Some words become so overused the importance of their initial meaning becomes almost forgotten. 

A football manager is a “genius” for overseeing three wins out of three and, in the process, lessens the genius of Abraham Lincoln building a Team of Rivals and ending the Civil War. 

A friend who goes for a run despite some light to moderate rain and a North Easterly breeze is a “legend” and, in the process, lessens the legendary status of Rosa Parks politely refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955. 

The rise of wellbeing

Wellbeing is becoming one of those words. Modern schools now use this most important of phrases seemingly endlessly - as does discourse in a variety of other spheres; a search of Google Books shows the word has featured in print 450 per cent more frequently than it did in the late 1800s when the influential philosopher Jeremy Bentham could be said to have been a trailblazer in his understanding and usage of the phrase. 

Even since the relative modernity of the year 2000, the use of the word wellbeing has increased by 300 per cent. Wellbeing is now a cultural phenomenon, but what does it really mean in terms of staff happiness in schools?

As a school leader, thinking of staff wellbeing is now a huge component in how we as a leadership team make decisions. This represents a quantum leap forward from my earliest days of teaching; back in 2009, I recall staff wellbeing being little more than tea and cakes in the staffroom on payday. 

Now school leaders need to be cognisant of staff mental health and, at times, act as counsellors rather than just administrators. 

At my school, we use bespoke software to track and more scientifically gauge staff wellbeing on a range of issues, and the breadth of responses across two years has compounded my view that much shallow thinking still exists.

Cookies and cancel

I call shallow thinking a “cancel and cookies” approach to staff wellbeing.

Cancel and cookies approaches are the quickest, simplest way to manage staff wellbeing. 

The cancel part includes the removal from calendars of school events, professional development programmes and after-hours student clubs, for example. 

The cookies part is the seemingly endless amount of sugary treats left in classrooms and staffrooms the world over, in the vain hope that a strawberry sprinkle Krispy Kreme will make people feel valued, listened to and respected. 

Both cancelling and cookies have their place; in the depths of lockdown, the removal of an extra hour on Zoom was a welcome respite, and a Krispy Kreme is a guilty pleasure.

The joy of the struggle

But cancel and cookies fail to acknowledge the other side of human wellbeing, best phrased by Holocaust survivor and author Dr Viktor Frankl: ”What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”

And herein lies the rub.

For every coach’s cheer when the U15 football team training is cancelled, there is another colleague quietly disappointed that the chance to have an hour in flow outside, watching students improve and enjoy, has been taken away. 

For every teacher who finds the termly tray of sticky buns a welcome and sufficient thank you for a term well done, another inwardly wishes for lengthy, honest feedback on how they can improve their performance as a classroom teacher; the buns are a mere distraction from getting better at something worth doing. 

So, if we remove so many cookies, stop cancelling as often and listen instead to Dr Frankl, what else can staff wellbeing involve?

Give staff a voice 

The first element is building staff voice in decisions. The recently released Staff Wellbeing Charter from the Department of Education explicitly discusses this, and it is also interesting to note how little cancel and cookies feature within that charter. 

In order to give teachers an authentic voice, schools need leadership teams who possess humility and open-mindedness, and means heads should recruit new senior leaders who have the confidence to listen and accept gaps in their own thinking. 

Some leaders have learned the language of listening, meaning they understand that the illusion of taking on other’s ideas is important but they really are already set in how they wish to do something - the best teachers spot this quickly and the exercise becomes hollow. 

Software that helps us capture insights on staff wellbeing are more scientific ways to survey colleagues and look for common trends in teacher viewpoint and, in my current school, we frequently discuss the outcomes of these surveys and how we can implement consistently raised issues.

Find the right level of challenge

The next area is challenge, the antithesis of giving people an “easy” life. 

The pioneering positive psychologist Dr Martin Seligman called this area The Meaningful Life and one-third of the components involved in positive wellbeing - but, for school leaders, this is a hard area to get right. 

Finding that healthy stretch in an individual’s professional life can be tricky; if the challenge is too small then the individual can easily become bored and lose a sense of purpose, and if the challenge is too great then feelings of stress and overwhelm can drown them. 

As an individual to whom challenge is vital in my own workplace wellbeing, I have at times got this wrong and, for example, encouraged one of my heads of year to take on a discussion with a parent that I know will be tough in order to develop them. 

However, they have found the experience chastening rather than developmental. 

Knowing the types of challenges that are exciting to people rather than threatening is important, but also having high expectations of your teams. 

In my experience, school leaders can often aim low when it comes to how they challenge their teachers and assume cancel and cookies are all that is wanted. 

To do this is partly understandable, but also fails to acknowledge the depth of human needs - our taste buds like doughnuts, but perhaps our souls like doing things we wrestle with at first but gain meaning from in the end. It takes courageous school leaders to stretch their teachers in this way.

A Christmas event to warm the soul

Finally, to a recent anecdote.

Our school put together a Christmas dance competition, which saw students from across the high school choreograph a dance of their choice.

The student efforts were extraordinary and witnessing their bravery, imagination and glee melded with that eternal mood enhancer, music produced a kind of alchemy in our teachers.  

As the lights went up and the curtain closed, there was a kind of energy in our school auditorium I had not felt all term. I saw colleagues, some jaded by this point in the term, watching the events with that warm, satisfied engagement of the proud guardian, smiling the types of smiles that come from joy rather than fun. 

If I could have administered a happiness gauge as we all climbed the steps to leave together, I am sure it would have been at its highest all term; the tens of official staff wellbeing events I have attended or indeed led could not compete with how happy this hastily arranged student event had left our teachers in those moments. What was the alchemy?

I believe it was because it allowed teachers to see what is best about their profession, and allowed them to see it as a community.

Many wellbeing initiatives look to do the opposite in that they look to remove - physically or mentally - teachers from students and the school in order to improve wellbeing. 

Perhaps the secret to wellbeing in schools is not to get rid of school events, or sedate staff with sugar, nor manipulate them with gifts, but instead create school events that remind us jaded educators why we got ourselves into this profession in the first place.

Perhaps the secret is not to so consciously plan to manage teacher wellbeing but, instead, unpack happiness itself and remember that seeing an introverted, shy student dance untroubled by self-consciousness to Shakin’ Stevens in front of an audience of 400 will stiffen even the most cynical of teacher sinews and stir the educator’s blood in a way a KitKat Chunky and an extra half an hour in the staffroom ever could. 

Seek eudaimonic activities, not hedonism 

Like our students, we do not always know the difference between what we need compared to what we want.

A heightened awareness of teacher wellbeing is a hugely positive step forward in creating happier schools - though with awareness comes oversimplification. 

The work of Martin Seligman and others in the field of positive psychology has allowed us to better understand that flourishing humans are multifaceted - we need leisure but also purpose, rest but also work. 

Admirably, school leaders are thinking more and more of colleagues’ happiness but we need to remember that profound wellbeing is grounded as much in eudaimonic activities - those with purpose, meaning and challenge - as hedonistic ones that revolve around fun and freedom.

School leaders would be wise to listen to the wisdom of the ancients in planning their staff wellbeing approaches, and who better to finish than Aristotle himself: “Never mistake pleasure for happiness. Pleasure distracts the mind but rarely engages the soul.”

Andy Bayfield is assistant principal at St Joseph’s Institution International School in Malaysia