“Reminds you to keep staying positive no matter what.”
“Informative course.”
“Resilience for us and the students going forward.”
“I learnt to separate work/personal life and allow time to recover from each day.”
Situation
In line with other schools across the country, staff at AHA experience high levels of work-related pressure and demand. As a school whose aim is to “Be inspired and achieve together” the forward thinking senior management team at AHA identified the need to optimise wellbeing and staff support in order to achieve these goals. They recognised the role of resilience training in equipping staff to manage the demands they face and inspire young people to succeed.
Task
AHA identified a need for all staff to be offered the opportunity to learn and build resilience and wellbeing. In addition they wanted to provide more comprehensive resilience training to two groups:
Senior managers – with a view to supporting the development of resilient practices throughout the school
Pastoral care staff – to develop personal resilience skills to manage the particular demands they face, as well as learning how to adapt the skills to build resilience and wellbeing in students with the most need
Action
As a whole school approach to resilience was needed, we collaborated with school heads to create a programme that would allow all staff the opportunity to learn some skills and strategies for building resilience and wellbeing through an introductory workshop. We also provided our full Resilient Leadership training and Essential Resilience training packages adapted to the particular needs within school, to the senior leaders and pastoral team respectively. Group coaching was included for all participants of the full workshops to reflect, review and support the maintenance of resilient practices within the school.
Result
All training sessions were well attended, highlighting the interest in resilience across all staff groups. Participants were able to identify and work on the specific challenges they face in their roles, explore the use of resilience skills to cope more effectively and identify ways of taking the skills forward to support others. Participants identified the importance of changing mindset, flexible thinking, and ensuring better balance between work and home life as helpful outcomes of the training.