How do you, as a teacher, foster resilience?

These are challenging times in education. The coronavirus measures were accompanied by higher workloads and more stress among teachers. Education is also dealing with a teacher shortage, the consequences of coronavirus, and burnouts among educational staff. Especially now, it is important to pay attention to teachers’ well-being. Teachers who feel good about themselves experience less stress. They are also better able to teach and support pupils effectively. This regularly comes up in conversations with educational staff, Healthy School Advisors (GSAs), and municipalities. A primary school teacher puts it as follows: “At school, you are constantly focused on the pupil, but an important question is also: how are you doing yourself? Building well-being as colleagues is the foundation.”

The teacher as a role model

Jelle Rommers teaches eighth grade. He contributed to the recently developed guide ‘Working preventively on well-being’, which provides practical tools and inspiration for teachers in primary and secondary education. Teachers are central to the guide. To support pupils as effectively as possible, it is important to consider not only pupils’ well-being, but also that of the teacher. After all, pupils’ well-being is embedded in the well-being of the teacher (van Zundert, 2017). The framework by Viac & Fraser (2020) connects teacher and pupil well-being (Onderwijskennis, 2022).

Jelle Rommers uses the guide ‘Working preventively on well-being’ at school. The guide made him more aware of the teacher as a role model: “How do you do that? Being comfortable with yourself, feeling emotions, regulating emotions, and finding words for emotions.” Jelle talks about the farewell period at the end of the school year for eighth grade. “I experience emotions too. I have to let pupils go, even though you have built a bond with them. I try to be open about this and explain what it does to me.”

Well-being within the team

It is not only about the well-being of individual teachers, but (especially) also about well-being within a school team. Teacher Jelle explains how his school team pays concrete attention to its own well-being: “When we have meetings, we initially discuss: how are you doing, what are you struggling with? And: what do you need? The feeling that you are not on your own is already helpful.”

Laura Stroo, a school psychologist affiliated with the Dutch Institute of Psychologists (NIP), emphasizes the importance of strong school teams as the foundation for good education and well-being: “What can we, as a school team, do to see how we are doing ourselves? If you are resilient as a team, pupils will also do better. If you consider it normal to talk about well-being, your pupils will do the same.”

School leaders play an important role in promoting the well-being of their staff (Onderwijskennis, 2022). For example, by providing room for meaningful professional development; giving staff a voice in decisions and changes; and ensuring that staff feel valued (Cann et al., 2021). The key question is: what does this school team, at this school, with these pupils and these parents, need at this time to meet pupils’ educational and developmental needs and achieve the objectives set? The practical guide ‘Sustainably investing in well-being’ offers schools concrete steps for this.

Think big, start small

Many schools are already working on well-being. Rather than introducing isolated initiatives or programs, it is useful to consider what you observe among pupils and the school team and how you can address this structurally. The guiding principle is: strengthen what is going well and adapt what could be improved.

You can also initiate change through small things. Knowing that we live in a time of teacher shortages, coronavirus, and high workloads, Laura offers several tips as part of ‘think big, start small’: “For example: tomorrow I’m going to make the break five minutes longer, or we’ll start the day by asking: how are you? Or we’ll spend the first 20 minutes of large meetings walking outside, and then you simply ask: how are you keeping yourself going?”