Sinéad McBrearty, Chief Executive of mental health and wellbeing charity Education support, spoke to AGM on Saturday and delivered a humorous, and very well received, presentation.
“There is no one solution to the challenge of teacher health and wellbeing. There just isn’t enough money in education to do everything that teachers are supposed to achieve – that’s just the long and short of it,” she said.
“Stress has such a negative effect, on you physically. We need to reflect on the emerging data about health and wellbeing. It just is not professional to work in an environment that is habitually overworking.”
We need to ask ourselves the question, ‘How do I do this job AND stay well?
Sinéad McBrearty
Sinéad continued, “We need to ask ourselves the question, ‘How do I do this job AND stay well?’ We are always thinking about the first part of that question, and hardly ever thinking about the second part. Stoicism is not the greatest gift that the Romans ever gave us – the roads were good, the stoicism not so much. Just putting your head down and keeping going can be deeply damaging.”
“Sometimes experiencing stress is feeling wired, and it can feel good, but that doesn’t mean it’s not damaging. There is a productivity paradox, and we must change our relationship to it. We have to do this collectively in order to make meaningful change.”
She added, “Rest and recovery are not soft and fluffy propositions – they are essential elements in allowing you to do your job well while being well. We need to break out of the concept of overwork. What you all do matters enormously – you change lives.”