Staff Matters - MindMatters

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Staff Matters - MindMatters

• Tracy Zilm
• MindMatters National Coordinator
• School Community Development
• Gateway to the Future
• ASPA 2004 National Conference
• ANTSEL Biennial Conference
• Darwin 27 Sept 2004

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Outline of todays session

• Background to Staff Matters
• Components of the resource
• Models and concepts

• Strategies from training
• Where leadership fits
• Reflection/input

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Why Staff Matters?

• Reactions from staff at conferences
• resilience, loss and grief, safety and trust,
  mental health literacy
• Discussions with individual schools
• resilient staff leads to resilient students
• MindMatters evaluation
• schools with a training development commitment
  among those who develop MM quickly and across the
  whole school
• MindMatters Plus research
• Supporting students with high needs in the area
  of mental health and wellbeing

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Impact of MM PDObservations from the evaluation
case study
  I got a lot out of the training as far as how
I relate to kids. It opened my eyes as to
awareness of what some kids are kids going
through and I think the more staff that are aware
of it and do go through the training, I think the
overall wellbeing of the school could only
benefit from it.
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One of the reasons given for implementing
MindMatters

• Concern about wellbeing and behaviour management
• number of students with mental health risks or
  disorders including low self-esteem, family
  problems, lower socio-economic background,
  depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm
  or suicidal behaviour
• high or increasing levels of disruptive
  behaviour, bullying or substance use
• truancy and disengagement from school
• impact of social change or social problems on the
  wellbeing of students and staff

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Staff Matters a series of resources
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Mental health a holistic sense of wellbeing

• Emotional and spiritual resilience which
  enables us to enjoy life and survive pain,
  disappointment and sadness. It is a positive
  sense of well-being and an underlying belief in
  our own and others dignity and worth.
• Health Education Authority, 1998 England
• Improves other health areas

J
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Mental Health Promotion
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Towards defining health promotion

• Health and well being
• Holistic
• Starting from strengths
• Aspects of health literacy involved
• Applicable to everyone
• Dynamic concept
• Skills need to be practiced
• A Positive concept rather than a neutral concept
  or the absence of ill health
• Important to think through our concepts and
  attitudes to health

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The role of health promotion in the workplace

• Occupational health and safety
• The nature of many staff roles is high demand and
  low control
• Individual staff are critical to learning
  connection
• Student well being and staff well being are
  connected

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Teachers

• Teachers cannot create and sustain the conditions
  for the productive development of children if
  those conditions do not exist for teachers
• (Bishop Mulford, 1999 Blase Blase, 2000
  Louis, 1998 Sarason, 1990 Silins Mulford,
  2002)

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The diverse professional aspects of working in a
school

• As a group each person take one of the following
  roles (and others)
• Principal
• School Nurse
• Teacher
• Grounds Person
• School administration officer
• Canteen manager
• School counsellor
• After a moment to think or write down your
  thoughts, tell the group about the role,
  responsibilities, stressors, strengths and gains
  of this role

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Individual well being

• Protective factors for teachers?
• (Based on those for students)
• Handling the demands of the workplace
• Belief in ability to cope (efficacy)
• Sense of control
• Individual disposition
• Family/personal circumstances
• Support and belonging and role models

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How can the worksite support these protective
factors?

• Your group selects one protective factor
• Is it reasonable?
• How should/could a school support this?
• Share our views

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Congruence and dimensions of health promotion
Community Organisational Collegial Professional Pe
rsonal
Need congruence between all levels
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Outstanding workplaces- 15 key factors

• Quality of working relationships
• Workplace leadership
• Having a say
• Clear values
• Being safe
• Built environment
• Recruitment
• Pay and conditions

• Getting feedback
• Autonomy uniqueness
• Sense of ownership identity
• Learning
• Passion
• Having fun
• Community connections

Simply The Best Workplaces in Australia Working
paper 88 Dr Daryll Hull Vivienne Read Dec
2003 Uni of Sydney www.acirrt.com
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The school as a dynamic system
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The school as a system of reciprocal relationships
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Starting point Reflecting on collegiality

• Think about when you commenced in your best job
  or working location.
• What role did your colleagues play?
• Talk to the person next to you about this.
• Collegiality is proposed as one of the key areas
  for health and well being in education (and
  health) and one rarely acknowledged or
  consciously activated by staff management.

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What is collegiality?

• Collegiality has dimensions of moral,
  professional structural support or enabling.
• Each of these dimensions is able to make a
  difference to self efficacy, connectedness help
  seeking for staff.
• This in turn enables performance to improve which
  often feeds back into the self efficacy loop.
• For health promotion this also means congruence
  between the systems or levels or dimensions of
  work.

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Foundations for authentic collegiality

• Staff room communications need to have some
  aspects of emotional literacy to enable them to
  contribute to a sense of collegiate and
  individual wellbeing
• Real conversations exercise

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Real conversations

• Where would you rather be?
• If you overheard a conversation about your
  personal qualities what 2 qualities would you
  want the speaker to mention?
• When was the last time your job was magic?
• If you were able to ask for support from your
  colleagues what sorts of actions by them would
  make a positive difference for you?

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Leadership and staff health and well being

• Health and well being for the leader as a person
  and as a professional
• Leadership is a critical factor for schools,
  important to walk the talk
• The leader enabling health and well being for the
  staff as a whole

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Learn Lead Succeed A metaphor for leadership
and wellbeing
Talk to the person next to you about one action
you do in each aspect
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Metaphors

• Think of the role of school leader in enabling
  health promotion
• Describe how you would see yourself
• Magician
• Fitter and turner
• Grease monkey
• Artist

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Summary Health promotion for staff

• A leadership model that includes Health Promotion
• Staff Health Promotion as an end in itself
  stress reduction, affiliation belonging, self
  esteem, coping, help seeking
• Congruence with what we offer students ie
  protective factors
• Opportunity to socialise, discuss, exchange work,
  spend time together, air opinions safely, develop
  shared understandings, work in teams, celebrate,
  mentor and feedback
• Individual acknowledgement, development

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Your ideas and input

• Models
• Frameworks
• Themes
• Design
• Delivery
• PD approaches

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Reflection
Community Organisational Collegial Professional Pe
rsonal
Need congruence between all levels
Think about one aspect of health promotion at
each level
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Leading Changesteering, not rowing

• Make time for your own personal and professional
  development
• See yourselves as designers of learning
  experiences and communities
• Develop the capacity of others
• Find morally compelling purposes for doing your
  work
• Be ruthless about your time, direction and
  energies
• Shaw, 2002