Supporting staff to support students

By

Martin

Macleay Vocational College (MVC) is a Special Assistance School on Dhungutti Country for students from the Macleay Valley. We provide a flexible learning environment that supports the young people in our care to reengage with education, experience success, and help them build the confidence to explore future pathways beyond school.

It’s quite ironic that I ended up working in education- I didn’t enjoy school and can’t say I was a great student. I was bored easily, and I left school without much of an idea about what I wanted to do other than working with my father who was a builder.

After trying a few different things including demolition, roof plumbing, gym instructor, I eventually found myself in teaching. In my first year of teaching, I ended up running a behaviour management unit. I started working with kids who were getting into trouble all the time and I started looking at why these students weren’t engaging. Was it the subject, the teacher or was it something external to school? What was it that was stopping these kids from engaging in school?

So, for the past 15 years I’ve gravitated toward leadership positions in schools where health and wellbeing are the starting points to re-engage students in education. I love working in this space, and my competitive nature pushes me to think outside the box to ensure that when other people have failed to re-engage these young people with school I think, ‘why can’t we get them to the end of year 12? Let’s give this one more crack!’

Being a special assistance school, many of our students are not living with mum or dad. They might be living with grandparents, other family members, in foster care, ‘couch surfing’ or in the youth justice system. For whatever reason, they have all struggled to thrive in mainstream school and are at risk of disengaging from education.

At MVC, we provide that opportunity for them to complete their education and support them as they develop the confidence to pursue employment or further study. All of our students have experienced various levels of trauma, our teaching staff work really hard to provide a supportive and safe environment that is trauma informed. This is supported by the Berry Street Education Model that all staff have been trained in. You won’t hear a raised voice at our school, we focus on providing a calm environment even if we don’t feel that way. We are really strong about that being our best approach when things get challenging. The ‘duck in a pond’ analogy gets spoken about a lot, calm up top even when you are kicking like mad below. Our barometer for student success is whatever allows them to find something meaningful beyond school. We don’t get it right 100 percent of the time, but that can always be an aspirational target. HSC completions are fantastic, but there are other targets that are just as important. Last year we had 20 students complete Year 12 and 15 of those were employed when they graduated with another three heading to university. We really celebrate that stuff.

To ensure these exit outcomes at Macleay Vocational College, the job extends beyond the bounds of the classroom. This can often mean helping students with appointments, accessing support services outside of school, dropping food off to families and finding safe and secure accommodation for students in need. Our school provides a wrap-around level of care for our students. This is really draining on staff and is why I am so passionate about our staff looking after their own health and welfare.

Teacher burnout is a monstrous problem, and it is not just young graduate teachers leaving the profession, it is across the board. The statistics around this issue are alarming with some reports suggesting half of all teachers have considered leaving the profession. I would contest that this figure might be much higher in schools in disadvantaged communities. The workload placed on educators is overwhelming, coupled with difficult students that without the tools to cope, things can spiral downward pretty rapidly.

The unique and challenging nature of our school means staff often observe behaviours that can be confronting and upsetting. There is a mental toll as a result of this that we carry as a burden outside of school.

To help staff decompress, our school has thought deeply at how we address this. With the support of the school board, we now offer additional support and work/life flexibility.

MVC provide staff with a Mental Health Day each term, so they can take a day for themselves when they need it. Self-care is something we value and believe our teachers need to understand and put into practise.

In addition, we also offer flexibility for staff to work from home when permissible. There is this old attitude that teachers have to be in their classrooms from 8am until 5pm, and I don’t think this idea is helpful. I trust our staff to do their work, and if they need to work from home when they don’t have classes or leave early to organise the family then we as a school need to be flexible to make this happen.

It’s not a comprehensive program and doesn’t answer all the problems that teachers are facing, but these things have been well received by staff and have gone a long way to reducing staff absenteeism. We have more plans in place for staff in the future, but believe this is just a starting point. I’d rather people take a day off for themselves before they work themselves into the ground and have to take a week off on sick leave.

Obviously, we have some unique challenges at Macleay Vocational College, but I believe staff wellbeing and self-care should be considered a priority for all educators. In addition, having a support network of people at school or outside the school who you can talk to and decompress is incredibly important.

This self-care/wellbeing approach is not something I personally have perfected yet, but the key word here is ‘yet’. I’m trying to demonstrate a better way and it is a goal. I am encouraging staff to take the first steps towards improved wellbeing as well.

‘Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just the first step.’ – Martin Luther King