It's easy to feel overwhelmed. Every day kindnesses and mind exercises are important for wellbeing. Health and Safety Manager, Eddy Schlachter, explains.
The coronavirus pandemic has not been good for our mental health, something on which almost everyone can agree. Experts are particularly concerned about children, many of whom have expressed feelings of increased anxiety, social isolation, and depression. Never has it been more important for us to talk honestly about how the last year’s interruptions in routine and new ways of living in the world have affected the wellbeing of our families, schools, and communities.
Building resilience relies on routines, reassurance and reflection, all of which are critical to our mental health.
We all benefit from the confidence that comes from exerting control over our little corners of the world. We can remind ourselves that this will not last forever, and that we can all still grow through adversity by making progress where we can. And we can remember that even amongst the uncertainty, we have much to be grateful for, including strong networks of caring adults and a wide range of resources to support each other when times are tough.
Wellbeing is broad concept that wraps around a holistic vision of education.
Our wellbeing strategy at ACS takes a broad view of concept, identifying five areas that were defined in a 2016 paper from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD):
Wellbeing is not just the absence of disease or illness, but is more a complex combination of a person's physical, mental, emotional and social health factors which is strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
CASEL, a global leader in best practice for social and emotional learning, suggests some ways we can take care of each other in a crisis, even when we don’t know all the answers yet:
These everyday kindnesses and habits of mind are important for wellbeing. They represent the broader principles of our strategic wellbeing plan for the ACS community. Our whole-school approach is building a strong collaborative foundation that will outlast the COVID-19 crisis.
We are creating partnerships to support health, safety and wellbeing for parents, students, teachers, school leaders, senior managers, and trustees. By working with leading organisations, we are benefitting from their expertise and experience, extending the skilled and caring community of advisors, counsellors and safeguarding leads who look after our students’ wellbeing every day. We are expanding our capacity to identify people in distress by training all staff in mental, as well as physical, first aid. Our new student mental health policy looks closely at the connections between community, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion.
In the end, wellbeing is about retaining our balance in a wobbly world. Our aspiration is well-expressed in the IB Learner Profile:
For few times in recent history, have those words been so important, and so true.