so about three weeks ago as the Easter
holidays were drawing to a close
I received a direct message from a
tweeter arguing that my ideas about
nourishing schools were the epitome of
everything that was wrong with the
school system and stating that like a
cancer they should be cut out as you can
imagine when faced with such strong
sentiment I felt a little rocked and I
was moved to question momentarily
whether this mission I have for
nourishing schools was in some way a
distraction whether it was at odds with
the purpose of Education and so I went
back to basics and I asked myself why
why am I here why am I still here why
did I choose this vocation of education
and the answer came back loud and clear
because over successive years in
successive schools what has been
demonstrated to me is that the thing I
can most help with is bringing
nourishment I want to provide that which
is necessary for life for health and for
growth now as a profession it seems as
though we’ve reached a stage of almost
complete overwhelm there is something so
breathless so panic ridden about the
pace of life in schools a pace to a
certain extent governed by the pace of
school policy change and to a certain
extent governed by the need to
demonstrate constant improvement within
a context in which it’s clear that we
need to do more with less overwhelm is
felt in all aspects of school life
teachers feel overwhelmed by the
constant pressure to be brilliant
teachers to be fantastic tutors to be
outstanding leaders there are frequent
discreet ADIZ of marking of lessons of
progress and alongside all of this some
of us even want to be good friends
good family members maybe even a good
parent the profession has ceased to feel
like a place in which it is safe to be
judicious in which to choose wisely to
do little but do that little well
instead it’s an acquisitive environment
it’s one in which we seek to accumulate
and many of us drown in the volume of
what is accumulated I wonder for some of
our children if this constant drive
we’ve had for embracing every initiative
that passes us by means that for them in
the classroom overwhelm is also manifest
at a much earlier age the stakes have
been articulated as being so high and
for so long that for students for
teachers for leaders failure just does
not seem to be an option we are
connected aren’t we to the next village
we are connected by the power of the
Internet to the way the next village
does things we know how well the school
down the road performed our children
know how well the child next door
performed and so for many of us there is
nothing we can do but keep striving
often failing keeps driving for more
feeling evermore the imposter and it’s
quite simply overwhelming and this is
why I come back to the idea of
nourishment to nourish is to provide
that which is necessary for life health
and growth so imagine this imagine if in
our schools educators at all levels took
steps to address their own feelings of
overwhelm paying as much attention to
this as we do to so many aspects of our
work life imagine if crucially we try to
change the culture of our schools
tipping the balance from her if you
can’t measure it you can’t manage it
culture – if you can’t manage it as a
human being you can’t manage it in other
people imagine if we were proactive
about dealing with overwhelm if we named
it if we identified it and we took steps
to try and reduce it in our
organizations imagine the excitement of
working in a school that talked about
overwhelm imagine knowing that your
leaders rather than walking away
awkwardly from your own signs of
overwhelm would walk towards you and
compassionately embrace it offer to
share your burden as well as witnessing
overwhelm in our schools I think most of
us as teachers and leaders are
witnessing unprecedented levels of
stress anxiety and overall mental
disorder as a head teacher I know that
our staff are not across the sector
always happy we read daily stories in
the papers of the challenges faced by
newly qualified teachers challenges that
have been quite quickly considering
alternative professions we hear with
regularity from experienced teachers for
whom the pressure of the job makes it
feel like it’s a job that’s no longer
worth doing we hear that there is a
shortage in the pipeline of leaders of
her teachers and the shortage is set
against almost weekly stories of had
teachers losing their jobs as a result
of the incredibly high stakes that
leadership in our sector now carries in
our schools the mental and spiritual
health of our staff meets the mental and
spiritual health of our children
children growing up in exceptional times
times that have seen rapid growth in
communication a grating communication
that means our children are almost
perpetually switched on and allegedly
connected and yet they feel so power
Dok sickly disconnected and in fact the
mental health of our children makes the
pages of certainly the educational
literature on what feels like a daily
basis the school funding crisis
underscores all of this doesn’t it in
the most challenging and upsetting of
ways setting out that in our schools we
are ill-equipped to meet the growing
disease of children growing up in the
21st century
anxiety stress depression even suicide
these are features of life in our
schools and so it’s quite clear that
across a whole range of indicators on so
many levels
our schools are not always well places
and so why do I keep coming back to this
idea of nourishment to nourish to
provide that which is necessary for life
health and growth imagine this imagine
if in our schools our leaders committed
to ensuring the mental and spiritual
health of everyone in the school
community demonstrating that mental
ill-health disorder stress and anxiety
have no place in our schools they do not
reflect the culture of our schools
perhaps with this in mind we would cue
up our inset days our assemblies our
lessons with an insistence if not an
invitation that everybody get into the
right mental frame of mind maybe we
would use the evidence from countless
pieces of research on the benefits of
mindfulness of meditation of inner work
of stillness to support us maybe those
strategies would not be cut out like a
cancer but would be applied as a healing
now the thing is we cannot manage what
we cannot manage for this to work in
schools we as leaders have to model our
own mental and spiritual well-being we
have to feel confident enough to talk
openly about the strategies that we use
the support that we gather in to
strengthen our leadership this is really
simple but for some of us in our schools
it’s really brave work and I think for
we are working in a system that has been
relatively decentralized and yet many of
us are still feeling the effects of
top-down pressure in this sense in
schools of ceaseless implementation
there are definitely freedoms in the
system and yet it’s a heavily regulated
system – we all know I’m not going to
use their name but we all know the
outcome of what happens in our classroom
we all know that our outcomes are
heavily scrutinized by external bodies
and forces
and you could argue that the effect of
the inspection regime that we’re subject
to in education has been to erode
autonomy in our sector I actually think
that autonomy has quite deliberately
been chipped away at at all levels of
the education system and also but there
has been an insistent and a pernicious
undermining of the unique gifts and
talents and riches that individuals can
bring to our school communities people
are penalized aren’t they if they fail
to achieve within a very narrow
parameter of what good looks like and
the effect of this is that our children
don’t trust in their innate abilities
and that the staff in our schools fail
to trust in their wisdom in their own
judgement we want independent autonomous
creative thinking children but we cannot
manage what we cannot manage so imagine
this imagine if as school leaders we
committed to finding opportunities to
give rise to the wisdom innate in our
schools building communities that were
rich in autonomy communities that
celebrated the individual strengths and
gifts and talents that everybody has to
offer imagine if our response to the
challenges in school funding were to tap
the resources that we have in our
schools if our response to the erosion
of services now schools was to ask our
members of school community what they
have to offer
imagine the transformative effect on
well-being for our staff to know that
not only are they are valued they are
needed they are necessary they have
something to offer and imagine people’s
willingness to want to do more with that
knowledge in mind to nourish is to
provide that which is necessary for life
health and growth
as educators many of us have been called
and we’ve been called to serve but we
cannot manage what we cannot manage it’s
our job to provide ourselves with that
which is necessary for life for health
and for growth in order that we can work
most beneficially with all of those
people around us to have the integrity
to witness the overwhelming conditions
of life in our schools and normalize
that for other people to demonstrate the
kindness that is needed to mitigate the
ill effects of stress and anxiety in our
workplaces and to commit to cultivating
the wisdom needed to bring about
autonomy these are just three ways of
nourishing our schools whatever we
choose to do we have an opportunity and
I would say a gift of an opportunity we
also have a responsibility because it
must be argued that in the times we are
in now there is no other priority thank
you
[Applause] [Music]
holidays were drawing to a close
I received a direct message from a
tweeter arguing that my ideas about
nourishing schools were the epitome of
everything that was wrong with the
school system and stating that like a
cancer they should be cut out as you can
imagine when faced with such strong
sentiment I felt a little rocked and I
was moved to question momentarily
whether this mission I have for
nourishing schools was in some way a
distraction whether it was at odds with
the purpose of Education and so I went
back to basics and I asked myself why
why am I here why am I still here why
did I choose this vocation of education
and the answer came back loud and clear
because over successive years in
successive schools what has been
demonstrated to me is that the thing I
can most help with is bringing
nourishment I want to provide that which
is necessary for life for health and for
growth now as a profession it seems as
though we’ve reached a stage of almost
complete overwhelm there is something so
breathless so panic ridden about the
pace of life in schools a pace to a
certain extent governed by the pace of
school policy change and to a certain
extent governed by the need to
demonstrate constant improvement within
a context in which it’s clear that we
need to do more with less overwhelm is
felt in all aspects of school life
teachers feel overwhelmed by the
constant pressure to be brilliant
teachers to be fantastic tutors to be
outstanding leaders there are frequent
discreet ADIZ of marking of lessons of
progress and alongside all of this some
of us even want to be good friends
good family members maybe even a good
parent the profession has ceased to feel
like a place in which it is safe to be
judicious in which to choose wisely to
do little but do that little well
instead it’s an acquisitive environment
it’s one in which we seek to accumulate
and many of us drown in the volume of
what is accumulated I wonder for some of
our children if this constant drive
we’ve had for embracing every initiative
that passes us by means that for them in
the classroom overwhelm is also manifest
at a much earlier age the stakes have
been articulated as being so high and
for so long that for students for
teachers for leaders failure just does
not seem to be an option we are
connected aren’t we to the next village
we are connected by the power of the
Internet to the way the next village
does things we know how well the school
down the road performed our children
know how well the child next door
performed and so for many of us there is
nothing we can do but keep striving
often failing keeps driving for more
feeling evermore the imposter and it’s
quite simply overwhelming and this is
why I come back to the idea of
nourishment to nourish is to provide
that which is necessary for life health
and growth so imagine this imagine if in
our schools educators at all levels took
steps to address their own feelings of
overwhelm paying as much attention to
this as we do to so many aspects of our
work life imagine if crucially we try to
change the culture of our schools
tipping the balance from her if you
can’t measure it you can’t manage it
culture – if you can’t manage it as a
human being you can’t manage it in other
people imagine if we were proactive
about dealing with overwhelm if we named
it if we identified it and we took steps
to try and reduce it in our
organizations imagine the excitement of
working in a school that talked about
overwhelm imagine knowing that your
leaders rather than walking away
awkwardly from your own signs of
overwhelm would walk towards you and
compassionately embrace it offer to
share your burden as well as witnessing
overwhelm in our schools I think most of
us as teachers and leaders are
witnessing unprecedented levels of
stress anxiety and overall mental
disorder as a head teacher I know that
our staff are not across the sector
always happy we read daily stories in
the papers of the challenges faced by
newly qualified teachers challenges that
have been quite quickly considering
alternative professions we hear with
regularity from experienced teachers for
whom the pressure of the job makes it
feel like it’s a job that’s no longer
worth doing we hear that there is a
shortage in the pipeline of leaders of
her teachers and the shortage is set
against almost weekly stories of had
teachers losing their jobs as a result
of the incredibly high stakes that
leadership in our sector now carries in
our schools the mental and spiritual
health of our staff meets the mental and
spiritual health of our children
children growing up in exceptional times
times that have seen rapid growth in
communication a grating communication
that means our children are almost
perpetually switched on and allegedly
connected and yet they feel so power
Dok sickly disconnected and in fact the
mental health of our children makes the
pages of certainly the educational
literature on what feels like a daily
basis the school funding crisis
underscores all of this doesn’t it in
the most challenging and upsetting of
ways setting out that in our schools we
are ill-equipped to meet the growing
disease of children growing up in the
21st century
anxiety stress depression even suicide
these are features of life in our
schools and so it’s quite clear that
across a whole range of indicators on so
many levels
our schools are not always well places
and so why do I keep coming back to this
idea of nourishment to nourish to
provide that which is necessary for life
health and growth imagine this imagine
if in our schools our leaders committed
to ensuring the mental and spiritual
health of everyone in the school
community demonstrating that mental
ill-health disorder stress and anxiety
have no place in our schools they do not
reflect the culture of our schools
perhaps with this in mind we would cue
up our inset days our assemblies our
lessons with an insistence if not an
invitation that everybody get into the
right mental frame of mind maybe we
would use the evidence from countless
pieces of research on the benefits of
mindfulness of meditation of inner work
of stillness to support us maybe those
strategies would not be cut out like a
cancer but would be applied as a healing
now the thing is we cannot manage what
we cannot manage for this to work in
schools we as leaders have to model our
own mental and spiritual well-being we
have to feel confident enough to talk
openly about the strategies that we use
the support that we gather in to
strengthen our leadership this is really
simple but for some of us in our schools
it’s really brave work and I think for
we are working in a system that has been
relatively decentralized and yet many of
us are still feeling the effects of
top-down pressure in this sense in
schools of ceaseless implementation
there are definitely freedoms in the
system and yet it’s a heavily regulated
system – we all know I’m not going to
use their name but we all know the
outcome of what happens in our classroom
we all know that our outcomes are
heavily scrutinized by external bodies
and forces
and you could argue that the effect of
the inspection regime that we’re subject
to in education has been to erode
autonomy in our sector I actually think
that autonomy has quite deliberately
been chipped away at at all levels of
the education system and also but there
has been an insistent and a pernicious
undermining of the unique gifts and
talents and riches that individuals can
bring to our school communities people
are penalized aren’t they if they fail
to achieve within a very narrow
parameter of what good looks like and
the effect of this is that our children
don’t trust in their innate abilities
and that the staff in our schools fail
to trust in their wisdom in their own
judgement we want independent autonomous
creative thinking children but we cannot
manage what we cannot manage so imagine
this imagine if as school leaders we
committed to finding opportunities to
give rise to the wisdom innate in our
schools building communities that were
rich in autonomy communities that
celebrated the individual strengths and
gifts and talents that everybody has to
offer imagine if our response to the
challenges in school funding were to tap
the resources that we have in our
schools if our response to the erosion
of services now schools was to ask our
members of school community what they
have to offer
imagine the transformative effect on
well-being for our staff to know that
not only are they are valued they are
needed they are necessary they have
something to offer and imagine people’s
willingness to want to do more with that
knowledge in mind to nourish is to
provide that which is necessary for life
health and growth
as educators many of us have been called
and we’ve been called to serve but we
cannot manage what we cannot manage it’s
our job to provide ourselves with that
which is necessary for life for health
and for growth in order that we can work
most beneficially with all of those
people around us to have the integrity
to witness the overwhelming conditions
of life in our schools and normalize
that for other people to demonstrate the
kindness that is needed to mitigate the
ill effects of stress and anxiety in our
workplaces and to commit to cultivating
the wisdom needed to bring about
autonomy these are just three ways of
nourishing our schools whatever we
choose to do we have an opportunity and
I would say a gift of an opportunity we
also have a responsibility because it
must be argued that in the times we are
in now there is no other priority thank
you
[Applause] [Music]
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