WELLBEING:
R E I T N O R F W E N THE
Teaching is one of the hardest professions in the world, Zephyr Bloch-Jorgensen writes. It is also one of the noblest: in your classroom is the mindset of tomorrow and the decisions that will elect leaders, select values, and steward humanity for the next 70 years. In this pivotal age, the nobility of teaching and its importance to society cannot be overstated. In carrying out your role as a teacher or teacher aide, amid school politics, parental expectation, and student trauma caused by drought, fire or flood, it is easy to lose perspective on why we teach, and how to best realise our calling. It is difficult to hold this calling centrally in the mind if one feels exhausted, anxious, defeated, or depressed. So, hand in hand with how we teach is how we feel. And how we feel can be a compass to self assess our wellbeing and steward our calling. Feeling well is elemental to our ability to teach optimally and intrinsically important to mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. A history of wellbeing: Why the late start? In the 1950s profound questions and research emerged from pathfinders such as Maslow, Rogers, Fromm and Erickson. Central to the research of these investigators was the question: How do we actualise our potentialities and achieve a flourishing life? 18 | independent education | issue 1 | Vol 50 | 2020
Few subsequent questions about how humans flourish were posed in the fields of psychology and psychiatry because the lens of investigation came to focus exclusively on mental illness driven urgently by Korean and Vietnam war related research into post traumatic stress disorder. However, thanks to American Psychologist journal and the mandate to ‘make life better for all people not just the mentally ill’, we now know that optimal wellbeing spans superior psychological and physiological functioning and predicts increased longevity and healthy ageing. On 1 January 2000, the American Psychological Association released a Declaration of Independence in the millennial issue of American Psychologist which introduced a radical change of focus with a new term: positive psychology. This new focus shifted mental health research beyond just the risk factors for mental illness and toward the horizon of an optimal state of wellbeing. Subsequent research has flourished in fields like psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and sociology as radical advancements in technology enabled the wellbeing revolution to track the brain’s behaviour in real time, measuring changes in both the networks and anatomy of the brain. This wellbeing revolution has facilitated a paradigm shift in our understanding of what wellbeing is and the nature of happiness.
