Secondary PSHE

Male teacher stands in front of a white board in a classroom. He is smiling with his arms crossed.

Practical ways to improve teacher wellbeing

By Suzanne Allies We all know that teachers are extremely busy, and when workload and expectations from school become overwhelming, this can be very detrimental to the wellbeing of you and your colleagues, especially if stress and exhaustion continue in the long term. Wellbeing is such a personal matter; activities… Read More

Taking a whole-school approach to wellbeing

Wellbeing is more than just mental health. It encompasses physical wellness, a sense of belonging, social inclusion and basic needs such as food, safety and shelter. If we consider this broader sense of wellbeing it becomes clear we must consider it to for our pupils to achieve and be successful. Read More
female head silhouette with sunset over sea reflection

How self-reflection can help you deliver an emotional education

Recommendations for how to get back to ‘the new normal’ seem to be everywhere you look nowadays. They roll in like crashing waves: mental health, wellbeing, catch-up programmes, behaviour, discipline. So, where to begin? How can we as teachers support the emotional wellbeing and emotional education of our students and not just make a token gesture? It can feel overwhelming, especially when your students will have had such varied experiences of home learning, home life, interactions with friends and more. A person-centred approach To truly support your students’ emotional wellbeing, I believe we need to take a person-centred approach, rather than falling into the trap of making assumptions. It’s so easy to paint a broad picture of what we think our students need but it’s far better to know. It is my belief that if we expect our students to explore and get comfortable with their myriad of emotions, we have to consistently do the same – not only as part of our own personal wellbeing, but also as part of our planning process before we teach these emotional health and relationships lessons. Of course, to maintain our professionalism we cannot share our personal issues with students, but it is hugely valuable to find an empathy and understanding around the challenges of really ‘seeing ourselves’ and contemplate the scarier aspects of how to reveal these to others. Healthy relationships start with the relationship we have with ourselves When teaching about relationships in RSHE it’s good to remember that having healthy relationships with our friends, co-workers and students must start with the relationship we have with ourselves. For example, if we have very little self-respect and are continually putting ourselves down, pushing ourselves to the limit or refusing to admit or talk to others about our fears and worries how can we expect others to do these things? So, let’s take a minute to put this into practice right now. How is your self-respect? Do you make sure you rest, eat healthily, drink water throughout the day? Do you speak kindly to yourself? Do you recognise when you need to talk to someone and do it? If you haven’t had a chance to think about how you are for a while, please spend a moment reflecting now. I recommend doing this regularly; self-reflection is a valuable life skill and knowing the signs of when we are disrespecting ourselves means we can ask for help, and in turn allows us to build empathy and an understanding of others, including our students, who often find it much harder to see and communicate their truths. Having been through this process of self-reflection and assessment, we can then begin to consider how we might feel about opening up to others in a group context. What might help? What might shut us down? Of course, we are all different, but taking time to consider these things will help us see how we can best support our students as we ask them to do the same. How do we bring self-reflection into the classroom? First of all, we start with remembering two equally important elements that are fundamental to every good PSHE/RSHE lesson: creating a working agreement (this is a useful way to establish rules at the beginning of the topic which are then referred back to regularly), and signposting to further support (within school, the community and online). Then we think about our cohort and suitable activities to engage them. For some classes talking and listening will be familiar but others may need time to get comfortable with the idea of talking and listening openly to each other. Be aware this may not be a Hollywood film style easy flow, ‘kids-pour-their-heart-out-instantly-and-everyone-is-bonded’ experience! But I assure you, if you do this regularly, every day if you can, your pupils will increase their emotional intelligence massively – I have seen this happen. Alternatively, if this feels a real no-no currently with your class, you could ask them to complete anonymous questionnaires or write on post-it notes and share their feelings that way, then you could share these anonymously back to the class. Further activities to explore respectful relationships A more in-depth activity you can do too is from Your Choice for Key Stage 4, my latest co-authored resource with the fab’ Simon Foster.  Amongst many topics that address the challenges of being a teenager in the 21st century, one of our lessons explores what respect looks like in a variety of contexts. Take a closer look at lesson 2.1 ‘Respecting others’ and try it with your class Reassessing our relationships as we move back out into society, to our ‘new normal’, feels more important than ever. People, and our relationships with them, may well have changed, but bringing self-awareness back to us as individuals will empower us all to acknowledge ourselves, to become aware of our feelings and to talk about them. This in turn will give space for others to do the same and create a stronger sense of self and community. In my book (if you’ll excuse the pun), this can only be a good thing. Read More
Kids at school

Anti-bullying: is it enough?

As we approach another Anti-Bullying Week, I question whether anti-bullying is still the most appropriate phrase. 2020 has been the most challenging of years, and school-based bullying has been going on since schooling itself began, but it seems curious that we persist in describing what we don’t want, rather… Read More
Male teacher standing in front of whiteboard talking to pupils

Settling students back into school: a wellbeing guide

The reality of teaching through a global pandemic is that many of our students haven’t set foot in an educational setting for 16 weeks and counting. With little warning, their lives as they knew them changed completely. As adults, the past few months have certainly been challenging, but imagine how… Read More
Students discussing RSE

Why we should all be talking about RSE

Jo Fliski From 2020 it will be compulsory for all secondary schools to teach both relationship education and sex education and for primary schools to be teaching relationships to young people. The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes found that young people, and young woman especially, who learn about sex and… Read More

Letter to Rexi

The following submission was sent to a website designed to support those struggling to recover from anorexia nervosa.  Alicia’s dramatic declaration of her determination to liberate herself from this illness may be something that you might wish to share with your students during their PSHE lessons as stimulus for research and discussion. It… Read More

Secondary RE, PSHE and Citizenship – True Tube

How long have we accumulatively spent searching through the reams of videos that have been uploaded to You Tube in the hopes of finding a video clip to help our students to explore big social or global issues such as war or the environment and how useful would it be… Read More

Secondary RE and PSHE – Enquiry-Based Learning

During an INSET day in September, I was reminded that students learn and remember best when the learning has meaning. Essentially, the learning undertaken within PSHE and RE should have meaning to all students, as both subjects explore contemporary moral issues and personal views and opinions as well as those… Read More