From being caught in the rain to being stuck on a train, headteachers are taking to social media to document the rigmaroles of their lives in a bid to show pupils they don’t have to be perfect.
Sally-Anne Huang, head of James Allen’s Girls’ School in London, started tweeting about the dull parts of her day under the hashtag #Headteachersreallife in a bid to puncture the impossibly perfect version of life people project on social media.
“It stands to reason that, if you are forever pursuing a false, edited ideal and trying to create your own at the same time, mental health and real happiness will often be sacrificed,” she said in a blog post.
“We get told that teachers are role models to the young people in our schools. I’m not sure that extends entirely to headteachers but, in any case, I am going to try to do things differently for a little while.
“If we believe that striving for an impossibly perfect ideal to match those edited online lives is making our students ill, then we should at least offer a more realistic alternative.”
The trend is a response to the growing concerns that overuse of social media is harming pupils’ mental health.
Last year, a report from the Education Policy Institute claimed that more than a third of 15-year-olds can be classed as extreme internet users, with online habits that could have harmful effects on their wellbeing.
Other heads have joined the campaign with gusto, tweeting about their messy houses and the trials of having children at home for half term.
Gwen Byrom, headmistress of Loughborough High in Leicestershire, tweeted that she “almost didn’t make it on time to open my own briefing” at a recent Girls’ Schools Association because she was stuck in traffic.
Vicky Bingham, head of South Hampstead High Schools, described how she was “frantically tidying tip that is our house. Work has to wait till Sunday afternoon/evening”:
Gareth Doodes, from Dover College, added: “My daughter is sick with a temperature and our children are killing each other at the end of half term. I have three days between next Monday and the end of term when I’m not working.”
