of well-being in their life are less able to contribute to their full potential. To ignore this is to risk immense loss. Loss to ourselves, to those we teach, to our communities and, ultimately, to the world.
Bringing this right down to its most basic level, it would not be outrageous to recognise that the well-being of the teachers in our schools is intimately connected to pupil performance. Even if we only partially believe this to be true, healthy practices which foster well-being need to be embedded deep within the culture of a school.
But what exactly is this supposed key to success?
The following is intended to serve as a brief introduction to the notion of well-being and its various components. Focus, both implicit and explicit, will be given to each element as appropriate throughout the book.
Well-being defined
Remembering ourselves and our power can lead to revolution, but it requires more than recalling a few facts. Re-membering involves putting ourselves back together, recovering identity and integrity, reclaiming the wholeness of our lives.
(Parker J Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p.)
Well-being is a vague expression, bordering on the indefinable, yet claiming an increasingly dominant place in our psyche. We may not fully grasp all that it entails, but we know we want to make sure we get our fair share; it sounds that good. Thereâs even a âwell-beingâ aisle in most supermarkets now, and a well-known florist is selling a âwell-being bouquetâ, so if commerce is jumping on the bandwagon it must be seeping into the public consciousness!
Well-being requires harmony between mind and body. It implies a sense of balance and ease with the myriad dimensions of life. When we feel a sense of well-being, we are not under-stimulated and bored, nor are we suffering under the burden of excessive stress and pressure. We have a sense of control over our work and even over our destiny in life.
Historically, the mind-and-body connection has been rejected by some aspects of modern medicine. Yet, increasingly, studies are showing the extent of the influence that the mind can have over physical and emotional dis-ease. If we want to consider our personal well-being, we have to recognise that it is not simply the opposite of stress, just as health is not the opposite of sickness. There is far more to the concept than that.
ACTION Whatâs your immediate reaction to what you have read so far about the notion of well-being?
Do you have any instinctive feelings about the degree of well-being that you are currently experiencing in your life?
EXAMPLE BREAKING DOWN
For many years I have worked under the illusion that because I was healthy, needed very few days of sick leave and could always be relied on to cover other peopleâs classes I was somehow stronger than my colleagues. I couldnât understand why so many of them seemed to limp through each term. But, then, I led a relatively uncomplicated life. It was only when my mother died that the veneer of âcopingâ that I had perfected over the years started to crumble and I saw overwhelming problems in just about every aspect of life. I should have paced myself differently throughout my career. I should have looked not just at me the super-efficient teacher, but at me the whole person. Yes, Iâm still a teacher, despite what can only be described as a breakdown; but, if you were to ask me what well-being is, I could answer with real knowledge and experience of what it feels like to be so dangerously out of kilter. Itâs not necessarily the strongest physically and emotionally that never need time off. Itâs not necessarily these people who are experiencing well-being.
(Secondary teacher with twenty yearsâ experience)
Defining the scope of well-being
The scope of well-being is wide and deep, and may well vary depending on the perspective from which you are exploring the issue. For the purposes of defining the scope of well-being both in the classroom and in the wider context of life, we can divide it into the following sub-categories:
- physical well-being
- emotional well-being
- mental and intellectual well-being
- spiritual well-being
The needs of each sub-category are explored implicitly throughout the book, and advice on promoting each one within the context of school life is given. However, while the intrinsic elements of well-being can be extracted from the concept, itâs important to take a holistic approach to it, which is why there are no systematic prescriptions to be found here!
Physical well-being
Physical well-being encompasses all aspects of our physical being. The shape weâre in, our ability to resist disease, the exercise we get, the food we eat, and so on, all contribute to our physical well-being. It is far more than simply the absence of sickness or disease.
In many ways, physical well-being is our ultimate challenge. Not only is modern life so hectic that time can rarely be found truly to focus on our physical bodies and the needs we may have, but we are also under attack from toxins and pollutants in our food and water and in the air we breathe.
Yet it is important not to feel that we are powerless in determining our physical well-being. One of the most significant factors in our physical health is the finely balanced relationship between mind and body. We can categorise different aspects of well-being, but we cannot lose sight of the deep interrelationships between them.
EXAMPLE A NEED FOR EXERCISE
At a recent doctorâs appointment I was asked how much exercise I got. I burst out laughing. Iâm a reception teacher, so itâs hardly as if I do a sedentary job! But the fact is Iâve put on weight since Iâve been doing this job and I was sitting in front of my GP who I knew was about to tell me to join a gym or start jogging in my rare spare moments. He actually used the words âphysical well-beingâ and told me Iâd be able to cope with my work more effectively if my general levels of fitness were improved. I had to swallow my pride and take it, but itâs very tough to hear. I feel self-indulgent even thinking about it, but the stark reality is that, if I donât keep an eye on my physical well-being, it doesnât matter how great I am with the kids, I simply wonât be around to do my job.
(Primary teacher with ten yearsâ experience)
ACTION When you consider the term âphysical well-beingâ whatâs your reaction?
Do you consider it has to take a priority in your life?
Are you able to see that itâs possible to view your physical being as separate in some way from other dimensions of your being?
Should your physical well-being receive targeted treatment?
How would you define your overall attitude to your physical well-being?
Emotional well-being
We all experience an emotional life. In fact, the way in which we interact in the world is, to a great extent, dependent upon our emotional response to the events we face from day to day.
Adults are mostly aware of their emotions but may not always be fully in control of them. They are central to the decisions we make and the way that we respond to the world. We even find ourselves dealing with the fallout from othersâ emotional responses day in, day out, especially where pupils are concerned.
While sound relationships will help to contribute greatly to the emotional well-being of all members of a schoolâs community, there must also be an appreciation of the power that emotions have in directing an individualâs life. The ability to recognise, understand and appropriately express emotions is a valuable key to emotional well-being.
Emotional intelligence (sometimes referred to as emotional literacy)
It would be impossible now to mention a term such as âemotional well-beingâ without at least tentatively exploring the work of key thinkers in the realm of emotional intelligence.
The term âemotional intelligenceâ was first coined by Daniel Goleman in 1995 in his book Emotional Intelligence. Charting the work of the psychologist Peter Salovey, Goleman identifies skills such as recognising and handling oneâs own emotions, being motivated, productive and efficient, having the ability to recognise othersâ emotions empathetically, and being capable of sustaining relationships as some of the essential components of emotional intelligence. Going back a decade earlier, itâs possible to see how these capacities are reflected in the work of another seminal writer in this field, the psychologist Howard Gardner, who tentatively identified seven intelligences:
- linguistic
- logical-mathematical
- spatial
- musical
- bodily-kinaesthetic
- interpersonal
- intrapersonal
Few teachers have received any formal training in these areas, yet some manage them very well for much of the time, whether through formal education or out of a natural affinity with the concepts involved. There is little doubt, however, that when we take this kind of development seriously there are untold benefits to be had personally as well as for our pupils in the classroom.
The team of researchers who wrote Learning by Heart: the role of emotional learning in raising school achievement concluded that:
- understanding emotions is directly connected with motivation and with cognitive achievement
- dealing with emotions helps to develop better relationships and a sense of psychological and mental well-being
- emotionally developed people are better equipped to live with difference
- educating the emotions leads to a more effective workforce
- our moral outlook and value systems are deeply shaped by our attitudes and feelings
- our sense of meaning and purpose is derived as much from feeling as from understanding
Those with physical challenges can still tutor others on how to perfect their skills as an athlete or a dancer. They donât have to be able to perform the moves themselves to know how someone else should in order to improve their expertise. Someone with weigh...
