Creating The Conditions That Support Our Wellbeing In The Classroom - Part 2: Purpose and Emotional Culture

 

In my last post I focused on the first part of a hunch I have about how we can maintain and sustain our own wellbeing and resilience. My hunch is:

Your wellbeing is more likely to be strong if you have strong, productive relationships with students and they feel engaged in their learning because it is meaningful to them, and that you can find meaning in your work.

The first part focuses on you creating the conditions that allow for strong, productive relationships and on you designing learning in ways that engage students. 

The second part of my hunch/hypothesis focuses on the absolute importance of you finding meaning and, dare I say it, joy in your work.

I’ve tried to capture the hunch in the following diagram and the last post focused on the first part of my hunch (strong relationships and student agency): Relationships.

In this post I’ll focus on the last part of my hunch and explore the elements of Purpose and Emotional Culture:

Your wellbeing is more likely to be strong if you ……. can find meaning in your work.

First up: Your deeply held beliefs about learning must drive your practice.

This part of my post is driven by the findings from research which concluded that alignment of purpose with personal values and associating meaning with work has strong links to improving satisfaction with life. If you go to work each day knowing what drives you, knowing that you are making a difference, and purposefully creating conditions to experience positive feelings and avoid negative feelings then your wellbeing will be much stronger than if you are not.

Let’s have a look at going to work each day knowing what drives you.

I use the Circles framework which is the most powerful way I know to do this and it can truly align what you do, your habitual practices, with what you say you value.

This tool requires you to identify what your core, deeply held beliefs about learning are and for each one go through this process. You write it in the centre circle. You define it (see left box) as these beliefs can have many different meanings for different people. Then you give your reasons for this belief to make it more than a reckon. Once that has been done you move to the second circle and consider some guiding statements that stem from that core belief and will drive what your teaching practices will be. It’s then, and only then, you move to the outer circle and determine what your practices will be.

A school I have been working with came up with the following for their belief that excellent teaching and learning requires a focus on Warm and Demanding Relationships.

They have a definition, they have stated why they value it and can quote the research they went through to come to this belief so that it is more than just a reckon.

They settled on these 3 Principles or Guidelines - I like starting them all with I/We will look for ways to…, and then they settled on some practices. The outside circle will be added to quite frequently while the inner 2 circles are more set in concrete.

You can do this exercise with whatever your driving beliefs are whether it be that learning must be authentic, and/or it must be inclusive, and/or it must be personalised. If you don't actually centre your beliefs in the centre and then work out to your practices the likeliest outcome will be non-alignment between what you believe best drives learning and what you actually do to support learning.

So let’s now have a look at the second part which has you purposefully creating conditions to experience positive feelings and avoid negative feelings.

Studies show the significant impact emotions have on how people perform tasks, how engaged and creative they are, how committed they are to their organisations, and how they make decisions. In most cases, it’s not what you do, but it’s how you are feeling about what you are doing that is most important.

And if you are a leader and you are wanting to lead people through change you must address the emotions and feelings you want your people to experience and those you want them to avoid. Without doing that you will fail.

But we’re not all leading others. At the very minimum each of us must know the emotions we must feel to be successful in our work and the emotions we must avoid. From that point we identify critical actions or steps we take every day to promote the desired emotions and to reduce and/or manage the undesired emotions. Let’s look at a way of doing that.

I invite you to complete the following exercise:

Draw up the following table:

For the Desired Feelings choose 3 words from the following:

Do the same from the next table for the Undesired Feelings:

Now complete the 3rd and 4th sections. This gives you an opportunity to take control. What will you purposefully and habitually do every day to promote the desired feelings and what will you do when you notice the undesired feelings emerge?

Now you have a little guidebook that can act as your prompt so you can increase the likelihood of the desired feelings and manage the undesired. You can take control.

I hope that this can help to bring to life that second part of my hunch:

Your wellbeing is more likely to be strong if you ……. can find meaning in your work.

In my last post I concluded by encouraging you to:

Be warm & demanding

It must be both - locate yourself firmly in the north-east.

Allow for more, not less, student agency

See yourself as a learning designer and invite your students into the learning design process. The more challenging the student is (think Passenger, think Resister) provide for more agency.

 

I’d like to finish this post by encouraging you to:

Understand your sense of purpose and driving beliefs and bring them to life through your practice.

Make use of the circles to do this at an individual level, or a team level, or a whole school level, or what about at a national, system level? Imagine that!

Cultivate the emotional foundations of your work

Create the conditions that promote the desired feelings for you and your students.

Know what steps to take when undesired feelings emerge for you or your students.

Your wellbeing is more likely to be strong if you have strong, productive relationships with students and they feel engaged in their learning because it is meaningful to them, and that you can find meaning in your work.