 Efallai, ddigon, i'w ddigon i'n dweud ei wneud yn gyffredinol yn ysgolwg. Yn ymgyrchu'r ddweud, i'n ddweud ei wneud yn eu ffordd, yma'r ddechrau'n ffordd arna'r gweithio. A fydddech chi ddweud yw'r ddweud, mae'r ddweud i chi ddigon i ddweud eich gwrdd, Over the last few days, while I was trying to find out what the issues are that you're facing right now so that I could tailor this session as best as possible. So when you download things from our site or you book onto things, then often you're asked to provide your phone number and sometimes I will use it to call you and ask for your input. So thanks ever so for those of you who did take those calls and helped me with this. So thank you ever so much to everyone who's come along today. It looks like we have got quite a mixture of people, mainly senior and middle leaders, which is kind of where I've broadly pitched the content, but we've also got some governors, support staff, teaching assistants and teachers and others as well here. So those breakout rooms should hopefully be a really nice opportunity for you to begin to explore some of these ideas a little bit there. If you're in a group watching this, then do feel free just to take this discussion offline during those moments if you'd rather not join in. And as Sophie said, not a problem if you can't put your camera and your microphone on, but particularly in those breakout sessions, if you are in a position to do so, it really does kind of add to things. So staff wellbeing, this is a massive issue at the moment, and I have had so many of you come to me saying I'm really, really worried about my staff. I think there's a significant issue around kind of burnout, stress, anxiety, worry, lots and lots of people who feel that staff are really struggling. It's absolutely understandable. This is a notoriously tricky time of year in schools in particular always, and this year has not been a usual year. So we're not surprised by what we're seeing, but that doesn't mean to say that we shouldn't be looking to proactively do things about it. So I wanted to pull together just a few really simple ideas of things that are working in the current situation right now. These might not always work, but right now these are things that people are telling me are working well for them. As always, with the things that I'm sharing today, take away from it what makes sense for you, adapt it for your setting, use what you think will work and ignore the bits that don't feel like a good fit for you. We're trying to meet the needs of a whole range of people here. We've got people who are working in nurseries and people right up at college and beyond as well. So, you know, there's not a one size fits all, but I've tried to share some ideas you can easily adapt. Before I go into the four ideas, the first thing is my continual plea that you please look after yourselves first. So I have had a lot of heads and deputies on the phone and email to me saying I'm worried about my staff. What can I do to help them? And if you do nothing else, then the number one thing you can do to help your staff is actually to prioritise your own wellbeing. Remember that in all that you do, in all that you say, in all the ways that you behave, you are a role model to your staff and to your wider community because this isn't just about staff, it's about the students and the families as well and you are role models. So it can be difficult to prioritise our own self care. But remember that when we do that, when we show that this matters to me, looking after myself is important, I'm going to make the time, the effort, the energy to do that. You give others permission to do the same and you cannot pull from an empty cup. I feel this is a point I labour and make far too often, but I couldn't start without first saying that and something just to think about. Many of you in the room today are leaders and the buck stops with you and that can feel a bit lonely. And so something just to go away and think about today is who are you able to go to? Who is your support network? Perhaps you know other people who are in a similar role in another school or another setting, who you feel able to talk to. Perhaps you make good use of the Education Support Network, who are brilliant and who I just learnt today offer supervision, which I wasn't aware of before, and I'm going to try and get some information from them about that. So their counselling line is free. I assume the supervision comes with a cost, but I don't know. I don't know the detail. If anyone does know and would be happy to talk about it or their experience of using it, do put a note in the chat and we'll come to you later. But yes, you might make use of something like the Education Support Partnership. The other thing that I would be thinking about is how your governors can help you. So I've had lots of governors speak to me saying we're worried about our school leaders. We want to help. We're not sure how. And sometimes actually having a governor as a listening ear, someone who you can talk to about the things that are worrying you and uses a bit of a sounding board can be really helpful here too. So those are some things to think about before we go into the four ideas. And sorry for getting on my soapbox, but you matter to and you must look after yourselves first. So first first things first. The first idea of the four is about encouraging blocked downtime. And this is an idea that I've been exploring quite a lot lately, which is about the blocking of our time. And those of you who follow me on YouTube will have seen me share this idea recently. It's something I've been experimenting with in my own life. And I've had really good feedback from a whole range of different people who've used this idea. Now, the idea of time blocking isn't a new one, but it's usually used as a mechanism for increasing productivity. So it's something we normally use in a work context where we say, you know, that I'm going to block out this hour for this task. And for that time, I am going to be indistractable. I'm not going to be drawn off on other tasks. I'm on do not disturb. And I'm just going to really focus in on this. And I've taken that idea because I like it and I've always found it very useful in a work context. But I've looked at how we can apply that to our downtime. Because historically, I've been encouraging schools to look at things like communications protocols and saying things like after X o'clock, you know, we don't answer email. We don't expect to be available by phone. We're kind of on off duty mode. But that has limited effect at the moment where we've turned into this very much 24 seven culture more now than ever before. And actually there are all sorts of different times when we feel we might be needed and it is very difficult for us to step away. And it's always difficult for leaders to do that in any case. And so here by blocking our time, instead of saying, you know, essentially we have working and non working hours, we take focused periods of time and say, this is my downtime. So you might encourage still that kind of communications protocol, but what you're very specifically saying here is, I don't know, between the hour seven and eight in the evening, for example, this is my focused downtime. So not just that email is off and phone is off, but that you're focusing this as kind of golden time. This is time where for me, I am focusing on family or doing things just for fun, just for me and where I'm turning off not only work, but also the news because the news is although more positive now than it has been, it can feel a little bit relentless. So time blocking, this is something that can work for all staff at all levels, but really blocking that downtime and thinking proactively about what would we do with that golden time? Who are the people we would choose to spend that with or what are the activities that we would want to engage with? What are the things that we can do just for fun or as part of our personal development? If that is the thing that we find that we get enjoyment from, how can we spend that time in order to help ourselves to reset and to restore? In terms of making this work, there are a few things that we can do. One is about leading by example. So if we're suggesting this to our teams, to the line managers, to the staff within our school, if we're saying, you know, it'd be really good each day just to have half an hour or an hour, which is blocked out is, you know, your absolute downtime when you're completely uncontactable and you're focusing in on these golden activities, suggesting that you're going to do the same, letting people know when that time is for you. And it's important that people communicate those times so that other people know that they're not reachable at those times and letting people know what you would choose to do with that time as well. So in our house, that is often, if it's a day when I need quiet and I'm autistic and I often do need quiet, I might be playing piano or going and sitting in a window and knitting. If it's a day when I can manage more peopleing, then I might spend that time doing things like playing board games with my children. Board games for us has been a really brilliant way of having downtime together as a family. It's a good way to kind of focus that time, take the children away from their screens and get us focused on something other than the world at large. We can encourage staff to make a commitment to blocking that time out. So when we put this actually in our calendars and we make a commitment to it, that can really help. And having that as a regular commitment, again, makes it more likely that we will be able to fulfil that commitment. And when we tell people about any commitment that we make to anything, we're more likely to actually kind of follow through on it. So encouraging staff to actually block that time, make a commitment to it and share it and tell people what they'll do. The other thing that we can do as leaders, as managers is to take an interest in what our colleagues are doing in that time. And that also sort of feeds into our other kind of five ways to well-being, one of which is connect. And when we stop and we ask our colleagues, what do they do in that time? We're basically saying what are your passions, your interests, your hobbies? What do you choose to do when you don't have all the other passions on you? And often this can be a really nice way to build rapport and relationships with people as well. It's also something I really encourage when we're looking to relationship build with children. It's actually understanding if they could do absolutely anything for an hour, what would it be? Where would they go? What would they do? Who would they be with? And the things that people choose to do in those times can often tell us quite a lot about the things that make them tick and can really help to build and cement those relationships. OK, I'm going to leave that idea with you to take into your breakout rooms for a moment. And so the question here to discuss in your breakout room, they feel free to go off track if you wish to. If you were to block half an hour golden time each day, what would you do with it? When do you think you might be able to find that little bit of time just for you or for you and your family? What would you choose to do? So if you could chuck us into our breakout room, Sophie, and leave people to discuss that for a moment. Do you feel free to share any thoughts, ideas, questions that came up in the chat? I am going to respond to any questions on this and other topics at the end specifically. But I am also very happy to share thoughts, ideas on the way through. Also, brilliant always if you've got ideas of resources and things that you would like to share. And thank you to Laura, who said that she shared my give yourself permission video with her staff. So this was, I was leading a session week or so ago with carers about their own well-being. And one of the questions that was posed at the end was, as carers, how can we give ourselves permission to look after ourselves as well as the people that we're looking after? Because all the ideas in the whole session were about self-care. But they were just saying it's very hard to give myself permission. And so the video was really essentially a summary of my response to that question, which was that when we give ourselves permission to exercise good self-care, we can actually flip that and look at it from the point of view of the people that we're caring for. Because in caring for ourselves, we're enabling ourselves to be the adults that the adults or children around us really need. We're not able to fulfil that role as well when we're very tired or we're undernourished or we are very stressed and anxious. So self-care is really important so we can be who we need to be to everyone else. Jenny, we all mentioned how we miss social contact, even if working in schools staggered lunch and breaks mean little contact. And actually number three was going to be about connection, but I will bring number three to number two because I'm in charge and I can do whatever I like. So let's go with that. So point three, which now becomes point two, is around enabling connection and kindness. So when we were thinking about the four ideas, I think we'll make a really big difference to staff wellbeing right now, thinking about how do we facilitate connection in the current climate has become really important. I think we maybe thought that when we returned to school and college that we would feel that sense of connection that we'd really, really missed when we were in that bigger period of kind of lockdown earlier on in the year and we all felt sort of isolated and maybe connected virtually, but not actually. But what I'm hearing from colleagues in school is almost that it feels more lonely because you're in the same building on the same site as your friends, your peers, your colleagues. But either you're in separate bubbles and so you're not able to mix or just simply that you have so many other tasks now that you wouldn't have usually have had to do, which are taking up a lot of those breaks and lunch time. So you might be, for example, in your breaks and lunch going and cleaning and making sure that you're keeping all of your students safe by ensuring that your space is kept clean and that you're meeting those requirements or thinking about extra organisation of resources and those sorts of things. So it seems that there are quite a lot of additional tasks that have come on board, essentially, which take up time. So there's a real lack of connection right now. There's not the time or it's not safe to actually physically be together. So although we're back in sight together, there is that feeling of isolation, that feeling of loneliness. So one of the things that as leaders, we can be thinking about in order to promote those well-being within our teams is thinking, how can we support connection between our staff members during these times? And this will look different for different teams and in different settings and depending on what's feasible within your team. But things that have worked well for other people, things that ideas have been shared with me, has been budding up members of staff so that they might regularly call one another and check in with each other. And this doesn't need to be that line managers are calling their teams, although there's obviously a really good place for that. And it's important that we are checking in and making sure that our team members are OK. But actually, one of the things I've heard from many schools is that almost sort of slightly random assigning of buddies within the staff can work really well and just having someone pick up the phone and say, just calling to see how you're doing and almost just sort of having the chance to shoot the breeze with someone who kind of gets it can be incredibly helpful. You know, I've heard really, really nice feedback about that. So thinking about budding, budding colleagues up. The next thing is around when we're holding our meetings, often they're happening online now like this. This feels very familiar to all of us now, doesn't it? And when those meetings happen online, what we miss out on often is the chat before and the chat after and the little bit of silliness that might happen and catching up with each other and thinking about how can we actually facilitate a little bit of that connection that would normally have happened. So we're often very, very focused, very, very on task when we have these online meetings, but thinking about how can we build into the agenda space for a little bit of connection? And one of the things I've been thinking about here is how we can use questions to break the ice and connect people. So in the same way that I might do if I was running a training session with a few of you for the day, we might start the day with a slightly sort of funny or searching question so we could break the ice a bit, get to know each other a little bit. Those kinds of questions can actually work really well even in amongst teams who know each other relatively well just to get people talking. So in the notes, I put a list of suggested questions here. And you could do anything and actually asking different team members to come up with a question each time can work really, really well too. But things like if you could pick up a new skill in an instant, what would it be? What are you reading at the moment? What was your favourite band in school? What do you wish you spent less time doing? Although we might, whether we want to ask that, we want to make sure we're happy for an honest answer. One, I'm going to use in the training session. I'm running on Friday. What is the best compliment you've received recently and what do you want to try for the first time in the year ahead? And I've put other questions in there. This is also something that colleagues I interviewed recently for my podcast who were talking about restorative practice. They talked about having this practice of always starting a meeting with a question that everyone has an opportunity to answer and to feel heard by all colleagues regardless of hierarchy and that really kind of broke the ice and built that connection and how having that as a regular practice, even in more normal times, they encouraged that as something that had worked really, really well. So that's something that could work well. Another thing that can help in terms of enabling that connection is thinking about where it's possible and safe to do so, perhaps sometimes walking and talking. So you might not be able to sit and meet in a room together, but perhaps for things like one-to-ones, you might safely be able to do that outside, perhaps having a walk whilst doing it. The other thing is that when we are talking about tougher stuff or having slightly more difficult conversations, that actually the action of walking alongside, so we're doing, but we're also not facing each other, face on, can mean that those conversations are better facilitated and that can really aid connection as well. Some colleagues have said that there's been really good use of things like WhatsApp groups and other kind of group technology. I personally hate them, but I know a lot of people have found these to be really good ways to stay connected, so we might encourage colleagues to make use of those kinds of things. I maybe hate them because I'm a mum, and so I end up in WhatsApp groups of mums, and mums are wonderful, but sometimes we have different priorities at different times in the day and I'm not too worried about someone's missing jumper when I'm trying to focus on writing, for example. I'm not great at those groups, but then I am also autistic and small talk is not my thing, and I think WhatsApp groups really lends itself to that fun small talk touching in with people, which is actually the thing that many people are missing, so you might have ideas for how that might work. The other thing that some leaders have told me has worked well in their schools is thinking about actually appointing someone whose role it is to try and foster connection and kindness, and giving them a little bit of time and a little bit of budget, perhaps, in order to think about how they might do this. It doesn't need to be a lot of time, it doesn't need to be a lot of money, but particularly if we ask some of our more junior members of staff, our support staff are often really imaginative about some of these kinds of things, and we allow those ideas to come from within our teams rather than always dictating them from the top down, and then that can often be, we can see some really creative ideas coming up through there. So let's have a moment again to our breakout rooms and thinking about how within our schools can we enable that social closeness that we're looking for despite physical distance? What might that look like in your school or your setting? In faces, which I hope means that you're finding the breakouts helpful. They're a real marmite thing, some people love them and some people hate them, but I think that I find them a useful thing when I'm attending. It's really nice to be able to explore these ideas and think about how it would work for you, and sometimes just helps us feel a little bit less alone in our travels as well. So we went in a funny order, so we did first the first idea and then the third idea. So now we're going to do idea number two, which is about enabling mastery. If you have thoughts or questions that you want to share from your past breakout room, do pop them in the chat and we will come to them. But now we're going to think about enabling mastery. So when we're thinking about how we promote staff wellbeing, one of the things that we often forget is that actually feeling good at your job and competent in your role is one of the key things that makes us feel good. So we have chosen to work within our profession for a reason and helping people to continue to identify with that reason and to feel that they are doing their role as well as they can be and that they're being developed and helped and supported to meet the changing needs of their role, particularly at times like the moment, can make a really big difference. What I'm hearing at the moment from colleagues is that they don't feel this mastery and that's understandable. So much has changed. We're doing things in a different way than usual. We are finding many schools telling me that behaviour is a real issue at the moment for all sorts of different reasons, but so colleagues might not be feeling that sense of mastery if they are experiencing more low or indeed high level disruption within their classes and the groups that they're working with. And also there is just so much general uncertainty about what is happening with regards to things like exams and so on and so forth. And there's not a blanket answer to that because I know we've got people from all sorts of different places attending today and this is different in the nations in the UK and different again in different countries. But there's a lot of uncertainty and so it's difficult to feel that sense of mastery. So we need to be thinking as leaders, firstly about how can we be agile in identifying the issues that our colleagues are facing, what are the things that make them feel less good at their role at the moment and what can we do to be supporting with that? Sometimes helping colleagues just to realise that everyone else is facing the same challenges can actually help a little bit here. And certainly we've run sessions where we've done things like bring together lots of sencos. We had one in the summer, safety will remember this, we ran a kind of ad hoc session for sencos in the summer and just bringing them together and all these sencos, suddenly realising that all the other sencos were facing the same challenges and that they were all really struggling and not knowing how to make best use of their TAs when they came back. They didn't know what to do about resources. There were all these common issues and just coming together and knowing that other people were facing those same challenges instantly seemed to make everybody feel a bit better. And that can help that sort of solidarity in that sense that we're walking alongside each other and facing similar challenges can help. Other things that can help here is if we can identify where there is good practice happening within our staff and thinking about how we can cascade and share that, perhaps looking towards things like buddying, mentoring and coaching. At the moment it's important to acknowledge that more than ever our existing hierarchies might not be the best way to look to expertise. So right now some of the best expertise within your school, within your organisation, which will help staff to work out how to manage the current situation will come from some of your most junior on paper members of staff. So people like your teaching assistants and your learning mentors, your other support staff, your school nurse if you have one. These are the kinds of people who know how to support our students and indeed colleagues through the sorts of things that we're facing right now. So we might be looking to them for advice, guidance, a bit of coaching, mentoring and support for how to approach the situation right now. And it may well be through learning and sharing of resources and ideas from some of those support staff colleagues that we can enable our teachers, leaders to feel a bit more mastery in their role at the moment. Some of the particular challenges that people are talking to me about are not knowing how to support students who might be finding it difficult being at school, higher levels of anxiety. There's lots of loss, separation and those sorts of issues going on as well. And again, we are largely having to step into the breach and support students with those sorts of issues which we might normally refer on. So again, if we're able to give people a little bit more confidence in how they manage some of these conversations and these sorts of issues, that can make a really big difference. And you have that expertise almost certainly within your school already. It's just about finding it and finding an appropriate way to cascade and share that knowledge, that understanding. It can be helpful to actually formally audit or survey your staff to get a real feel for what the challenges are that they're facing because I'm sharing the generic picture, the kinds of things that I'm hearing about, but it might be very different within your specific setting. So it's really worth hearing from your staff what's going on there and making sure that when you do that, that you're hearing a genuine variety of voices as well. And remembering that where we're trying to build knowledge and understanding of our colleagues, we don't necessarily have to do that in the way that we've always done it. So you don't have to wait until your next inset day or until we've got a twilight session. Actually sending people a five minute video or recommending a chapter of a book or giving them the contact details of a colleague who's very good at that thing and asking them to catch up on Zoom. These are all things that are really good to CPD. CPD doesn't have to look like it always has looked if that makes sense. And the other thing there is just to think really carefully as leaders about what you're going to do with that January inset day assuming that you have that day set aside. Some people haven't worked out what they're doing with it yet and don't panic if that's the case for you. Many people I'm talking to haven't worked out the answer to that yet, but some of you will have had this set in stone for some time. I certainly often will be booked ahead like 18 months ahead for a January inset. And if that's the case in your school, I would just challenge whether what you thought you needed is what you still need now. And if not, whether as a leader you can be brave enough to say, do you know what that's not the best use of that day? Perhaps what we need to do is talk to staff, find out from them what their challenges are and perhaps think about using that time a little bit differently because things are changing very rapidly here. The final thought there about enabling mastery and thinking about training and supporting and coaching and mentoring is just thinking about how can we hear from colleagues about what's working for them and if they've done things like access good training online or read a good book, how can they recommend that to each other or cascade what they've learnt? So again, your staff meetings might not look like they normally would. So you might be thinking about what are the different forums for enabling that to happen. So let's have a think about that. And I'm going to put this out there for you as a big question for the last breakout room now is what are you going to be doing with your January Inset Day? What have you decided as a staff you feel is the very best use of that time? And what might be the questions that are coming to mind about if you're not quite sure yet what might be perhaps better use of that time? So just throwing some ideas around for that day. It's a really good opportunity to really enable staff feel mastery within their role. So, yes, share your ideas with each other on that one. OK, so the last bit and do please put any thoughts, comments, ideas, questions into the chat box if you have them. There's a suggestion in there about having a staff meeting that's not about work, which and the suggestion came from a TA. And I think that's this kind of thing that if staff make those suggestions and they come from the bottom up, really great idea. I'm not sure how well it necessarily goes down when we lead those sorts of things from the top like how people complain about having to go to compulsory yoga in order to try and chill them out and things. I think we sometimes just have to think about how we enable these ideas to come and facilitate and support the things that colleagues tell us they want rather than necessarily dictate them even if we think that these ideas are good. Yeah, thinking how to be surfaced. But I actually really like that idea of having a meeting that's that's not about work, allowing people to connect. So the final, the final of the four ideas is around building in moments for co-regulation. And this is based on the fact that at the moment there's this kind of low level anxiety rumbling through everyone much of the time. And what I am hearing is that students are less well regulated. There's a lot of anxiety, a lot of low level behavior issues going on in many classrooms. But that actually this is exacerbated by the fact that also the adults are not feeling great either. They are tired, they are stressed, they are anxious. Understandably, we are doing our best in really challenging circumstances, but it's really hard. Now, the challenge with that is that our brains are amazing things and we mirror the feelings, the behaviors, the way that those who are around us are. So one of the things I'm always teaching people about how we can take a trauma-informed approach and try and support and calm children who are dysregulated is by being swan-like and appearing calm and thinking about our breathing and thinking about lowering the tone and the pitch of our voice and really coming across in that calm, supportive way. Because when we are calm, it helps to calm the child who we are looking to bring their mood down. But the opposite is also true. And if there is anxiety amongst our children and anxiety amongst our staff, then we kind of butt off each other. And our mirror neurons mean that things kind of bubble over and it gets very hard. So the idea here is basically leaning into our amazing neurobiology, which means that we can all regulate together if we do this proactively. So the idea is that we build into our day regular moments when maybe throughout the whole school, we just take a minute or so to regulate and together we find that moment of calm. This is the sort of thing that you can do in an assembly. It's the sort of thing that you can do. It doesn't have to be in the room. It can be done virtually as well if you're leading assemblies virtually. It could be done at the beginning of lessons. Works particularly well in transitions. And it's about finding kind of routines and rituals that can be used just to bring the mood down just to find that moment of calm. And this really matters because when we're kind of, our anxiety is rising and rising and rising, just finding a moment, finding a way just to reset a little bit. And when the adults do that alongside the children, it's really good in terms of role modelling, but crucially, it also helps to calm the adults down. And that then means that the adults are more able to be that calm, in control, persistent, consistent being that the children really, really need. When we explain to colleagues that by actually participating in these kind of regulating activities, these activities designed to relax and calm us when they actually participate rather than just watch, which is what can sometimes happen when we put these things in place, actually it really benefits the children. So it helps to regulate all of us. So again, thinking as leaders about how do we lead by example if we're doing things like putting in moments of mindfulness or perhaps using a breathing technique or even just having a few minutes of calm, quiet reading, whatever it might be that works for you and your students in your setting, whether actually we can lead that and engage with it too. Great role modelling, but it will also help you to regulate yourself. A few things that colleagues have shared that's working well for them here is making sure that all classes, all staff learn a whole range of different breathing and relaxation strategies so that they can work out which ones they like. So again, look to your support staff. They will have oodles of resources and ideas of different strategies here. So the kind of things they're normally using with your anxious or autistic children are the kind of things that all of us can benefit from right now. And they will have tons of ideas and probably lots of lovely resources they can share there. So look to them for these ideas. You can think about having students lead some of these activities. So again, this is the sort of thing where sometimes students might even go and do their own research and come up with ideas of what you might do in that kind of calm five minutes or have you want to name it. And when we empower students to lead those moments, that can be really sort of a real boost for those students as well. But it can also mean that we're making sure that we are using activities that resonate with the kids because they've led on it here. Some schools I've been talking to have talked about having working walls or journals where students have recorded their own ideas of what's worked for them so that they're able to look back and access that at different times. And the other thing there, just slightly more widely around journaling, that's again something that can be a really useful activity for students is to have non-directive drawing, journaling, or play depending on what age range you're working with. And even doing that for just a few minutes can often help to sort of restore calm and can be really useful for adults as well. We don't always have to have a focus there quite often. That non-directive free writing, free drawing, or free play can help us to just work through whatever's on our mind, even if it might not feel like it's necessarily taking us rapidly in the right direction. That's something one of my colleagues at Great Ormond Street taught me was about the importance of not necessarily always understanding exactly what the outcome is of each activity we do and just trusting sometimes in the process there a little bit, and that particularly when we build this in as a regular routine, it can be really, really restorative for children and adults as well. And then the final idea here was one colleague that I spoke to this week talked about having a reset script that he used, where he basically learned particular words that worked well with his class and an activity that he would use if he felt that the mood was just beginning to tip towards not what he wanted. So where things began to feel, a little bit frantic, a little bit frenetic, things were feeling a little bit less calm and we just wanted to re-find that place of happy calm that would enable everyone to engage with their learning and with the class. And having scripts, having go to things that we do, things that we say can be super helpful because in those moments when we feel like we're just beginning to lose control of the class, of the way that things are feeling, it can be very difficult in those moments to do good thinking and problem solving and having something that we have pre-rehearsed and that we've tried before and we know works can be super, super helpful. So again, this is the kind of idea that we could look to share with our teams. And that again helps with that other idea we were talking about before of having that feeling of mastery and just acknowledging that right now behaviour is for many of our colleagues something that they don't feel necessarily quite in the same level of control of that they might normally hope to. A colleague said to me last week, it feels like every day is the equivalent of one of those really windy days when, yes, the children are always very high spirited for reasons I don't know. I'm sure there is a reason, but I don't know. So that's number four. So we had kind of four simple ideas here. Use what you think will help you. Adapt it, make it your own and you will get notes on all this. I made notes while I was preparing the course and Sophie will send these all out to you. So the four ideas we're encouraging that blocks down time. So having that golden time each day and making sure that as leaders we do that for ourselves as well. We thought about enabling mastery, making sure that our colleagues really feel that they're able to do their job well and we're identifying what the challenges are so we can support them in that. The third idea, although we did it in a different order was enabling connection and kindness thinking about how can we create that feeling of connection when people feel a little isolated in their roles right now. And then finally thinking about building in those moments of co-regulation so that we can just be resetting regularly and really keeping that feeling of calm and control. And my final thought, final challenge for you all really before we go into an opportunity for questions is just asking you as largely middle and senior leaders here but all people who are role models to the children in their care what are the things that you wish to role model? And my healthy challenge always is when it comes to wellbeing and self-care would you be happy for the staff in your team or the children in your care to copy how you're doing things when it comes to your wellbeing and your self-care? And if you wouldn't be happy for them to completely copy the way that you're doing things just asking if it wouldn't be good enough for them why is it good enough for me and reminding yourself that you are a role model in all that you do each day. So sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to stop to look after ourselves or to exercise that self-care in order that the staff within our team the children within our care have a really, really good role model that they can copy. Do you please pop your questions in the chat? I'm going to stay, Sophie and I are going to stay now for questions on this and anything else that you want to... I mean, I say anything else I reserve the rights to not answer questions I don't want to but yeah, feel free to ask your questions in the chat should you wish to. And share any ideas you have to. If anyone has anything they would like to say then again you are more than welcome to unmute yourself you can press and hold the space bar. And the other thing is Sophie if you could just pop a link in a moment when people stop saying thank you and thank you for saying thank you a link into the chat for any of you who would be interested in having a walkthrough of the website. Sophie's sister Eliza has specifically asked me to let you know that she is available to walk people through the website for anyone who wants to have a look at how our online courses work the new pathway courses that we have which are kind of... You get a CPD certificate for three to six hours depending on the course and lots of people are using those for the inset days. And yeah, and she can also set you up with a free trial for all your staff as well. So those would last through until after your January insert if you're interested. So yeah, if you wanted to be shown around the site understand kind of how it works and get yourself set up with four weeks of trial then the link is there and we'll send that through on the email as well. Okay, any questions or thoughts? Angela is asking about the give yourself permission video. Yes, it is available. Sophie, would you mind grabbing the link to that? So do you know where it is? It will be on my YouTube channel and we can add it into the end of the notes but do you maybe pop it in the chat as well for the colleague who was asking and just seeing if I put it in. Yeah, I did put it in the notes. So it's definitely in the notes. And thank you. Elaine had a walkthrough of the site today so Elaine works with lots and lots of schools up in North Tyneside and so Eliza wanted to show Elaine the site so that she could talk to her schools about it. We're really proud of the site. We've worked really, really hard on it and yeah, we now have about 130 different courses on there. So yeah, hopefully something for everyone. But yes, so yeah, do do let us know if you'd like to have a look. We'd love to hear ideas. This is Paul Fitzgerald. We'd love to hear ideas as to how governors can help support staff wellbeing, especially senior leaders who are frazzled. I've literally today just commissioned a good friend of mine called Julia who does a lot of work supporting governors to look at the role of governors more widely but specifically thinking about their role in terms of wellbeing. My kind of first thoughts on this, so for governors who are listening and the most important thing I think that you can do right now is be a listening ear. Often and leaders do correct me if you have other thoughts on this you want to share. Often I think that it can feel very lonely being a leader and having someone who you know who will non-judgmentally listen and be able to hear your ideas and perhaps bounce those around. You can be incredibly helpful. I would also urge governors who are tuning in actually to show their appreciation for our school staff at the moment and particularly our leaders. Everyone's very tired. Many, many deputies and heads who I've spoken to have not had a proper break since March. And I mean, I'm in awe of what you've been doing. It's been absolutely incredible and I think just stopping to really say thank you is very, very helpful. And the other thing I think that governors can be doing is holding leaders to account in terms of their own wellbeing. So a school I coached last year, so pre-pandemic, the chair of governors actually targeted the head who was one of those amazing heads of a primary school who did everything, every single job and they targeted the head on learning to say no. And the chair of governors regularly checked in with the head teacher to say, what have you said no to this week? And actually holding her to account in that way made her really stop and think about what she was saying yes to and what she was saying no to. And the really interesting thing about that was that in beginning to learn to say no and learning the art of delegation, she realised how much capacity, energy, enthusiasm, knowledge and skills there were within her team that she hadn't been taking advantage of before and actually she saw those who worked lower in the hierarchy than her really begin to grow. So as she learnt to say no and others stepped up and said yes, it was actually beneficial to everyone. So yeah, those are my opening thoughts but I think that could be a whole session for another day. I mean, I don't know how much interest there is from governors but I would be really happy to either run or commission a session and specifically thinking about governor's role in terms of supporting staff wellbeing. Any more questions in here Sophie that I've missed? You're very good at picking them up. So I've not seen so many questions, just a lot of thanks and how useful the training has been. Laura put in a nice comment but I think I could have some suggestion here. She said, I have used an almost scripted journal when the child refuses to engage with this. I wonder if it was too directed. Yeah, so it's always worth being flexible and trying different things. So for some people having something that's quite focused where there's quite clear asks of them can help and can be a really good starting point. Others are much happier with something that is a lot freer. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all. However, as I've said before about the colleague from Great Ormond Street who taught me so much about the power of this sort of non-directive journaling and play that actually, yeah, giving a child a little bit more freedom there, perhaps might work for that child. I think it's certainly worth thinking about. Always worth though if you're going to do that non-directive journaling or play having a think about what some prompts might be because it can be really terrifying being faced with a blank page or complete free reign to do something. Sometimes we don't quite know where to start and sometimes there it might be open questions or you might begin if it were play, for example. If I were doing play with a child, I might think about acting out a typical day and then just seeing where it goes and often simple questions like, and what happens next or how did that feel or what did that look like can be helpful. But yeah, there's not a one-size-fits-all and I think it's worth being curious and explorative in those kinds of activities. But also remembering that what works one day or what doesn't work one day, actually a child might be more ready for on another occasion. So don't think that just because it didn't work once that it's never worth revisiting. Finally there, talk to the child. Find ways to communicate with the child at times of calm about what are the things that they like engaging with and what feels good to them and that can help to give us some direction too. Any more? No, just a lot of thanks. Laura also said I'm a governor and would be interested so that's always good. A lot of thanks to the breakout rooms of the good discussions. I'm just having a look at how quickly our numbers have shot down pokey and was wondering if I should survey everyone once I've sent out the recording. That's a good idea. Oh yeah, I've completely forgot I asked you to survey. Yeah, do that when you've done the recording. Sorry if that's my bad. Yeah, no, that's no problem. It's just that I know a lot of people have a lot of things after five o'clock and lots of people have had to shoot off throughout the majority of it. And we just want to know how useful this is and if people are actually enjoying coming. Yeah, and do reply as well. So if you will drop an email to everyone and let us know what was helpful and what other sessions might be helpful and that kind of thing as well. We're real people, talk to us basically. I'm just picking up here. Helen said that her SEMH governor did a course with the Carnegie Mental Health. He regularly checks in with me to see how things are going. So that course will be, I believe, the e-learning for the lead mental health governor from Leedsbecket University. I might be wrong, but that would be my assumption there. So for, I think it's about £50. And certainly many of the schools that I coached through the School Mental Health Award did encourage their lead mental health governor to take on, to do that course and many reported it to be very, very helpful. That's right. So yes, I've heard really good feedback about that. And certainly I've worked extensively with Leedsbecket and everything I've ever done with them has led me to, yeah, it's been good. So, yeah, would be really well recommended. And that is a final thought I didn't say about governors. Having a governor whose responsibility is to lead on mental health and wellbeing, and including within that staff wellbeing, would be, yeah, something I would recommend. Details of the course. Okay, so it's the Leedsbecket University mental health governor course. I'll get a link and I'll send it, we'll send it through on the email. Cos, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you should be able to find it by Googling, but it'll be Leedsbecket University. It'll be an online course for governors and it was developed like pre-pandemic. So very forward thinking, online learning back in those days. Okay, any final thoughts, questions, ideas? I think we're maybe there. Okay, well in which case it just remains to say thank you ever so much. Those of you who are still here, you win the prize of, yeah, more of your time taken up. And yeah, hope to see you again next time. Thank you ever so much for all that you're doing. And yeah, do keep in touch with us. Let us know how we can best support you and we'll look forward to working with you again. Thanks ever so much and thank you Sophie, as ever for your wonderful.