00:00:20Teach Happy
00:12:35Science of Wellbeing in Education
00:18:53Supporting Children's Wellbeing in School
00:29:26The Importance of Reading for Pleasure
00:33:15Importance of Nurturing Student Understanding
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Adrian Bethune, a beacon of hope in the world of education, joins us on this episode of Literacy Works podcast, taking us through his life experiences, from the music industry to primary school teaching and how his own personal challenges with mental health led him to champion the teaching of wellbeing in schools. His journey is an inspiration, underscoring the necessity of nurturing emotional health in both teachers and learners alike.
We venture into the essentials of teacher wellbeing, touching on Adrian's "Seeds of Happiness" course, a Teach Primary award winner in 2021. Our conversation sheds light on the practical strategies and collaborative efforts needed to root these evidence-based wellbeing methods within the fabric of our educational systems. As Adrian articulates, the science of wellbeing offers more than just the keys to personal fulfillment—it's a blueprint for a thriving learning environment.
To cap off our discussion, we celebrate the power of reading for pleasure, exploring how this simple yet profound activity fosters both emotional intelligence and academic prowess in children. From Andy and Adrian's personal narratives with their children to the broader implications of reading culture, we affirm the long-term benefits of reading for everyone.
For more insights from Adrian:
English
United Kingdom
IN THIS EPISODE
SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Hello everyone and welcome to what I guess now is series two of the Literacy Works podcast with Bedrock Learning.
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I'm Andy Sammons, the Deputy Head of Teaching and Learning at Bedrock, and today we're joined by Adrian Bethune, who is the primary school teacher amongst lots of other things that we're going to hear about, and he also runs Teach Happy.
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Is it Teach Happy or Teach Happy?
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Teach Happy, teach Happy.
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I thought it was Teacher, because it's the way it's spelled, isn't it?
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So we'll hear all.
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I thought like it's like an app, but anyway, apologies, everyone Teach Happy and we're going to hear lots and lots about this in the next half an hour or so.
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When I read my book, adrian very kindly gave me his time and of the interviews, his was one of the interviews I did for the book that I remember the most.
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It really hit me very hard his interview.
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It was fantastic, very honest and frank account of his own journey with Will Welbing and things like that.
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So delighted that I've been hunting poor Adrian down for the last few months to get him on and I'm delighted that he's here.
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So thank you so much for joining us, adrian.
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It doesn't mean a lot.
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Thank you, no thanks for having me.
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Andy, if we could start with kind of your journey in schools and up to this point, I think it's really useful for the listeners to hear kind of where you've come from and where you are now.
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Yeah, so I'm a practicing primary school teacher.
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I teach part time at a junior school in Aylesbury and I've been a primary school teacher since 2010 and I was a career changer.
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So I worked for several years in the music industry before retraining and I guess the music industry was where it all started my interest in mental health and well-being, and it's because of a period of really poor mental health in my life.
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At that time I'd always been kind of naturally optimistic, happy, go, lucky.
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And then, around 2008, on the surface it should have been one of the happiest times of my life.
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I had a girlfriend that I thought I was going to marry in the future.
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I just bought my first flat in London or shared ownership flat.
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Couldn't afford a whole one.
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I had a good job publishing company.
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Well, to get a flat in London at that point I own 30% of a flat.
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You know, everything on paper was just right, but I felt anxious and it was an anxiety or an anxious feelings that weren't going away and in fact they were getting worse.
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It was affecting my sleep.
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I wasn't able to sleep proper at night.
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I lost my appetite, so I was losing weight because I just wasn't eating well and I just stopped enjoying things that I would normally enjoy, just because my mind was just so full of worries and anxieties.
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It's probably worth reminding people 2008 was when there was a world financial crisis and I think that was a big part of what I was feeling.
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I bought this flat, had a mortgage which I'd never had before, and suddenly I felt this pressure like what if I lose my job, what if I lose my flat, etc.
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But anyway, it kind of spiralled to the point where I just completely burned out.
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And then I went into a period of like depression, where everyone experiences these in different ways but my experience of depression was like a nothingness, like I didn't feel really sad.
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I wasn't crying, I just felt nothing.
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It was complete opposite of anxiety, where you literally feel like everything is a life and death situation, to feeling nothing and having no motivation and not seeing the point in anything.
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Anyway, they say there's an evolutionary aspect to that, don't they?
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In terms of it's your body's way?
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I remember, jim, a Jim Carrey bit on YouTube and he said depressed actually means deep, deep rest, and it means it's your body's way of saying you need to stop now and one of the things you said to me.
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You won't remember this probably.
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You said to me your mental health is everything, because it's the lens through which you see the world.
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When that goes and that's obviously what happened for you, right?
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Everything lost its color everything, yeah, and that's the thing.
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Until this is the thing about, like mental health or let's say, mental illness, because that's what that was.
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Until you have been through it, you honestly have no idea.
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I'd heard about anxiety, I'd heard about depression, but until you, literally that person going through that, you cannot comprehend, you cannot understand.
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And yeah, that was like the lens of how I saw the world and experience it.
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It affects everything, like the taste of food, like even when I was hanging out with my family.
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In that period I felt no connection.
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I just felt nothing and that is quite scary, right.
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Like you're a human being that has feelings and emotions, and even the people that I felt closest to and most loved by and supported I didn't feel connected to.
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But it's one of those.
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I've read a good book recently, maybe Ender Last Year, called Wintering.
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I don't know if you've come across that book.
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No, I've not heard of that.
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I can't remember the author, but look it up.
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It's called Wintering and she describes.
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It's basically about the seasons.
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It's like a metaphor, like the seasons, the reason we go through winter, everything kind of decays and dies, and then it's basically preparing us for like a rebirth, right the spring, everything coming back to live, shoots, bold, start to come out, and that's probably a good way of looking at that period in my life.
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It was like everything was decaying and kind of, and it was, I guess, preparing me for some kind of like regeneration.
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Because that's what happened.
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I kind of almost had to weather that period of wintering, just get through it.
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And when I kind of naturally started to feel better like there was no epiphany, there was no oh, I'd tried this and then suddenly I felt better, I just started to feel a bit better and a big part of that was just having supportive friends and family.
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You know they talked to me, they supported me, they just let me know that they were there and that was actually really reassuring.
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But one of the things I started to do as I was starting to feel better was just research.
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I was like googling at work like causes of stress, anxiety and depression, because I wanted to understand more about what I was experiencing and I learned loads about mental health.
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I just simply just didn't know before.
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And some of the things were just really helpful, like some of the causes of anxiety and depression can be major life changes, like taking on a mortgage, like moving into a flat by myself, which I'd never done before, etc.
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So that was helpful.
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Kind of a period that didn't make sense to me was starting to make sense, and then I also discovered as part of this research that there was a science of well-being.
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So for decades scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, behavioural scientists have been studying what is it that contributes to human well-being, what is it that gets in the way?
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And again, I learned loads about well-being that I just didn't know before and I just started to make small tweaks to my own lifestyle.
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And one of the things that kept coming up time and time again was the power of volunteering.
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And that was when I volunteered to mentor.
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I joined this mentoring charity for a year, mentored a nine-year-old boy in Hackney who was being taught in a pupil referral unit, and that had such a profound impact on my life, gave me a real sense of meaning and purpose, which, again on reflection, I was lacking and that made me want to retrain to be a teacher, which is what I did 2010, and when I got into the classroom, I wanted to teach and share some of these practical tools that, as an adult, I had found really useful, that, on reflection, I wish I'd known growing up, and that's really how teach happy and my journey into focusing well-being in schools really started.
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I mean, I just I remember I'm not just saying this I remember interviewing you for the book last time and being really struck.
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I'm actually identifying a lot with you because I had a very similar experience and I think, on reflection, what was happening was there had been a really intense period in my life where actually I had been a teacher, but actually I've been in, probably found myself in the wrong school, wasn't in the right place, and I think actually I did start to come out of it in a similar way to you, found myself in a school that I've been at for the last four or five years.
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That was probably the best four or five years of my life.
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It was just amazing.
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And here I am now with different challenge and it's and it's bedrock is a genuinely a fantastic place to work at.
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And I think I remember identifying so much of what you said about, about the importance of of taking care of yourself, and so that the next thing I really want to ask you about is what is that?
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Let's unpick, what is that work you do with schools?
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And actually you know off there you were saying about getting lots of schools, lots of schools willing to partner with you.
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So what is it that you do and why do you think that's been so successful?
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So what I do is try and translate and share the science of wellbeing and make it applicable to a busy time, poor cash, poor primary classroom setting and school setting.
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And, equally, a big part of my work is focused on teacher and teaching staff wellbeing.
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And I think it's popular because it's evidence based.
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There's a science, there's a theory behind it and, honestly, some of the best feedback I get after training sessions in schools is from the more cynical teaching staff that say, oh, I saw wellbeing on our agenda for the twilight or the insert and my eyes rolled.
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But you know the fact that you shared the research behind the ideas.
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Actually, I found it really compelling and it and it and it made sense, and so I'm going to try some of these ideas out.
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And so I think that it's a mixture of look, here's the research.
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This is what the research says, why this is a good thing to try out.
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It's not a guarantee that it's going to improve your mental health and wellbeing, but it's a good thing to experiment with.
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And then, secondly, here are some practical ways that you can bring this to life in your classroom, either for your children or for yourself, or both.
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And thirdly, the reason I think it's popular is because we know that teacher mental health has been suffering ever since I've become a teacher.
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It's you know.
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The teacher wellbeing index shows that things are going in the wrong direction, and the Children's Society Good Childhood Index.
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It's a report that comes out every year since 2009.
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They've shown that there's been a significant decrease in children's wellbeing, life satisfaction, over the last 10 or so more years, and so there's just a need for it.
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So what does a typical partnership with you look like?
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What happens?
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Yeah, I mean there's a variety of ways that schools and teachers can kind of work with me.
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I guess one of the most common is teachers sorry, schools book me to deliver some kind of staff training twilight after school or typically an inset day, or what happened during the pandemic, when everything went online.
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I recorded a whole load of training content.
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So I've got this kind of training platform where it's much cheaper than booking me in person because you don't have to pay for traveling, all these other expenses and also it's just on demand.
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It's like as and when you want to dip into this training, you can, whereas an inset day is like this day you know if you've got staff off or new staff join and they've missed that training.
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So I'm trying to encourage more schools to go digital just because I just think it's more flexible and you can keep revisiting and etc.
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So those are the two main ways.
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It's training it's in-person training or online training.
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And yeah, there's a course also I created with a secondary teacher called Yvonne Biggins, and the course is called the Seeds of Happiness, and that was my way of taking the science of wellbeing and creating a mini little curriculum that is child facing.
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So how can you bring this to life and make it engaging for five to 11 year olds?
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And it's a six or seven lesson course.
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Just do the training online.
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It used to be in-person, but now that's purely online.
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And a couple of things happened.
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One, we won the teacher primary award for well-being in 2022.
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And then also a researcher at Cambridge University faculty, faculty of education, got in touch and said I'd love to Test your seeds of happiness course in a pilot study, have a control School and an intervention school and see if it makes a difference to their well-being.
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And I was okay, great, really excited and also Crapping myself because I was like, oh god shows has no impact or negative impact.
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Yeah, anyway, it had a positive impact on the intervention children's well-being and then they did a follow-up, like half a term later, to see if that impact had lasted.
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And it had.
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And also, interestingly, this isn't a design of the course, but they were testing attitudes to learning as well.
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In the children and and the intervention schools Children's attitudes to learning had improved significantly.
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So children saying I'm trying harder in my lessons, I'm more engaged in learning, even the lessons I didn't like before, partly because the course teaches them about their brains and how their brains learn and neuroplasticity and how we learn the most when we Challenge ourselves and do things that we find tricky.
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And so that was motivating for children to kind of actually try get stuck into mass when they'd previously found mass really hard and we switched off to it.
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So that was really pleasing.
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So yeah, I mean that's interesting.
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And you've mentioned a few times now about the science of well-being.
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Yeah, it's, I wouldn't say that's an entirely kind of unintuitive Concept.
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But what the what does that mean?
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Because I kind of, I kind of have a sense about what it means.
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But what would you, how would you pin that, turn down the science of well-being?
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so One of the best definitions that I like about the science of well-being is it's the scientific study of what makes life worth living, which I just think it's a great.
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You know, when I was going through that period in my life where I was struggling with my mental health partly is that was that fundamental existential questions that I didn't know what the point was.
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Everything felt pointless.
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So the science-tific study of what makes life worth living and Many people do not know that Oxford University has a well-being research center and it's you know, it's one of the World leaders in terms of its well-being research.
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It also has the Oxford mindfulness research center, so a whole research center dedicated to studying the impacts of mindfulness training on children and adults.
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Cambridge University has a well-being Institute.
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In fact that's existed for, I think, about three decades.
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One of the first ones.
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London School of Economics, has a huge well-being research center in America Yale and Harvard, the equivalent of Oxford and Cambridge.
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Here.
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Their most popular courses in the university's history are science of well-being undergrad degrees.
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So it's not what some people have said to me in the past, mainly on Twitter, kind of fluffy well-being nonsense it's.
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It's.
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An hour well-being.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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The science of well-being is based on thousands of empirical studies I over three decades worth of research.
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In fact, psychologists used to study happiness and well-being far longer ago and what happened was around the Second World War, because so many people were returning from war with PTSD, post-traumatic stress.
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Psychology then kind of fixed, kind of switched, and looking at how can we get these kind of damaged people back to feeling okay again, and kind of ever since then, traditional psychology is focused on that Like how can we get people struggling with the mental health to feeling kind of level playing field?
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The science of well-being takes a different approach.
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It looks at people at the flourishing end of the mental health spectrum, people that are saying I'm happy and satisfied with my life, I experienced regular moments of pleasure and purpose.
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It looks at their habits.
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It looks at the way they perceive the world, the things they say to themselves, all of these things, and then looks at are there things that they do that the rest of us could practice and experiment with?
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And multiple studies now have shown that yes, there are things that we can all do that are likely to not guaranteed to improve our mental health and improve our well-being.
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There's a branch, increasingly of what I've seen of psychology as well, around, I think, self-actualization, where, for example and some of it takes from the work of Maslow and people think of Maslow as they think well, that's just, if you've got your basic food and shelter, then you can get on and crack on with the other stuff.
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But actually there's a line of thinking that Maslow was actually misunderstood.
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He wasn't just talking about that.
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He was talking about often that, the tip of the, the kind of the highest part of his trying, if you like, the hierarchy where actually only when those things are in place can you then start to talk about the stuff you're talking about, which is that kind of higher-purpose challenge.
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And what I think is really interesting is how you've turned this into a school setting, because this stuff does link with learning and literacy and numeracy and all that stuff.
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So how have you found, how have you started to tease apart and actually pull together those two threads?
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How have you started to kind of you know you talked about attitudes for learning, for example what have you seen there?
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Well, there's a couple of things.
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So one we also know from increasing research and evidence that, generally speaking, children with high levels well-being tend to perform better in school.
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And there's a mixture of reasons for that.
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One, if you look at the negative end of the spectrum, if a child is struggling with their mental health, a couple of things.
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One, their rates of absence are higher, so they are less likely to be in school.
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And if you're not in school it's going to be very hard for you to learn the curriculum.
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Secondly, if you are in school but you're struggling with your mental health as Professor Tamsin Ford said she's an expert at Cambridge University in children's psychiatry when you are in a state of distress it's very hard for you to focus on anything.
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So you've got kids physically in the classroom, but you know they can't concentrate on that rich learning.
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So focusing on children's emotional health and well-being, getting them to feel safe, giving them tools to manage their emotions all of these things help them to self-regulate, help them to focus on what the teachers teaching them, help them to get on better with their peers and be able to make friends and resolve conflicts that naturally arise.
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All of these things help children do better in school.
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So this is another part of my training is that it's not an either-or we don't.
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There's no dichotomy.
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Do we focus on academic learning or do we focus on the well-being Like?
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They mutually support each other, and we also know it's a two-way relationship.
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When children are doing better in school, they're performing better in their English, they're doing better in maths, they feel better about themselves and their lives in general, so their well-being goes up.
00:20:30.968 --> 00:20:33.193
So yeah, it's.
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And the other thing is you can use any subject, any any subject on the curriculum can be an opportunity to improve a child's well-being.
00:20:44.010 --> 00:20:46.059
So perhaps could you give me an example.
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Yeah, an example is.
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So one of the ideas I talk about in my book, well-being in the Primary Classroom, is this concept of the stretch zone.
00:20:54.846 --> 00:21:04.868
That expression I borrowed from a psychologist called Talben Shihar, basically says you know, in the middle you've got your comfort zone.
00:21:04.868 --> 00:21:11.059
So in a, let's say, a traditional maths lesson, your comfort zone is where you know the content already.
00:21:11.059 --> 00:21:13.963
It's not challenging, it's not stretching you, you know it already.
00:21:13.963 --> 00:21:22.645
Therefore, you're going to get bored quickly and you're going to look for distractions, because our brains naturally want a challenge, they want stimulation.
00:21:22.645 --> 00:21:31.019
So outside the comfort zone is the stretch zone and this is where we should all be trying to spend as much as our time is possible in lessons.
00:21:31.884 --> 00:21:37.019
Stretch zone by its very nature is uncomfortable, so it's outside your comfort zone.
00:21:37.019 --> 00:21:40.857
So you're going to feel some level of discomfort and it's important to normalise that.
00:21:40.857 --> 00:21:52.365
With kids Like, you're going to feel maybe nervous, you're going to feel confused, you're going to feel uncertain, you're going to maybe have some negative thoughts like I can't do this or I don't want to do this or I don't know what I'm doing.
00:21:52.365 --> 00:22:00.707
All of that's completely normal and by normalising that, you stop them from panicking and freaking out and shutting down to the opportunities to learn.
00:22:00.707 --> 00:22:08.983
Other thing about the stretch zone you're going to make mistakes because you don't know already, you haven't mastered it yet, and mistakes are just part of the process, completely normal.
00:22:08.983 --> 00:22:11.972
They're a good sign you're challenging yourself.
00:22:12.059 --> 00:22:20.059
Another thing about being in the stretch zone is when you're brave enough to take risks, have a go, extend yourself, use some more exciting vocabulary.
00:22:20.059 --> 00:22:23.526
That yeah, you might get the spelling wrong, but you're having a go.
00:22:23.526 --> 00:22:28.548
You might get the context of that word wrong, but well done for just trying something different.
00:22:28.548 --> 00:22:32.727
What happens is eventually you start to learn from those mistakes.
00:22:32.727 --> 00:22:35.067
Good teaching, support from your peers, etc.
00:22:35.067 --> 00:22:40.968
And when you start to master that new skill, you're starting to get better.
00:22:40.968 --> 00:22:42.305
You see that improvement.
00:22:42.305 --> 00:22:49.059
It feels exhilarating, it's those light, bold moments, it's that I can do this now.
00:22:49.059 --> 00:23:04.244
And that then becomes motivating, like you're going to want to challenge yourself and stretch yourself more in the future, because you've experienced that taking this risk, going through that discomfort, leads to a much more exhilarating and satisfying place than just staying in your comfort zone.
00:23:05.180 --> 00:23:15.059
And then, it's important to note, outside your stretch zone is the panic zone, and that is where what you're being asked to do feels like it's far beyond what you're capable of doing.
00:23:15.059 --> 00:23:30.990
And so you go into that kind of fight flight freeze mode Again, you don't really learn anything there and that's why a big part of learning is learning how to regulate those emotions, because learning, as we all know, is inherently difficult.
00:23:30.990 --> 00:23:44.766
You know, even as an adult, if you think about something new that you've, you've learned like tomorrow I have a half term where I am tomorrow I've got a skiing lesson, because at the end of February I'm going skiing.
00:23:44.766 --> 00:23:45.666
I haven't been skiing.
00:23:45.666 --> 00:23:48.269
I've only ever been once, and the last time was 12 years ago.
00:23:48.330 --> 00:23:52.403
Right, I feel nervous even about my lesson tomorrow.
00:23:52.403 --> 00:23:54.347
I'm anxious about it.
00:23:54.347 --> 00:24:01.442
That is me in the stretch zone, right, it's a skill that I know I'm gonna fluff up and make mistakes tomorrow.
00:24:01.442 --> 00:24:26.689
I know I'm gonna feel a bit silly at times but because I'm so used to putting myself in the stretch zone, I accept that that's just part of the journey of getting better and I know that when I'm on that ski slope In a couple of weeks time going down a mountain, I'm gonna feel at times not all the time I'm gonna feel amazing and it's worth that going through that discomfort and pain to get to there.
00:24:26.689 --> 00:24:40.067
And I think that is such an important skill to teach kids from a very, very young age that to experience high levels of well being it's you've got to go through that pain barrier in a way.
00:24:41.255 --> 00:24:45.002
There's a thread here, isn't there, about that, the comfort zone thing.
00:24:45.002 --> 00:25:00.861
I mean, it's a well, a well worn Thing, the comfort zone thing, yeah, but then to place it into a context that the people can understand, and you know, I'm thinking about my little boy, who's seven, and we went to a BMX track last week.
00:25:00.861 --> 00:25:12.328
He bought you got this new BMX and honestly he spent 10 minutes just looking at the slope and thinking I can't do, I can't do it and yeah, I the one point I think please just go down the hill, you know.
00:25:12.328 --> 00:25:17.980
But it was a really useful thing for me to see and watch that, because now he's saying can we go back that?
00:25:17.980 --> 00:25:18.521
Can we go back?
00:25:18.821 --> 00:25:29.221
You know, yeah, and I often refer to you know he's doing his maths or is, is English or reading, whatever I said, that's how, that's what it should feel like in the, in the classroom, not like you're going down.
00:25:29.221 --> 00:25:41.479
You know 10, you know a 10 meter slope, but if you just push yourself a little bit more than when you've gone through that, that brief period, as you said you're gonna have, you're gonna come out the other side of that and it feels like I don't know, do you ever do work with parents.
00:25:41.479 --> 00:25:45.125
It feels like this that the parents would be would really been.
00:25:45.125 --> 00:25:49.721
I would love my primary school To host an evening with you where you can speak to us as parents.
00:25:49.721 --> 00:25:51.066
That I think that would be amazing.
00:25:52.035 --> 00:26:11.525
Yeah, so literally just last week I hosted the parent workshop for the year six parents because they're about to be going into kind of sat period they're also heading towards transition to secondary school and it was really how to support their well being, their levels of resilience and, yeah, the stretch them as a core part of that, and I have done.
00:26:11.525 --> 00:26:17.196
I'm increasingly being asked to do parent workshops at schools For that very reason.
00:26:17.196 --> 00:26:24.028
Like this is this is one of the misconceptions that comes up the most when it comes to happiness and well being, particularly of children.
00:26:24.028 --> 00:26:35.048
But it's also true of us as adults that to be happier we need to reduce stress, we need to make things easier, we need to make things less scary and anxiety provoking, etc.
00:26:35.048 --> 00:26:35.190
Etc.
00:26:35.190 --> 00:26:58.517
And actually that that genuinely can be further from the truth that the more we get children used to In a safe environment where ultimately no harm is going to come to them, they are taking risks, they are getting outside their comfort zones, they're dealing with those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and then coming out the other side.
00:26:58.557 --> 00:26:59.598
That's the important bit.
00:26:59.598 --> 00:27:09.979
Like with your son if he hadn't experienced the actually having a go in, feeling that exhilaration, and you're just putting him in a scary situation.
00:27:09.979 --> 00:27:11.862
There's no positive outcome.
00:27:11.862 --> 00:27:14.488
I mean it's going to put him off completely.
00:27:14.488 --> 00:27:19.142
This is why it's it's supportive, but ultimately it's.
00:27:19.142 --> 00:27:21.807
You've got to take this leap of faith.
00:27:23.275 --> 00:27:28.886
Yeah, the more we get children used to that, the more resilient they are, the more they can overcome future challenges.
00:27:28.886 --> 00:27:36.944
And, like you said, andy, about your son, you can then take that experience and say look, you overcame that quite scary challenge.
00:27:36.944 --> 00:27:44.721
Going down a you know, a 10 foot slope on a BMX for the first time ever, doing equivalent fractions in math is not as scary as that.
00:27:44.721 --> 00:27:52.580
Like you could genuinely hurt yourself physically by by riding your BMX but sat in a comfy chair in a maths classroom.
00:27:52.580 --> 00:27:54.664
It's not a life and death situation.
00:27:54.664 --> 00:27:56.107
You're not going to physically hurt yourself.
00:27:56.107 --> 00:27:57.016
It's just a.
00:27:57.016 --> 00:28:07.009
It's a challenging maths problem that you've got to overcome and even that can put problems, anxieties in perspective, like you did this scary thing over here.
00:28:07.009 --> 00:28:14.169
Therefore, this challenge it's a challenge but it's not as bad and because you cope with that, you can definitely cope with this and I believe in you.
00:28:15.896 --> 00:28:28.417
Yeah, and one of the things we often talk about at Bedrock is the thing that comes up time and time again is the what some schools might term the reading for pleasure agenda, the idea that you know, you know, pet pinning that down.
00:28:28.417 --> 00:28:43.451
And we often say that you know, we feel that Bedrock enables reading for pleasure because we sequence vocabulary and we grow vocabulary through, kind of culturally, a range of fiction and nonfiction, sort of culturally enrich, rich in context.
00:28:43.451 --> 00:28:54.665
But to what extent do you find in schools that you're talking about unpicking self concept, with children who say things like I don't read, I don't like reading, and how does that link to this?
00:28:54.665 --> 00:28:59.931
Do you find yourself unpicking that narrative that children give to themselves?
00:29:01.195 --> 00:29:01.737
Yeah.
00:29:01.737 --> 00:29:26.107
So like a big I mean a big part of improving well being is is unpicking our Self talk and our kind of limiting beliefs so that A child saying I don't read or I can't read or I don't like reading is a limiting belief, like, of course there will be a book in the world that if I read it to you or you read it with me, you will absolutely love.
00:29:26.107 --> 00:29:29.590
Like there are that many books in the world it's impossible for you not to love, you know.
00:29:29.590 --> 00:29:37.161
So it's important to challenge those limiting beliefs in a in a friendly and supportive way.
00:29:37.161 --> 00:29:40.324
Don't say you're wrong, you know, but just challenge them.
00:29:40.324 --> 00:29:50.739
But secondly, like reading for pleasure, we know is one of the key ways of improving well-being.
00:29:50.739 --> 00:30:04.273
The children that read regularly for pleasure tend to have high level well-being and it's partly because through reading, particularly fiction, you understand yourself better, because you read the dilemmas of characters etc.
00:30:04.273 --> 00:30:11.492
See them overcoming problems similar to your own, and then you start to feel like I can do that because that character in the book has done it.
00:30:11.492 --> 00:30:27.886
So I mean, my top tip for reading for pleasure for parents is just to read regularly with your kids and a variety of books and don't be too snobby about what the child might naturally be interested in.
00:30:28.684 --> 00:30:34.676
So my son is currently loving my eight-year-old, who has read like he's quite a good reader.
00:30:34.676 --> 00:30:37.131
He's read like Harry Potter books.
00:30:37.131 --> 00:30:40.752
He's now reading cat kid comic club books.
00:30:40.752 --> 00:30:45.394
Right, in terms of reading ability they're much lower than, say, a Harry Potter book.
00:30:45.394 --> 00:30:51.009
My wife and I could get really snobby and say, oh, come on, neela, you can read better, more challenging books than that.
00:30:51.009 --> 00:30:55.329
He absolutely loves them and you know it's a phase.
00:30:55.329 --> 00:30:59.567
He will read them, he'll get bored of them and he'll move on to something else, a bit like Harry Potter.
00:30:59.567 --> 00:31:04.053
So yeah, but literally from babies.
00:31:04.053 --> 00:31:07.909
We have read with our kids every night and it's just rubbed off onto them.
00:31:07.909 --> 00:31:12.715
And now our boys, honestly, will not let us put them to bed without reading a book.
00:31:12.715 --> 00:31:17.355
Even if we've been out somewhere and it's late, we have to read, even if it's a page.
00:31:17.355 --> 00:31:23.556
That's how like hard-wired into them is that reading is just what they do at bed before they go to sleep.
00:31:23.596 --> 00:31:25.385
That's what we've done, that I mean.
00:31:25.385 --> 00:31:27.451
My little boy, will, for example, is a more reluctant reader.
00:31:27.451 --> 00:31:35.146
So whether we do a little bit of we have a nap that we use sometimes he loves.
00:31:35.146 --> 00:31:36.873
We've read the Marcus Rashford book.
00:31:36.873 --> 00:31:43.371
I don't know if you've come across that book yeah, I haven't read it, but you need to have a pick it up.
00:31:43.805 --> 00:31:47.055
It's so chimed with all the things you've been talking about today in terms of growth.
00:31:47.055 --> 00:31:53.749
You know that growth mindset and you know setting small targets for yourself and kind of coming out the other side.
00:31:53.749 --> 00:32:00.512
It's brilliant because, I find myself, we read it and then we stop and we discuss well, how does that link to what you've done in the last couple of weeks?
00:32:00.512 --> 00:32:03.534
When you said that, do you not think that that makes you think this way now?
00:32:03.534 --> 00:32:23.132
And it's been lovely really going on that journey with that book with him and reading it with him, and I think that's really important and there is no quick fix to this stuff, as there it's about creating supportive, nurturing environments and following what you've done from a distance and, having followed your career, you're doing that at scale.
00:32:23.132 --> 00:32:28.609
So, on behalf of lots of schools, thank you very much and thank you for joining us today.
00:32:29.231 --> 00:32:29.854
It's been brilliant.
00:32:30.885 --> 00:32:52.391
Yeah, I just wanted to add also because it's very relevant in terms of reading for pleasure, like genuinely, I didn't read lots as a child, but I ended up doing A level English and doing an English degree where I had to read absolutely loads, and it's just one of those things that I was more into sports than reading, and it changes.
00:32:52.391 --> 00:32:59.597
Like if your kid is a reluctant reader or doesn't naturally want to pick up a book, don't freak out, it will change.
00:33:01.146 --> 00:33:07.997
Yeah, but it will only change if we're encouraging and nurturing, of course.
00:33:07.997 --> 00:33:15.788
Yeah, yeah, and we create the environments at schools and where I often think, for example, when we talk about Bedrock.
00:33:15.788 --> 00:33:41.056
For me, just as an example because that's what my role is now and I speak to lots of schools it's really important to share with the young people why they're doing, for example, their Bedrock or whatever it is they're doing for their homework, whether it's reading this or whatever, and helping them to understand why it's got a role to play in their lives, why that thing matters to them, and I think that's all part of that nurturing environment that we need to have for our young people.
00:33:41.056 --> 00:33:45.856
So, yeah, that's an important thing to add, I think, but it's been brilliant.
00:33:45.856 --> 00:33:47.290
I knew I'd enjoy talking to you again.
00:33:47.290 --> 00:33:50.510
So thank you so much and, yeah, hopefully we'll speak to you again soon.
00:33:51.646 --> 00:33:52.148
Cheers, Andy.
00:33:52.148 --> 00:33:56.509
Thanks for listening to this episode of me.
00:00:20.196 --> 00:00:26.402
Hello everyone and welcome to what I guess now is series two of the Literacy Works podcast with Bedrock Learning.
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I'm Andy Sammons, the Deputy Head of Teaching and Learning at Bedrock, and today we're joined by Adrian Bethune, who is the primary school teacher amongst lots of other things that we're going to hear about, and he also runs Teach Happy.
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Is it Teach Happy or Teach Happy?
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Teach Happy, teach Happy.
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I thought it was Teacher, because it's the way it's spelled, isn't it?
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So we'll hear all.
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I thought like it's like an app, but anyway, apologies, everyone Teach Happy and we're going to hear lots and lots about this in the next half an hour or so.
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When I read my book, adrian very kindly gave me his time and of the interviews, his was one of the interviews I did for the book that I remember the most.
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It really hit me very hard his interview.
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It was fantastic, very honest and frank account of his own journey with Will Welbing and things like that.
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So delighted that I've been hunting poor Adrian down for the last few months to get him on and I'm delighted that he's here.
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So thank you so much for joining us, adrian.
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It doesn't mean a lot.
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Thank you, no thanks for having me.
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Andy, if we could start with kind of your journey in schools and up to this point, I think it's really useful for the listeners to hear kind of where you've come from and where you are now.
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Yeah, so I'm a practicing primary school teacher.
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I teach part time at a junior school in Aylesbury and I've been a primary school teacher since 2010 and I was a career changer.
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So I worked for several years in the music industry before retraining and I guess the music industry was where it all started my interest in mental health and well-being, and it's because of a period of really poor mental health in my life.
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At that time I'd always been kind of naturally optimistic, happy, go, lucky.
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And then, around 2008, on the surface it should have been one of the happiest times of my life.
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I had a girlfriend that I thought I was going to marry in the future.
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I just bought my first flat in London or shared ownership flat.
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Couldn't afford a whole one.
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I had a good job publishing company.
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Well, to get a flat in London at that point I own 30% of a flat.
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You know, everything on paper was just right, but I felt anxious and it was an anxiety or an anxious feelings that weren't going away and in fact they were getting worse.
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It was affecting my sleep.
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I wasn't able to sleep proper at night.
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I lost my appetite, so I was losing weight because I just wasn't eating well and I just stopped enjoying things that I would normally enjoy, just because my mind was just so full of worries and anxieties.
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It's probably worth reminding people 2008 was when there was a world financial crisis and I think that was a big part of what I was feeling.
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I bought this flat, had a mortgage which I'd never had before, and suddenly I felt this pressure like what if I lose my job, what if I lose my flat, etc.
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But anyway, it kind of spiralled to the point where I just completely burned out.
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And then I went into a period of like depression, where everyone experiences these in different ways but my experience of depression was like a nothingness, like I didn't feel really sad.
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I wasn't crying, I just felt nothing.
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It was complete opposite of anxiety, where you literally feel like everything is a life and death situation, to feeling nothing and having no motivation and not seeing the point in anything.
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Anyway, they say there's an evolutionary aspect to that, don't they?
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In terms of it's your body's way?
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I remember, jim, a Jim Carrey bit on YouTube and he said depressed actually means deep, deep rest, and it means it's your body's way of saying you need to stop now and one of the things you said to me.
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You won't remember this probably.
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You said to me your mental health is everything, because it's the lens through which you see the world.
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When that goes and that's obviously what happened for you, right?
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Everything lost its color everything, yeah, and that's the thing.
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Until this is the thing about, like mental health or let's say, mental illness, because that's what that was.
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Until you have been through it, you honestly have no idea.
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I'd heard about anxiety, I'd heard about depression, but until you, literally that person going through that, you cannot comprehend, you cannot understand.
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And yeah, that was like the lens of how I saw the world and experience it.
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It affects everything, like the taste of food, like even when I was hanging out with my family.
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In that period I felt no connection.
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I just felt nothing and that is quite scary, right.
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Like you're a human being that has feelings and emotions, and even the people that I felt closest to and most loved by and supported I didn't feel connected to.
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But it's one of those.
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I've read a good book recently, maybe Ender Last Year, called Wintering.
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I don't know if you've come across that book.
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No, I've not heard of that.
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I can't remember the author, but look it up.
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It's called Wintering and she describes.
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It's basically about the seasons.
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It's like a metaphor, like the seasons, the reason we go through winter, everything kind of decays and dies, and then it's basically preparing us for like a rebirth, right the spring, everything coming back to live, shoots, bold, start to come out, and that's probably a good way of looking at that period in my life.
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It was like everything was decaying and kind of, and it was, I guess, preparing me for some kind of like regeneration.
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Because that's what happened.
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I kind of almost had to weather that period of wintering, just get through it.
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And when I kind of naturally started to feel better like there was no epiphany, there was no oh, I'd tried this and then suddenly I felt better, I just started to feel a bit better and a big part of that was just having supportive friends and family.
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You know they talked to me, they supported me, they just let me know that they were there and that was actually really reassuring.
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But one of the things I started to do as I was starting to feel better was just research.
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I was like googling at work like causes of stress, anxiety and depression, because I wanted to understand more about what I was experiencing and I learned loads about mental health.
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I just simply just didn't know before.
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And some of the things were just really helpful, like some of the causes of anxiety and depression can be major life changes, like taking on a mortgage, like moving into a flat by myself, which I'd never done before, etc.
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So that was helpful.
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Kind of a period that didn't make sense to me was starting to make sense, and then I also discovered as part of this research that there was a science of well-being.
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So for decades scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, behavioural scientists have been studying what is it that contributes to human well-being, what is it that gets in the way?
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And again, I learned loads about well-being that I just didn't know before and I just started to make small tweaks to my own lifestyle.
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And one of the things that kept coming up time and time again was the power of volunteering.
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And that was when I volunteered to mentor.
00:07:51.095 --> 00:08:29.523
I joined this mentoring charity for a year, mentored a nine-year-old boy in Hackney who was being taught in a pupil referral unit, and that had such a profound impact on my life, gave me a real sense of meaning and purpose, which, again on reflection, I was lacking and that made me want to retrain to be a teacher, which is what I did 2010, and when I got into the classroom, I wanted to teach and share some of these practical tools that, as an adult, I had found really useful, that, on reflection, I wish I'd known growing up, and that's really how teach happy and my journey into focusing well-being in schools really started.
00:08:31.413 --> 00:08:38.418
I mean, I just I remember I'm not just saying this I remember interviewing you for the book last time and being really struck.
00:08:38.418 --> 00:09:03.164
I'm actually identifying a lot with you because I had a very similar experience and I think, on reflection, what was happening was there had been a really intense period in my life where actually I had been a teacher, but actually I've been in, probably found myself in the wrong school, wasn't in the right place, and I think actually I did start to come out of it in a similar way to you, found myself in a school that I've been at for the last four or five years.
00:09:03.164 --> 00:09:05.755
That was probably the best four or five years of my life.
00:09:05.755 --> 00:09:06.813
It was just amazing.
00:09:06.813 --> 00:09:13.037
And here I am now with different challenge and it's and it's bedrock is a genuinely a fantastic place to work at.
00:09:14.029 --> 00:09:25.940
And I think I remember identifying so much of what you said about, about the importance of of taking care of yourself, and so that the next thing I really want to ask you about is what is that?
00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:28.356
Let's unpick, what is that work you do with schools?
00:09:28.356 --> 00:09:34.154
And actually you know off there you were saying about getting lots of schools, lots of schools willing to partner with you.
00:09:34.154 --> 00:09:37.514
So what is it that you do and why do you think that's been so successful?
00:09:39.830 --> 00:09:52.381
So what I do is try and translate and share the science of wellbeing and make it applicable to a busy time, poor cash, poor primary classroom setting and school setting.
00:09:52.381 --> 00:09:58.061
And, equally, a big part of my work is focused on teacher and teaching staff wellbeing.
00:09:58.061 --> 00:10:03.921
And I think it's popular because it's evidence based.
00:10:03.921 --> 00:10:21.177
There's a science, there's a theory behind it and, honestly, some of the best feedback I get after training sessions in schools is from the more cynical teaching staff that say, oh, I saw wellbeing on our agenda for the twilight or the insert and my eyes rolled.
00:10:21.177 --> 00:10:25.217
But you know the fact that you shared the research behind the ideas.
00:10:25.238 --> 00:10:31.615
Actually, I found it really compelling and it and it and it made sense, and so I'm going to try some of these ideas out.
00:10:31.615 --> 00:10:37.682
And so I think that it's a mixture of look, here's the research.
00:10:37.682 --> 00:10:43.043
This is what the research says, why this is a good thing to try out.
00:10:43.043 --> 00:10:48.695
It's not a guarantee that it's going to improve your mental health and wellbeing, but it's a good thing to experiment with.
00:10:48.695 --> 00:10:56.158
And then, secondly, here are some practical ways that you can bring this to life in your classroom, either for your children or for yourself, or both.
00:10:56.158 --> 00:11:07.900
And thirdly, the reason I think it's popular is because we know that teacher mental health has been suffering ever since I've become a teacher.
00:11:07.900 --> 00:11:08.730
It's you know.
00:11:08.730 --> 00:11:15.259
The teacher wellbeing index shows that things are going in the wrong direction, and the Children's Society Good Childhood Index.
00:11:15.259 --> 00:11:17.649
It's a report that comes out every year since 2009.
00:11:17.649 --> 00:11:29.033
They've shown that there's been a significant decrease in children's wellbeing, life satisfaction, over the last 10 or so more years, and so there's just a need for it.
00:11:30.690 --> 00:11:34.818
So what does a typical partnership with you look like?
00:11:34.818 --> 00:11:36.282
What happens?
00:11:36.282 --> 00:11:42.322
Yeah, I mean there's a variety of ways that schools and teachers can kind of work with me.
00:11:43.289 --> 00:11:58.081
I guess one of the most common is teachers sorry, schools book me to deliver some kind of staff training twilight after school or typically an inset day, or what happened during the pandemic, when everything went online.
00:11:58.081 --> 00:12:01.719
I recorded a whole load of training content.
00:12:01.719 --> 00:12:14.596
So I've got this kind of training platform where it's much cheaper than booking me in person because you don't have to pay for traveling, all these other expenses and also it's just on demand.
00:12:14.596 --> 00:12:23.993
It's like as and when you want to dip into this training, you can, whereas an inset day is like this day you know if you've got staff off or new staff join and they've missed that training.
00:12:24.649 --> 00:12:31.357
So I'm trying to encourage more schools to go digital just because I just think it's more flexible and you can keep revisiting and etc.
00:12:31.357 --> 00:12:33.794
So those are the two main ways.
00:12:33.794 --> 00:12:38.317
It's training it's in-person training or online training.
00:12:38.317 --> 00:12:58.635
And yeah, there's a course also I created with a secondary teacher called Yvonne Biggins, and the course is called the Seeds of Happiness, and that was my way of taking the science of wellbeing and creating a mini little curriculum that is child facing.
00:12:58.635 --> 00:13:03.438
So how can you bring this to life and make it engaging for five to 11 year olds?
00:13:03.438 --> 00:13:07.998
And it's a six or seven lesson course.
00:13:07.998 --> 00:13:10.133
Just do the training online.
00:13:10.133 --> 00:13:12.519
It used to be in-person, but now that's purely online.
00:13:13.561 --> 00:13:14.523
And a couple of things happened.
00:13:14.523 --> 00:13:19.052
One, we won the teacher primary award for well-being in 2022.
00:13:19.052 --> 00:13:36.807
And then also a researcher at Cambridge University faculty, faculty of education, got in touch and said I'd love to Test your seeds of happiness course in a pilot study, have a control School and an intervention school and see if it makes a difference to their well-being.
00:13:36.807 --> 00:13:45.371
And I was okay, great, really excited and also Crapping myself because I was like, oh god shows has no impact or negative impact.
00:13:45.631 --> 00:13:57.211
Yeah, anyway, it had a positive impact on the intervention children's well-being and then they did a follow-up, like half a term later, to see if that impact had lasted.
00:13:57.211 --> 00:13:57.711
And it had.
00:13:57.711 --> 00:14:04.756
And also, interestingly, this isn't a design of the course, but they were testing attitudes to learning as well.
00:14:04.756 --> 00:14:13.366
In the children and and the intervention schools Children's attitudes to learning had improved significantly.
00:14:13.366 --> 00:14:28.580
So children saying I'm trying harder in my lessons, I'm more engaged in learning, even the lessons I didn't like before, partly because the course teaches them about their brains and how their brains learn and neuroplasticity and how we learn the most when we Challenge ourselves and do things that we find tricky.
00:14:28.580 --> 00:14:38.404
And so that was motivating for children to kind of actually try get stuck into mass when they'd previously found mass really hard and we switched off to it.
00:14:38.404 --> 00:14:39.448
So that was really pleasing.
00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:42.808
So yeah, I mean that's interesting.
00:14:42.808 --> 00:14:47.350
And you've mentioned a few times now about the science of well-being.
00:14:47.350 --> 00:14:53.082
Yeah, it's, I wouldn't say that's an entirely kind of unintuitive Concept.
00:14:53.082 --> 00:14:55.130
But what the what does that mean?
00:14:55.130 --> 00:14:57.220
Because I kind of, I kind of have a sense about what it means.
00:14:57.220 --> 00:15:00.730
But what would you, how would you pin that, turn down the science of well-being?
00:15:01.841 --> 00:15:14.125
so One of the best definitions that I like about the science of well-being is it's the scientific study of what makes life worth living, which I just think it's a great.
00:15:14.125 --> 00:15:24.114
You know, when I was going through that period in my life where I was struggling with my mental health partly is that was that fundamental existential questions that I didn't know what the point was.
00:15:24.114 --> 00:15:25.840
Everything felt pointless.
00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:43.087
So the science-tific study of what makes life worth living and Many people do not know that Oxford University has a well-being research center and it's you know, it's one of the World leaders in terms of its well-being research.
00:15:43.649 --> 00:15:51.559
It also has the Oxford mindfulness research center, so a whole research center dedicated to studying the impacts of mindfulness training on children and adults.
00:15:51.559 --> 00:15:54.625
Cambridge University has a well-being Institute.
00:15:54.625 --> 00:15:57.552
In fact that's existed for, I think, about three decades.
00:15:57.552 --> 00:15:58.494
One of the first ones.
00:15:58.494 --> 00:16:06.013
London School of Economics, has a huge well-being research center in America Yale and Harvard, the equivalent of Oxford and Cambridge.
00:16:06.013 --> 00:16:06.234
Here.
00:16:06.234 --> 00:16:12.513
Their most popular courses in the university's history are science of well-being undergrad degrees.
00:16:12.513 --> 00:16:21.506
So it's not what some people have said to me in the past, mainly on Twitter, kind of fluffy well-being nonsense it's.
00:16:21.506 --> 00:16:22.130
It's.
00:16:23.303 --> 00:16:23.905
An hour well-being.
00:16:24.640 --> 00:16:25.783
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:16:25.783 --> 00:16:33.908
The science of well-being is based on thousands of empirical studies I over three decades worth of research.
00:16:33.908 --> 00:16:49.464
In fact, psychologists used to study happiness and well-being far longer ago and what happened was around the Second World War, because so many people were returning from war with PTSD, post-traumatic stress.
00:16:49.464 --> 00:17:06.807
Psychology then kind of fixed, kind of switched, and looking at how can we get these kind of damaged people back to feeling okay again, and kind of ever since then, traditional psychology is focused on that Like how can we get people struggling with the mental health to feeling kind of level playing field?
00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:10.169
The science of well-being takes a different approach.
00:17:10.169 --> 00:17:19.827
It looks at people at the flourishing end of the mental health spectrum, people that are saying I'm happy and satisfied with my life, I experienced regular moments of pleasure and purpose.
00:17:19.827 --> 00:17:21.987
It looks at their habits.
00:17:21.987 --> 00:17:33.788
It looks at the way they perceive the world, the things they say to themselves, all of these things, and then looks at are there things that they do that the rest of us could practice and experiment with?
00:17:33.788 --> 00:17:45.763
And multiple studies now have shown that yes, there are things that we can all do that are likely to not guaranteed to improve our mental health and improve our well-being.
00:17:47.019 --> 00:18:06.598
There's a branch, increasingly of what I've seen of psychology as well, around, I think, self-actualization, where, for example and some of it takes from the work of Maslow and people think of Maslow as they think well, that's just, if you've got your basic food and shelter, then you can get on and crack on with the other stuff.
00:18:06.598 --> 00:18:09.789
But actually there's a line of thinking that Maslow was actually misunderstood.
00:18:09.789 --> 00:18:12.240
He wasn't just talking about that.
00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:28.159
He was talking about often that, the tip of the, the kind of the highest part of his trying, if you like, the hierarchy where actually only when those things are in place can you then start to talk about the stuff you're talking about, which is that kind of higher-purpose challenge.
00:18:29.145 --> 00:18:40.660
And what I think is really interesting is how you've turned this into a school setting, because this stuff does link with learning and literacy and numeracy and all that stuff.
00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:46.859
So how have you found, how have you started to tease apart and actually pull together those two threads?
00:18:46.859 --> 00:18:52.655
How have you started to kind of you know you talked about attitudes for learning, for example what have you seen there?
00:18:52.655 --> 00:18:55.059
Well, there's a couple of things.
00:18:56.366 --> 00:19:03.979
So one we also know from increasing research and evidence that, generally speaking, children with high levels well-being tend to perform better in school.
00:19:03.979 --> 00:19:05.999
And there's a mixture of reasons for that.
00:19:05.999 --> 00:19:13.539
One, if you look at the negative end of the spectrum, if a child is struggling with their mental health, a couple of things.
00:19:13.539 --> 00:19:18.059
One, their rates of absence are higher, so they are less likely to be in school.
00:19:18.059 --> 00:19:22.039
And if you're not in school it's going to be very hard for you to learn the curriculum.
00:19:22.039 --> 00:19:36.059
Secondly, if you are in school but you're struggling with your mental health as Professor Tamsin Ford said she's an expert at Cambridge University in children's psychiatry when you are in a state of distress it's very hard for you to focus on anything.
00:19:36.059 --> 00:19:43.059
So you've got kids physically in the classroom, but you know they can't concentrate on that rich learning.
00:19:43.059 --> 00:20:03.059
So focusing on children's emotional health and well-being, getting them to feel safe, giving them tools to manage their emotions all of these things help them to self-regulate, help them to focus on what the teachers teaching them, help them to get on better with their peers and be able to make friends and resolve conflicts that naturally arise.
00:20:03.059 --> 00:20:07.059
All of these things help children do better in school.
00:20:07.059 --> 00:20:11.443
So this is another part of my training is that it's not an either-or we don't.
00:20:11.443 --> 00:20:12.959
There's no dichotomy.
00:20:12.959 --> 00:20:17.141
Do we focus on academic learning or do we focus on the well-being Like?
00:20:17.141 --> 00:20:21.039
They mutually support each other, and we also know it's a two-way relationship.
00:20:21.039 --> 00:20:30.968
When children are doing better in school, they're performing better in their English, they're doing better in maths, they feel better about themselves and their lives in general, so their well-being goes up.
00:20:30.968 --> 00:20:33.193
So yeah, it's.
00:20:33.193 --> 00:20:44.010
And the other thing is you can use any subject, any any subject on the curriculum can be an opportunity to improve a child's well-being.
00:20:44.010 --> 00:20:46.059
So perhaps could you give me an example.
00:20:46.059 --> 00:20:48.516
Yeah, an example is.
00:20:48.536 --> 00:20:54.846
So one of the ideas I talk about in my book, well-being in the Primary Classroom, is this concept of the stretch zone.
00:20:54.846 --> 00:21:04.868
That expression I borrowed from a psychologist called Talben Shihar, basically says you know, in the middle you've got your comfort zone.
00:21:04.868 --> 00:21:11.059
So in a, let's say, a traditional maths lesson, your comfort zone is where you know the content already.
00:21:11.059 --> 00:21:13.963
It's not challenging, it's not stretching you, you know it already.
00:21:13.963 --> 00:21:22.645
Therefore, you're going to get bored quickly and you're going to look for distractions, because our brains naturally want a challenge, they want stimulation.
00:21:22.645 --> 00:21:31.019
So outside the comfort zone is the stretch zone and this is where we should all be trying to spend as much as our time is possible in lessons.
00:21:31.884 --> 00:21:37.019
Stretch zone by its very nature is uncomfortable, so it's outside your comfort zone.
00:21:37.019 --> 00:21:40.857
So you're going to feel some level of discomfort and it's important to normalise that.
00:21:40.857 --> 00:21:52.365
With kids Like, you're going to feel maybe nervous, you're going to feel confused, you're going to feel uncertain, you're going to maybe have some negative thoughts like I can't do this or I don't want to do this or I don't know what I'm doing.
00:21:52.365 --> 00:22:00.707
All of that's completely normal and by normalising that, you stop them from panicking and freaking out and shutting down to the opportunities to learn.
00:22:00.707 --> 00:22:08.983
Other thing about the stretch zone you're going to make mistakes because you don't know already, you haven't mastered it yet, and mistakes are just part of the process, completely normal.
00:22:08.983 --> 00:22:11.972
They're a good sign you're challenging yourself.
00:22:12.059 --> 00:22:20.059
Another thing about being in the stretch zone is when you're brave enough to take risks, have a go, extend yourself, use some more exciting vocabulary.
00:22:20.059 --> 00:22:23.526
That yeah, you might get the spelling wrong, but you're having a go.
00:22:23.526 --> 00:22:28.548
You might get the context of that word wrong, but well done for just trying something different.
00:22:28.548 --> 00:22:32.727
What happens is eventually you start to learn from those mistakes.
00:22:32.727 --> 00:22:35.067
Good teaching, support from your peers, etc.
00:22:35.067 --> 00:22:40.968
And when you start to master that new skill, you're starting to get better.
00:22:40.968 --> 00:22:42.305
You see that improvement.
00:22:42.305 --> 00:22:49.059
It feels exhilarating, it's those light, bold moments, it's that I can do this now.
00:22:49.059 --> 00:23:04.244
And that then becomes motivating, like you're going to want to challenge yourself and stretch yourself more in the future, because you've experienced that taking this risk, going through that discomfort, leads to a much more exhilarating and satisfying place than just staying in your comfort zone.
00:23:05.180 --> 00:23:15.059
And then, it's important to note, outside your stretch zone is the panic zone, and that is where what you're being asked to do feels like it's far beyond what you're capable of doing.
00:23:15.059 --> 00:23:30.990
And so you go into that kind of fight flight freeze mode Again, you don't really learn anything there and that's why a big part of learning is learning how to regulate those emotions, because learning, as we all know, is inherently difficult.
00:23:30.990 --> 00:23:44.766
You know, even as an adult, if you think about something new that you've, you've learned like tomorrow I have a half term where I am tomorrow I've got a skiing lesson, because at the end of February I'm going skiing.
00:23:44.766 --> 00:23:45.666
I haven't been skiing.
00:23:45.666 --> 00:23:48.269
I've only ever been once, and the last time was 12 years ago.
00:23:48.330 --> 00:23:52.403
Right, I feel nervous even about my lesson tomorrow.
00:23:52.403 --> 00:23:54.347
I'm anxious about it.
00:23:54.347 --> 00:24:01.442
That is me in the stretch zone, right, it's a skill that I know I'm gonna fluff up and make mistakes tomorrow.
00:24:01.442 --> 00:24:26.689
I know I'm gonna feel a bit silly at times but because I'm so used to putting myself in the stretch zone, I accept that that's just part of the journey of getting better and I know that when I'm on that ski slope In a couple of weeks time going down a mountain, I'm gonna feel at times not all the time I'm gonna feel amazing and it's worth that going through that discomfort and pain to get to there.
00:24:26.689 --> 00:24:40.067
And I think that is such an important skill to teach kids from a very, very young age that to experience high levels of well being it's you've got to go through that pain barrier in a way.
00:24:41.255 --> 00:24:45.002
There's a thread here, isn't there, about that, the comfort zone thing.
00:24:45.002 --> 00:25:00.861
I mean, it's a well, a well worn Thing, the comfort zone thing, yeah, but then to place it into a context that the people can understand, and you know, I'm thinking about my little boy, who's seven, and we went to a BMX track last week.
00:25:00.861 --> 00:25:12.328
He bought you got this new BMX and honestly he spent 10 minutes just looking at the slope and thinking I can't do, I can't do it and yeah, I the one point I think please just go down the hill, you know.
00:25:12.328 --> 00:25:17.980
But it was a really useful thing for me to see and watch that, because now he's saying can we go back that?
00:25:17.980 --> 00:25:18.521
Can we go back?
00:25:18.821 --> 00:25:29.221
You know, yeah, and I often refer to you know he's doing his maths or is, is English or reading, whatever I said, that's how, that's what it should feel like in the, in the classroom, not like you're going down.
00:25:29.221 --> 00:25:41.479
You know 10, you know a 10 meter slope, but if you just push yourself a little bit more than when you've gone through that, that brief period, as you said you're gonna have, you're gonna come out the other side of that and it feels like I don't know, do you ever do work with parents.
00:25:41.479 --> 00:25:45.125
It feels like this that the parents would be would really been.
00:25:45.125 --> 00:25:49.721
I would love my primary school To host an evening with you where you can speak to us as parents.
00:25:49.721 --> 00:25:51.066
That I think that would be amazing.
00:25:52.035 --> 00:26:11.525
Yeah, so literally just last week I hosted the parent workshop for the year six parents because they're about to be going into kind of sat period they're also heading towards transition to secondary school and it was really how to support their well being, their levels of resilience and, yeah, the stretch them as a core part of that, and I have done.
00:26:11.525 --> 00:26:17.196
I'm increasingly being asked to do parent workshops at schools For that very reason.
00:26:17.196 --> 00:26:24.028
Like this is this is one of the misconceptions that comes up the most when it comes to happiness and well being, particularly of children.
00:26:24.028 --> 00:26:35.048
But it's also true of us as adults that to be happier we need to reduce stress, we need to make things easier, we need to make things less scary and anxiety provoking, etc.
00:26:35.048 --> 00:26:35.190
Etc.
00:26:35.190 --> 00:26:58.517
And actually that that genuinely can be further from the truth that the more we get children used to In a safe environment where ultimately no harm is going to come to them, they are taking risks, they are getting outside their comfort zones, they're dealing with those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and then coming out the other side.
00:26:58.557 --> 00:26:59.598
That's the important bit.
00:26:59.598 --> 00:27:09.979
Like with your son if he hadn't experienced the actually having a go in, feeling that exhilaration, and you're just putting him in a scary situation.
00:27:09.979 --> 00:27:11.862
There's no positive outcome.
00:27:11.862 --> 00:27:14.488
I mean it's going to put him off completely.
00:27:14.488 --> 00:27:19.142
This is why it's it's supportive, but ultimately it's.
00:27:19.142 --> 00:27:21.807
You've got to take this leap of faith.
00:27:23.275 --> 00:27:28.886
Yeah, the more we get children used to that, the more resilient they are, the more they can overcome future challenges.
00:27:28.886 --> 00:27:36.944
And, like you said, andy, about your son, you can then take that experience and say look, you overcame that quite scary challenge.
00:27:36.944 --> 00:27:44.721
Going down a you know, a 10 foot slope on a BMX for the first time ever, doing equivalent fractions in math is not as scary as that.
00:27:44.721 --> 00:27:52.580
Like you could genuinely hurt yourself physically by by riding your BMX but sat in a comfy chair in a maths classroom.
00:27:52.580 --> 00:27:54.664
It's not a life and death situation.
00:27:54.664 --> 00:27:56.107
You're not going to physically hurt yourself.
00:27:56.107 --> 00:27:57.016
It's just a.
00:27:57.016 --> 00:28:07.009
It's a challenging maths problem that you've got to overcome and even that can put problems, anxieties in perspective, like you did this scary thing over here.
00:28:07.009 --> 00:28:14.169
Therefore, this challenge it's a challenge but it's not as bad and because you cope with that, you can definitely cope with this and I believe in you.
00:28:15.896 --> 00:28:28.417
Yeah, and one of the things we often talk about at Bedrock is the thing that comes up time and time again is the what some schools might term the reading for pleasure agenda, the idea that you know, you know, pet pinning that down.
00:28:28.417 --> 00:28:43.451
And we often say that you know, we feel that Bedrock enables reading for pleasure because we sequence vocabulary and we grow vocabulary through, kind of culturally, a range of fiction and nonfiction, sort of culturally enrich, rich in context.
00:28:43.451 --> 00:28:54.665
But to what extent do you find in schools that you're talking about unpicking self concept, with children who say things like I don't read, I don't like reading, and how does that link to this?
00:28:54.665 --> 00:28:59.931
Do you find yourself unpicking that narrative that children give to themselves?
00:29:01.195 --> 00:29:01.737
Yeah.
00:29:01.737 --> 00:29:26.107
So like a big I mean a big part of improving well being is is unpicking our Self talk and our kind of limiting beliefs so that A child saying I don't read or I can't read or I don't like reading is a limiting belief, like, of course there will be a book in the world that if I read it to you or you read it with me, you will absolutely love.
00:29:26.107 --> 00:29:29.590
Like there are that many books in the world it's impossible for you not to love, you know.
00:29:29.590 --> 00:29:37.161
So it's important to challenge those limiting beliefs in a in a friendly and supportive way.
00:29:37.161 --> 00:29:40.324
Don't say you're wrong, you know, but just challenge them.
00:29:40.324 --> 00:29:50.739
But secondly, like reading for pleasure, we know is one of the key ways of improving well-being.
00:29:50.739 --> 00:30:04.273
The children that read regularly for pleasure tend to have high level well-being and it's partly because through reading, particularly fiction, you understand yourself better, because you read the dilemmas of characters etc.
00:30:04.273 --> 00:30:11.492
See them overcoming problems similar to your own, and then you start to feel like I can do that because that character in the book has done it.
00:30:11.492 --> 00:30:27.886
So I mean, my top tip for reading for pleasure for parents is just to read regularly with your kids and a variety of books and don't be too snobby about what the child might naturally be interested in.
00:30:28.684 --> 00:30:34.676
So my son is currently loving my eight-year-old, who has read like he's quite a good reader.
00:30:34.676 --> 00:30:37.131
He's read like Harry Potter books.
00:30:37.131 --> 00:30:40.752
He's now reading cat kid comic club books.
00:30:40.752 --> 00:30:45.394
Right, in terms of reading ability they're much lower than, say, a Harry Potter book.
00:30:45.394 --> 00:30:51.009
My wife and I could get really snobby and say, oh, come on, neela, you can read better, more challenging books than that.
00:30:51.009 --> 00:30:55.329
He absolutely loves them and you know it's a phase.
00:30:55.329 --> 00:30:59.567
He will read them, he'll get bored of them and he'll move on to something else, a bit like Harry Potter.
00:30:59.567 --> 00:31:04.053
So yeah, but literally from babies.
00:31:04.053 --> 00:31:07.909
We have read with our kids every night and it's just rubbed off onto them.
00:31:07.909 --> 00:31:12.715
And now our boys, honestly, will not let us put them to bed without reading a book.
00:31:12.715 --> 00:31:17.355
Even if we've been out somewhere and it's late, we have to read, even if it's a page.
00:31:17.355 --> 00:31:23.556
That's how like hard-wired into them is that reading is just what they do at bed before they go to sleep.
00:31:23.596 --> 00:31:25.385
That's what we've done, that I mean.
00:31:25.385 --> 00:31:27.451
My little boy, will, for example, is a more reluctant reader.
00:31:27.451 --> 00:31:35.146
So whether we do a little bit of we have a nap that we use sometimes he loves.
00:31:35.146 --> 00:31:36.873
We've read the Marcus Rashford book.
00:31:36.873 --> 00:31:43.371
I don't know if you've come across that book yeah, I haven't read it, but you need to have a pick it up.
00:31:43.805 --> 00:31:47.055
It's so chimed with all the things you've been talking about today in terms of growth.
00:31:47.055 --> 00:31:53.749
You know that growth mindset and you know setting small targets for yourself and kind of coming out the other side.
00:31:53.749 --> 00:32:00.512
It's brilliant because, I find myself, we read it and then we stop and we discuss well, how does that link to what you've done in the last couple of weeks?
00:32:00.512 --> 00:32:03.534
When you said that, do you not think that that makes you think this way now?
00:32:03.534 --> 00:32:23.132
And it's been lovely really going on that journey with that book with him and reading it with him, and I think that's really important and there is no quick fix to this stuff, as there it's about creating supportive, nurturing environments and following what you've done from a distance and, having followed your career, you're doing that at scale.
00:32:23.132 --> 00:32:28.609
So, on behalf of lots of schools, thank you very much and thank you for joining us today.
00:32:29.231 --> 00:32:29.854
It's been brilliant.
00:32:30.885 --> 00:32:52.391
Yeah, I just wanted to add also because it's very relevant in terms of reading for pleasure, like genuinely, I didn't read lots as a child, but I ended up doing A level English and doing an English degree where I had to read absolutely loads, and it's just one of those things that I was more into sports than reading, and it changes.
00:32:52.391 --> 00:32:59.597
Like if your kid is a reluctant reader or doesn't naturally want to pick up a book, don't freak out, it will change.
00:33:01.146 --> 00:33:07.997
Yeah, but it will only change if we're encouraging and nurturing, of course.
00:33:07.997 --> 00:33:15.788
Yeah, yeah, and we create the environments at schools and where I often think, for example, when we talk about Bedrock.
00:33:15.788 --> 00:33:41.056
For me, just as an example because that's what my role is now and I speak to lots of schools it's really important to share with the young people why they're doing, for example, their Bedrock or whatever it is they're doing for their homework, whether it's reading this or whatever, and helping them to understand why it's got a role to play in their lives, why that thing matters to them, and I think that's all part of that nurturing environment that we need to have for our young people.
00:33:41.056 --> 00:33:45.856
So, yeah, that's an important thing to add, I think, but it's been brilliant.
00:33:45.856 --> 00:33:47.290
I knew I'd enjoy talking to you again.
00:33:47.290 --> 00:33:50.510
So thank you so much and, yeah, hopefully we'll speak to you again soon.
00:33:51.646 --> 00:33:52.148
Cheers, Andy.
00:33:52.148 --> 00:33:56.509
Thanks for listening to this episode of me.
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