Books, articles, products, advice and opinions on supporting your mental health are just EVERYWHERE. It is enough to make you feel guilty for feeling stressed, anxious or low!

As educators we are really good at seeing the importance of supporting the mental health of our pupils and our colleagues, whilst being completely cavalier about our own mental health. I think the self-talk that delivers this must go something like this – “I know this stuff, so I am determined to be there for everyone who needs me. I am a resilient professional and just need to get on doing the best job I can. So I will be just fine!”

In response, this humble addition to the published mountain is designed to be for you. Yes YOU!

You can do any of it alone, with family and friends or even with your class(es). Or you can ignore it and enjoy the smugness of your own self-determination. (That’s always good for your short-term wellbeing, but beware of the long-term consequences.)

Here they are: 10 things you can do for 10 minutes or less to support your mental health.

1. And breathe!

When things get stressful or challenging: STOP. Take a few moments to take four slow, deep breaths: slowly in and slowly out. You will feel your shoulders drop and become aware of the stress impacts in your body. You are on your way up.

2. Doodle or colour

Important not to use this one as a strategy to escape from the boredom of meetings, tempting though it might be. The point here is to get absorbed in the creativity of the moment so that you recharge your capacity to think.

3. Identify or indulge in creativity

Do you have an established creative outlet that brings you joy? If not, take 10 minutes to thought-storm options you would like to explore; but if you do, then spend 10 minutes contributing to it. If it is writing – try a stream of consciousness. If it is gardening - weed, dead-head, rake, plant or simply stroll in that garden. Or it could be a small contribution to your next project in any creative pursuit - origami, stone-painting, letter-writing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, woodwork. I know – it is only 10 minutes. But every little action moves your project forward and reminds you of your interests and beautiful creativity.

4. Look at the view

I mean it. But really look! In a way you don’t usually look. From a different window, from a new angle or searching for a specific filter (light, colour, shape, structure…). You could even get up close and personal to tree bark. I’ve never met a bark I didn’t like.

5. Listen!

We rarely spend time, with our eyes closed, listening intently to every sound around us – inner sounds (neck creaks, heartbeats, breathing…) and outer sounds (rain, wind, birdsong, leaves in the wind, trees creaking, distant voices, engines...).

6. Body roam

While we are talking about closing eyes – take a couple of deep breaths in and out and then take your focus on a journey around every part of your body. As you roam, tighten and then release the muscles in each area of focus and you will gradually free all the stress traps and feel refreshed. Notice your heat and coolness too. And end with another couple of deep breaths. Voila!

7. Move

Stretch, dance, walk, go up and down the stairs, skip, hula-hoop, run, star jump, bounce… Just move and shift the energy.

8. Sing

…as if no-one is listening. We should all sing more.

9. Laugh out loud

Go on. Do it! It starts off feeling false and then you end up laughing at yourself. Just a giggle will get you started. There are whole day workshops on this stuff.

10. Give yourself a head massage

In 2020 German psychologists found that a ten-minute head massage helps the body to tap into its parasympathetic, resting state. Had to end with a bit of bona-fide science!

However you do it, take time for yourself – you deserve and need it, each and every day. So recharge in 10 minutes or less any time in any day.

I’ve never really liked Black History Month.

I can feel your shock and bewilderment.

I am Black.

But I do have an issue with Black History Month and it’s about time that I explained why.

Here are 6 things that rile me about Black History Month:

1. It’s one solitary month.

2. When done badly, it’s reduced to tokenism and stereotypes.

3. There’s often an expectation of Black staff to do something for BHM.

4. It can create trauma for Black people.

5. It’s not celebratory enough.

6. It rarely includes any discussion about race and racism.

1.  So let’s start with the main reason BHM tends to rile me. I resent the idea that the history, contributions and impact of 57 individual nations in the continent of Africa, 13 countries in the Caribbean, let alone the wider diaspora should be confined to one solitary month. The histories and stories of Black people have not been included in history because we have not been the ones telling our story. One month won’t cut it. A bigger and deeper change is necessary.

2.  The history highlighted during this month is sometimes negative and inaccurate. There is an over-reliance on slavery, African American history and civil rights movements, as well as the ubiquitous entries from Bob Marley (for music), Martin Luther King (for English, politics and history) and a collection of sports and music stars such as Mohammed Ali. Black history in the UK is not an integral part of our psyche and that’s why it feels like a strange adjunct and indeed why BHM had to be invented. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting these figures but it would be better to draw on relevant and relatable figures from a range of fields, with stories connected to the Black British experience.

3.  A tentative voice is raised in a staff meeting and someone asks: ‘What are we doing for Black History Month?’ What happens next? Often Black teachers are just expected to ‘do something’. Whilst it might seem like the obvious choice, it’s riddled with over-simplistic thinking. Asking the Black teacher(s) is a genuine problem and not just because Black teachers – as detailed in the Runnymeade/NASUWT’s report (2016) – are paid less, face structural discrimination and are less likely to be promoted. In brief, they’ve already got a lot on their plates.

Another reason why this request is unfair might come as a surprise to some: most teachers are not knowledgeable about Black history and that probably includes Black teachers. It’s simple really; British teachers are a product of the British education system and are unlikely to know much about Black people within British history such as their contributions to WW1 or WW2, let alone the kingdoms they created such as Benin, Kush and Carthage, unless they have put in additional work in their own time. So I don’t really blame Black teachers who, finding themselves suddenly called upon to take on extra work, from disengaging from BHM. It’s hard to teach something you may know very little about and tougher still to acknowledge this in the face of those who expect you to be well-informed, able and eager to make a contribution. It’s even more difficult when some of the subject-material is personal and likely to induce painful memories or to expose you to previously unknown traumatic experiences of people like you. Black people are often expected to share their traumatic history without the offer of true empathy or support. Producing something authentic, accurate and detailed requires time, interest and skill.  If schools and educational settings are serious about BHM being done, then they must give staff time to research, increase their knowledge first and work collaboratively.

4.  I genuinely worry about the impact that BHM may have on Black children and young people. Imagine being a Black child in a class when a well-intentioned but misguided teacher decides to play a video depicting slavery, hostility towards Windrush migrants or racist booing during football matches?  Meanwhile the teacher recounts the statistics: numbers of Black people abused, stolen, beaten, raped, killed and thrown overboard. Your classmates react and you may be left feeling: upset, confused, ashamed, embarrassed, tearful and/or traumatised. You might wonder if your parents were consulted on how this topic would be handled or if, despite good intentions, the school just lacks empathy and sensitivity.  

We live in a world where psychologists have been able to show that, by the age of 5, children are already aware of race and the implications of being racialized as Black and White. So BHM must not further traumatise Black children by only reminding them of a world and system which sees and treats people like them as inferior and deficient.  Instead let’s celebrate and explore uplifting achievements.

5.  UK BHMs lack ‘Black joy’ and rarely celebrate positivity within the Black community. I know that, on the face of it, this underpins my other points but it’s important and, as it’s my piece, I’m going to give it the space I believe it deserves.

We must make time to identify positive examples of contributions made by Black people and teach about the many and varied ways in which Black people have made this world better, through their creativity, innovation and leadership. Yes, I’m aware that, inevitably, due to structural racism - in every facet of society - these stories are likely to be triumph-over-adversity narratives, but it’s about time we spent more time trumpeting Black successes rather than being defeated by the cruel and painful acts carried out against Black people. Take for example contributions to our world by Black inventors: the three-light traffic light, the super-soaker gun and the home security system. If this is news, don’t be embarrassed.  It just reflects our flawed system. 

So get hold of a copy of David Olusoga’s ‘Black and British: A Forgotten History’, Atinuke’s ‘Africa Amazing Africa’ 

or ‘Little Leaders’ (Bold Women in Black History and Exceptional Men in Black History)’. That’s where you will find that Black people have a lot to be proud of and a great deal to celebrate.  We must make sure that every child grows up with this knowledge so they can challenge our existing system.

6.  Why don’t we spend more time explaining why BHM was created?  The absence of debate and discussion about racism before and especially during BHM is most odd.  The reason we have BHM in schools is because the current curriculum does not adequately reflect the history or contributions of Black people; therefore schools celebrating BHM must surely engage in discussions about race, racism, inequality, unfairness, injustice and the balance of the curriculum.

Don’t get me wrong. I know why this isn’t discussed. It’s difficult, considered incendiary and it makes everyone incredibly uncomfortable because you’re encouraging people to see the status quo and acknowledge its unfairness, as well as recognise White people’s prominence and power and question the justification for this. But not being willing to discuss race and racism is a huge missed opportunity.  It shouldn’t be controversial to explore the Black Lives Matter Movement and its origins in school settings – this is the perfect place to allow students to ponder why people felt it necessary to create such a movement.

On reflection, perhaps it’s time to admit that I don’t dislike BHM quite as much as I thought I did.  What I genuinely find difficult is what it usually looks like in schools across the UK: displays on slavery, photos of MLK, sports stars and rap stars, African drumming, steel pan bands and groups of young Black children suddenly thrust into the spotlight, feeling confused, angry and traumatised. BHM UK can and should be so much more than this and it so easily could be.

An honest and true representation of Black history needs to be included and highlighted throughout the curriculum daily and does not need restricting to a solitary month.  Black history needs to be visible throughout schools throughout the year: in the books selected for libraries and text books; in the displays in every classroom and hallway; in the choices made by school leaders and teachers about what to teach and include; but ultimately and most importantly, in the approach, honesty and sensitivity of how topics are taught to ensure that the narrative reflects the reality of the event.

If BHM UK can be a stepping stone to anti-racism in education then even I would be forced to respect the importance of its annual role in flipping the current educational script.

Check out hidden black history and ways to diversify your curriculum on  blackhistorymonth.org.uk

It’s been ‘all change’ this year for most primary and junior schools in the delivery of puberty and sex education. Happily, gone is the far too long-lived ‘sex after SATs’ approach, with its visiting speaker coming in to deliver the gory truth in one terrifying fell swoop. The statutory RSHE curriculum demands that we prepare children in advance for the changes to come so that no child is unnecessarily frightened by the changes in their body. It has further supported the needs of children by clarifying that puberty education is not sex education, so children are now entitled to learn about their own body’s changes and cannot be removed by wary parents.

So how has it gone in your school this year? Teachers have been kept out of this content for so long that a considerable amount of insecurity and fear has developed around it. As a result, many schools have heavily relied on delivering the content of a purchased resource lock stock and puberty-barrel. If this has been your school’s experience, maybe it is now time to reflect and to build staff knowledge, confidence and ownership of the content and to form a better plan that tailors the lessons to your pupil’s needs ready for next year.

Many of the resources for delivering a comprehensive programme for RSHE that are on the market provide solidly good lessons (once you have livened them up a bit). However, puberty education tends to be the Achilles-heal for a great many of them. There is far too much focus on ‘this is preparing you for having children’, widely supported by biological diagrams that mean almost nothing to many children. 

Puberty brings about bodily changes that are about maturing and becoming an adult. The physical changes come first, and the brain matures more slowly. In puberty the brain is suddenly awash with hormones that lead to all sorts of emotions, many of which can develop into overly-competitive and power-based approaches to relationships (the ‘pecking order of who is in and who is out). In which year do your hurtful or unkind incidents really start to ramp up?

Puberty is a time when you start to experience inexplicable mood swings and emotions. So key learning has to involve understanding and managing moods and helping children to recognise that they must find a moral route through it all.

The devil is in the detail as the requirements emphasise that lessons need to be age- and/or stage-appropriate. Some seven year olds will be developing breasts and pubic hair whilst being quite emotionally and psychologically immature. Some children who have experienced trauma or abuse may be ready earlier than their peers for learning about sexuality and consent. A further group may already have an interest in or ‘assumed knowledge’ of sex through online experiences which are likely to be morally skewed.

So we must adapt our teaching to sufficiently meet the needs of children who are ahead of the curve, whilst maintaining an approach that gets rid of the separation of boys and girls and thus avoid any promotion of secrecy around puberty issues. A spiral curriculum approach, baselining and accessing pupil voice will be key to getting this right.

HFL Education’s Wellbeing Team have been supporting some schools already this summer on puberty and sex education. If we can support your staff team to be ready, confident and equipped for next year’s sex and puberty education, please contact us on wellbeing@hertsforlearning.co.uk.

June is that beautiful time of year when nature is leafing, greening, budding, and generally flourishing. It is also Pride month and the terminology ‘Pride’ says it all. This is a perfect time to take stock and make sure that LGBT+ people are safe, feel safe and can flourish, within and because of your school.

The statutory requirements for Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) are now being delivered in all our schools. Those requirements are very clear that LGBT inclusion must be integrated across the whole teaching programme. So if you haven’t marked Pride month before – this is the moment to seize.

Pride month is an important opportunity to celebrate LGBT+ people in all their diversity; to break out the rainbow flag and explore the symbolism of its different coloured stripes; to ‘beat the bounds’ of your school grounds in your own Pride rainbow parade; to champion equal rights for LGBT+ people; and to celebrate the accomplishments of LGBT+ individuals through history. Above all, we can ensure that all our staff recognise the importance of LGBT+ inclusion. June might be Pride month, but LGBT+ people should be positively represented and valued in our curriculum all the time.

There are many influential people who have greatly contributed to society throughout history, who also happen to have been LGBT+. These people could be celebrated across different subjects in the curriculum. Here are some examples.

	Alan Turing who effectively invented the first computer and contributed significantly to the ending of World War 2 by ‘cracking the codes’.
	Gentleman Jack (the subject of a popular BBC drama series) was born in Yorkshire in the late 18th Century. Her diaries were written in code and weren’t deciphered until the 1930’s.
	The poet Siegfried Sassoon (pictured above right) was a soldier decorated for bravery in WW1.  He was known to have had relationships with men and certainly formed an influential friendship with fellow poet Wilfred Owen (pictured above left), who fought and died in that war.
	Marsha P Johnson was an African-American transgender woman. She was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and was also an outspoken advocate for gay rights.

There are many examples of LGBT+ individuals who have influenced our lives more recently and are still with us today. The children may be familiar with: Sir Ian McKellan, Nicola Adams, Tom Daley, Elton John, Graham Norton, Stephen Fry and Clare Balding, to name just a few.

I am writing this Blog at home on 1st May. By long tradition across the British Isles, this day was recognised as the first day of summer. Falling almost half way between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, it marked the calendar day when livestock were moved to their summer pastures. However, its agricultural and social significance was so much more than just that.

May Day began the six week season of Beltane, the time of nature’s great flourishing. The Queen of the May (symbolised by the flowering hawthorn) and the Green Man bring with them the rapid growth of crops and flowers that will ultimately lead to mature growth and food security.

When our lives were more closely linked to the turning of the seasons, such a moment was a time of jubilation, marked with communal gatherings for feasting and fire festivals. I am told that a Beltane fire festival is an annual event at Calton Hill in Edinburgh on the night of 30th April.

In Oxford I have joined the crowds on many a May morning that gather on Magdalene Bridge at dawn to hear the college choir sing in the summer with traditional seasonal carols.

“Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing cuckoo…”

Why am I wittering on about these largely lost celebrations? Well, for the most part we are losing these punctuations of life linked to the rhythm of nature.

One positive side effect for many of us during Covid has been the rediscovery of the natural joys of our local footpaths, parks and gardens. Many of us have metred out our locked-down days with a new appreciation of small escapes into green spaces or even into wildness. We have observed the weather more closely. We have tasted the delight of being dressed for the season and drunk deeply the outside air. Above all we have noticed the turning seasons.

Those tastes of nature have supported our wellbeing and provided families with quality time together. They have been moments that have quite simply kept us going. So why shouldn’t we maintain our closer relationship with nature’s rhythms and rediscover our ancient celebrations?

It’s not too late to celebrate Beltane. And after that? The summer solstice, of course, welcoming in the season of Litha (light). 

We are so very fond of dropping the ‘S’ word, aren’t we? “I’m so stressed.” -  “This is too stressful!” – “I’m beyond stress” – “Aaargh!” And may I say, it’s no wonder. Right now we are living through experiences not known for over 100 years in our little corner of the world. The last year has been full of lost freedoms, imposed limitations and a herculean need to manage everything and everyone in different ways, whilst living in complete disconnection and chaos.

Living in the unknown, surrounded by risk and uncertainty, always adds that chilli-burn of stress to any situation. Covid has certainly been tough, and in many unexpected ways. But hold on! When you look back to those heady pre-Covid days, when all was ‘normal’ in your world, weren’t you still feeling stressed then? Isn’t it just part of modern living that we tend to be time and energy-poor? Don’t we usually have a sense that the expectations and demands driving us are constantly heading into overdrive? Or maybe it is just me?…but I don’t think so.

Where do these expectations and demands come from? Well I’m not letting work, money, families, shopping, ill-health or anything else off the hook; but frankly, we also do it to ourselves.

Does any of this mostly silent monologue seem familiar? “Was it good enough? I should have… I didn’t… Why didn’t I?  They’ll think I’m useless. I am useless at this. I’m rubbish. I’m hopeless. I’m worthless. I hate myself. And I’m old/fat/stupid/[add in your own preferred seriously damaging insult]”

That familiar inner critic is so much more active when we are feeling stressed. In no time at all, we reach that vindaloo-heat where we hate our life, our work, our luck, our nearest and dearest and/or ourselves. All because of the overload of that ‘demon stress’.

It’s easy for me to say this, sitting here typing on a sunny evening at home, but it really doesn’t have to be that way. When we experience too much stress all at once and/or for too long we go into stress overload. But come on, let’s be honest. There were warning signs before you ever got to that point. You secretly knew it was all getting too much. Of course, you were trapped in that driving force that the stress was so great you couldn’t possibly stop to get some fresh air, have a hot cup of the legal drug of your choice (or some water), stretch your legs, play a couple of your favourite songs or just otherwise be spontaneous. Even though you know deep down that those things would have cooled the intensity of it all and given you some renewed perspective.

Much of the time, it isn’t that stress is the demon that we picture doggedly shadowing our every move, ready to drag us down into the burning pits of hell. Rather, stress responses communicate to us that the pressure is a bit much and that we might soon need to reach for the cucumber raita. Feelings of stress are triggered in our bodies to alert us to a chemical shift in our brain. For a fair while our brain can cope and will rise to the occasion. In fact, in the short term, stress can spur us on, make us more efficient or more creative.

We can also extend that period of time when we are coping well with those high levels of stress, by using tricks such as focusing on isolated tasks rather than multi-tasking, taking timely breaks and rehydrating, taking some exercise and/or some fresh air, breaking for some human interaction, accessing some help by organising things differently and/or shifting our own or others’ expectations. Instead, we ignore the warning signs and allow ourselves to spiral down into negativity and despair. Believe me, I know. I’ve got a whole wardrobe full of the t-shirts! 

As adults we tend to live too much in our minds and not enough in our bodies. The warning signs that you are under serious stress are there. If you can’t recognise them yourself, your family will probably enjoy telling you what they are! So catch them early and take regular remedial action. April is Stress Awareness Month and now is the time to make some good changes. Be your own hero. It’s time to treat yourself as you would your best friend.

Start by taking a look at this fascinating TED talk to see that stress can itself be your friend.

Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend 

"The ultimate measure of a [person] is not where [they] stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where[they] stand at times of challenge and controversy."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Right minded people across the world have been profoundly shaken by the killing of George Floyd. The recording of the actual live event has hit hard through our screens, right into our own front rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. Schools of course have responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 to recognise the impact of such events on pupils, students and their families, and to provide support to those most deeply affected by the initiating event and the subsequent widespread protests. Our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in particular will be severely impacted by all of this. They may feel variously mobilised, fearful, deemed second-class, shocked, hated, disrespected, abused, and on and on. All these responses and more are inevitable. They want and need to know that schools and local authorities, along with all right minded people, understand the importance of events and the outrage they feel.

Racist acts of hatred and violence toward Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people continue in countries across the world, including here in Britain. This most public murder of George Floyd in the USA has led to world-wide condemnation and protest for good reason. British law is unequivocal about the priority that we hold for eradicating prejudice and inequality, so we should not be surprised that British newsreaders did not hesitate to use terms such as ‘outrage’, ‘shameful’ and ‘murder’ so immediately when reporting on the killing. Under the Equality Act 2010, it is the duty of all schools and local authorities to recognise pupils’ need for support (individualised where needed) and to provide education to help all pupils to interpret the meaning of what they have seen, felt and experienced. We need to be seen in solidarity with pupils with ‘protected characteristics’ when they feel this vulnerable, this angry and this exposed.

Our position in school must be that we hold prejudice and discrimination as unacceptable and that every single one of us (adult and pupil) has a role in this. The school equality policy has meaning only if we make it responsive to real events. We want our young people to be active and caring citizens who are willing to challenge what they see as wrong, lacking or prejudicial in their own relationships and in society as a whole. We should help pupils to develop an understanding of the complexity of events that is based on full and correct information, an understanding of the law and an insight into the experience and feelings of others. What can schools and teachers do?

What can schools and teachers do?

1. The school equality policy into practice

Revisit the school’s equality statement or policy. What does it say? Does it say enough? Is it clear that the school has expectations of everyone to be active in ensuring a school environment free of racism and other areas of prejudice, and a system active in improving outcomes for BAME people in every aspect of school life, from recruitment to exclusion. Consider how to ensure that the whole school community recognises your active commitment to ‘living’ the policy. Decide if meets the needs of the current situation and if it sufficiently supports staff to manage classroom responses to major events.

2. Curriculum review

Revisit the curriculum. Does the school teach pupils enough to develop their own age appropriate opinions on racism, race relations and prejudice? It is relevant to so many curriculum areas, for example:

• PSHE/Citizenship – human rights and equal human worth as well as the equality laws; what slavery looks like in the modern world; evidence of racism in our society today
• English – Black voices on their experience of inequality in novels, poems, interviews and newspapers;
• History – the impact of colonialism in exploiting countries around the world and the rise of the slave trade, its impact on African communities and how it benefited colonisers, the journey to outlaw slavery in Britain;
• Geography – the ongoing legacy of British colonial exploitation around the world; demographics demonstrating our diminishing relevance in the world
• Relationships Education – equality law, the right to peaceful protest, democratic response at times of crisis, inequality in Britain today, resilience and active citizenship.

In particular, the new mandatory RSHE policy also requires every school from September 2020 to

• be flexible in adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of pupils
• ensure that pupils understand the law
• represent and teach about diversity and equality
• develop pupils’ critical thinking skills

3. Personal and emotional support during distance learning

It is important that all teachers are prepared to respond to the increased vulnerability and/or outrage that is being felt, particularly by members of the BAME communities. (Don’t assume that other students will not have been deeply affected too.) Teachers should raise the issue with pupils who are not physically present in school and give them the opportunity to talk about their feelings and experiences in connection with recent events. The conversation could also explore the resilience skills they are using to manage under this added pressure, distress and disturbance.

If they need further support this should be signposted. Students can also be signposted to websites such as Every Mind Matters and Health for Teens (both run by the NHS), as well as encouraged to look at a range of reliable and factual resources to help them make sense of the context that has led to these events.(see below)

4. Induction activity post-Covid

When school resumes, teachers will of course provide opportunities for pupils to reflect on the feelings and experiences they have had to manage through the lockdown period. Perhaps allowing them to write them down anonymously might encourage them not to be fearful or self-conscious about what they write. The collected papers could be grouped and explored in one or several class discussion/s and pupils wanting or needing it should be enabled to access further support, whether in or out of school. If the Black Lives Matter movement does not come up at all through such a process, teachers might express surprise about that, which could then lead into wider discussion of how shocking and significant the collective events have been across the world, including in Britain.

It is important that current events are understood in the context of the history that has brought us to this point and the data that shows how the reverberations continue today as a result of that history.  Pupils do need to develop a recognition that British colonial history was complicit in establishing racist attitudes and divides that have left a legacy that still impacts today. In this context they will better understand why people might find deeply offensive the celebration of historical figures that were inherently part of systemic slavery and exploitation of Black peoples over centuries. This also needs an underpinning of the law in the past, the law in the present and the political and legal systems by which change should be able to be brought about.

At the time of writing, Google maps shows the location of the Edward Colston statue as being in the River Avon. There is a long and detailed history in Bristol of public disquiet about this statue of a man whose wealth was gained at the expense of kidnapped, enslaved, murdered and abused Africans. There is much other evidence of the public celebration of Colston’s life in the city, such as in the naming of a major concert venue and a school. Local political processes failed repeatedly to find a way forward in the face of the growing protest evidenced around the statue constantly. This has been the experience of just one city. Since these developments the protests in other cities are also finding a stronger voice. Peaceful and lawful protest within the law is an important part of our democratic right of expression and our young people should understand that.

Many schools teach about the civil rights movement in the USA, whilst overlooking parallels in this country, such as the Bristol bus boycott in 1963*. The British experience of racism and prejudice was different from that in the USA, but racism exists in our country and we must continue to be open to learning how it manifests itself and be ready to take action. Do our primary and secondary schools still revisit the life of Stephen Lawrence and explore how much had to be learned by mainstream institutions about their contribution to his attack, his death on the street and the failure to prosecute his killers? I hope so. The learning made changes to the law. Did we talk with pupils about the Windrush scandal and revisit that history? It isn’t too late.

The ending of systemic racism in our society and in our institutions begins with knowledge and understanding of the past and the present. It requires empathy and a recognition of our shared humanity and personal responsibility. It takes ‘courageous advocacy’ to stand up for fairness and equality and it is our responsibility as educators to skill our young people to be able to recognise where there is a wrong and to stand up and be counted through lawful and safe means. To build a better society, each and every one of us in schools must be open to working on ourselves. In Michelle Obama’s words, “It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our own.”

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoller

So Ofsted has finally recognised the importance of staff wellbeing to the effectiveness of schools! Who knew? Of course we all knew. Happy, properly trained, well supported and motivated staff with a good work-life balance will do a better job in the classroom and require fewer absence days. But by including staff wellbeing in their inspection framework, Ofsted are giving governors, leaders, and managers in schools a strong encouragement to allocate resources and time to ensure development in this area.

Recent data shows that work related absence due to stress, anxiety and depression is on the rise across the UK workforce and suggests that the central reasons are heavy workloads and poor management. Of course the managers also have heavy workloads. The chicken or the egg? The DfE have made a commitment to reduce teachers’ work load and are encouraging leaders to ensure staff have a positive work life balance. 

Of course, stress is not always an enemy.  It can motivate us to greater achievement and to experimentation with different approaches and new ideas. It can build our sense of achievement that we have dealt with everything that life has thrown at us. But that takes good positive self-talk and appreciative feedback from others that you have done well (manager’s please note!). So let’s not tell people that stress will kill you. At this point I could go into hormones and brain chemistry (but I won’t). Put simply, when our stress gets bigger, we can usually rise to meet it and we can surprise ourselves.  We all need to recognise our own early warning signs that we are struggling and have a selection of strategies to manage it: fresh air, exercise, listening to music that rests or inspires you, a space for mindfulness, having a laugh with someone else or – above all, to boost your positive oxytocin levels (it just slipped out!) - just talking to someone who will listen well (and not try to fix you! – note for all spouses, partners and good friends).

Only 50% of line managers say they have received training on how to support staff to manage stress. Our planning must go beyond the assumption that our staff will talk to someone at the appropriate moment if they need support.  Teachers can excel at feeling they are failing and blaming themselves for things that aren’t working well. So what about developing our line managers to understand stress and mental health issues and to be effective listeners and supporters? Managers need to be interested, appreciative and approachable. For detailed conversations, solution focused coaching can empower staff by focusing on moving forward positively. For this, managers need to set the right supportive tone, suspend any assumptions, recognise the staff member as a highly resourced individual and use quality approaches to access the strengths and experiences that staff member can bring to evolve solutions that they will be committed to and that will work for them.

The government’s priorities around mental health in schools and also the new Relationships Education, RSE and Health Education curriculum, both require teachers to be able to teach about and support pupils on mental health issues. Well, mental health and emotional wellbeing begins with each of us. It’s the old flight safety analogy of putting on your own mask first, before helping the children. If you are unconscious then you can’t help anybody else! So why not ensure that training on teaching about mental health also demonstrates how lessons from positive psychology can help teacher wellbeing as well.

The BBC Micro:Bit is the small (very small – smaller than a credit card) computer being distributed to every year 7 child in the country as part of a BBC initiative to help get children coding. The Micro:Bit website tells us that this little computer is in fact 18 times faster than the original BBC Micro computers from the 80s, which some of us (not mentioning any age groups) will remember, probably fondly.

I was excited to first get my hands on a Micro:Bit earlier this year, and my initial impression was how instant and accessible it was. I connected it to my laptop via a micro-USB cable, launched a browser, went to the Micro:Bit website and was coding in seconds.

And no sooner was I coding, than I thought how applicable to KS2 computing it was, despite being aimed at KS3.

This is mainly because the Micro:Bit website, through which the coding tools can be accessed, offers us 4 different programming environments. Whilst the Javascript and Python editors might be better led from the hands of specialist teachers, the Microsoft Block Editor will immediately seem familiar to many primary teachers, as it resembles other block programming tools such as Blockly and Scratch. And so even without glancing at the included tutorials, I was able to make the virtual Micro:Bit (displayed onscreen so you can test your code) flash that first “Hello World” message in seconds on its LEDs. And by downloading my code and copying it over to the actual Micro:bit I could see my program in action, for real.

Since the Micro:Bit became available, a number of local primary schools have contacted me to find out how they can buy their own devices so that KS2 children may develop their programming skills in this way. It will be interesting to see how widespread this device becomes across primary schools, as it becomes embedded in secondary practice.

It seems that a new app for programming or teaching children to code appears every week, and we are rather spoilt for choice these days. Many follow an independent learning, step-by-step approach, most are games of some sort, and often they are based on directing virtual robots or characters around various mazes or challenges.

It would be easy to bring in the shared iPads or tablets, hand them out to the children, and let them get on with it. And I’m sure many of the children would enjoy getting stuck into solving the puzzles and challenges these apps present.

But in a classroom environment, how can we make sure that we are getting the most from the apps and helping children to develop their skills in using decomposition, creating algorithms and programs, debugging and predicting? Those important computational thinking skills that the primary computing curriculum aims to teach.

One of the ways we can do this is to use the app as the stimulus and material for an activity, but not have children actually using the app on the device – at least not straight away. They can always work directly on the app after going through some of the activities below.

Let’s take one of my favourite ‘control the robot’ type of apps, Fix the Factory from Lego® Mindstorms® (free on the iTunes App Store and Google play).

(Screenshot from www.lego.com)

By simply projecting one of the levels onto the class screen, so that all the pupils can see the same level at the same time, we can first work as a class to solve the puzzle. Remember to start with clearly identifying what the objective of the puzzle actually is – for example, to collect the box and take it to the target. We could then go on to use squared paper and pencils, and every child can draw the arrows and symbols (which form the programming language that this particular robot understands) onto their paper to solve a level. As we work, step by step, though solving each task, we are using decomposition to break the problem into steps. The pupils can swap papers, check their peers’ solutions and correct any errors they might find – prediction and debugging. Another activity is for children to make a deliberate mistake in the program they are writing down, which their working partner must try to find. In that one activity a child will be decomposing, predicting and debugging.

Can we make the line of commands we’ve written down shorter by introducing repetition? It is less efficient to write down four arrows when we can write it once, followed by ‘x4’ or ‘repeat 4’ or just ‘4’.

To take it further, we could even use direction-based programming apps to help introduce the ‘real’ programming language Logo. A series of arrows can easily be translated into a series of basic logo commands, so children could learn directional commands in this way. Work on paper first, writing the Logo commands into the squares, before moving on to a Logo programming environment, such as MSW Logo or 2Simple Logo (part of Purple Mash.) Apps which don’t go beyond simple directions would be the best ones to use as the stimulus here, as we will struggle to find Logo commands comparable to picking up a box or jumping over a river!

(Remember that when we use directional Logo commands in a Logo programming environment we also need to state the distance to travel or the angle to turn.)

As I mentioned earlier, there are numerous apps where we can program virtual robots to solve tasks, so let’s have a look at a few possibilities.

Beebot (by TTS Group)

Free on the iTunes App Store.

This one probably needs no introduction. The free app is a faithful representation of the little robot found in many EY and KS1 classrooms. There’s nothing like actually programming a physical robot and seeing it follow your commands, but the app can be useful where the number of Beebots is limited, and as a stimulus for  activities away from the devices, as described above.

Bluebot (by TTS Group)

Free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

Beebot’s big brother is Bluebot – not actually physically bigger, but certainly more sophisticated. You can program the physical Bluebot robot through the free app, but even without an actual Bluebot, the app offers good basic programming challenges and exploration. The full functionality of the app, which includes repetition and 45o turns, is unlocked when you pair your tablet device with a physical Bluebot, over Bluetooth.

A.L.E.X. (by Awesomeapps.com)

Free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play (paid upgrade available.)

Alex is a robot, and the app offers directional programming challenges with increasingly more difficult levels. This also has a ‘create’ mode where players can build their own mazes. The create mode isn’t exactly programming – but it is fun!

Cargo-Bot (by Two Lives Left)

Free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

A more challenging game where we program factory machinery to move crates around.