Congratulations! You’ve made it through another year. Now put down that box of books, stow away your green and purple pens, and take a deep breath. It’s difficult to disengage as a teacher. You’re so used to being in “I have too much marking” mode, it becomes normal. However, working in one of the world’s most stressful professions, it’s important that you take some time out for yourself and relax....
Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (SEMH) issues have become the proverbial elephant in the classroom, and are now recognised in the 2014 SEND Code of Practice. It’s vitally important to notice these issues as they develop in children and to take action, as it can affect their education, future life prospects, and how they develop relationships and attitudes as they grow older....
We spend so much time focusing on the outcome of examinations and students’ results, it’s easy to forget about the impact this is having on their mental health. In this country, 80% of young people believe that exam pressure has significantly impacted on their mental health. When you consider that three quarters of long-term mental health issues start in childhood, that’s indicative of a huge problem facing today’s youth....
We are in the grip of a teacher stress epidemic. 3,750 teachers were signed off on long-term sick leave last year due to stress. That’s one in every 83 teachers, so chances are, you already know somebody who’s at the tipping point. In fact, 75% of teachers report high levels of stress, which is a significant margin over other occupations. The outcome is clear: teachers – particularly NQTs – are leaving the profession in droves....
Does anyone know how to talk to a child about grief and loss? It's a sincere question, because I certainly don't have the answer. I can only use my own experience to inform my past-self which perhaps isn't as helpful as I like to imagine. One thing I wish I had known as a child experiencing grief was that talking about it doesn't have to be awkward, and it's not something that an adult will consider to be an inappropriate topic. The amount of resources out there is heartening; I hope that other people find them useful and supportive. Heads Together...
As we enter exam results season, it's common for many of us to think back on how it felt to get our own exam results. Scared? Anxious? Excited? The system has changed over the years; O-Levels, AS Levels, Coursework, A2 Levels; these are all terms that some of us are familiar with and others not so familiar....
“I can’t do it”. Sometimes, this pessimistic four-word mantra can be difficult to brush aside. It’s all too easy to believe that the 5k run you foolishly agreed to, the 50,000 word writing challenge you signed up for on a whimsy, or even an average Thursday morning lesson with the class from hell are insurmountable obstacles, designed to waste your time and embarrass your ego. In many cases, this might be true. You can’t possibly run that far, or for that long. Yet. I can’t do it yet....
Even the most confident subject teacher can sometimes have doubts about the effectiveness of their PSHE lessons. How can you be sure that your PSHE lessons are equipping your students with the tools they need for life?...
Social, Emotional, and Mental Health education. It’s not something that’s often discussed, but, in a world where children can communicate cross-globally using small rectangles of glass and have access to a vast web of unfiltered information, the need for schools to talk about SEMH is greater than ever....
Almost a third of children aged 2 to 15 are classed as overweight or obese. That’s a staggering statistic. Children are trending towards obesity at younger ages than ever before, and this is carrying through into adulthood. In 2007, the government predicted that, if nothing was done to stop this trend, over half of the UK population would be obese by 2050. Consider that the children of today will be the adults of tomorrow, and this prediction isn’t far-fetched....