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*Matthew Audley is Lead Trainer for Place2Be, responsible for quality assurance of training delivery across the UK. He is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, with 25 years’ experience. He also works as an organisational consultant, trained through the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and is currently training as a Group Analyst at the Institute for Group Analysis.*

## Teaching is a relational task

At the best of times teaching is a challenging and potentially stressful task. It not only involves conveying information but building the intellectual and creative capabilities of children while managing the individual and collective behaviour of the class. 

Beyond this, attachment theory emphasises that teaching is primarily a relational task: that authentic learning can only happen where there is trust and consistency established between teacher and child over time.

As a charity supporting the mental health of children in school settings, Place2Be has long recognised the importance of supporting teaching staff to manage the impact of working with children with mental health needs. 

Throughout our decades of school-based provision we have noticed how teachers regularly experience the vicarious trauma of working to support these needs through their day-to-day, hour-to-hour practice.

## ‘I haven’t got the time to think’

Right now we are experiencing a collective trauma. We are all struggling to process and adapt to significant loss. This loss is felt particularly keenly in areas of society where there continues to be close human contact. Like Hospitals. And Schools.

A teacher recently declared in the middle of one of our group wellbeing sessions - “But I haven’t got the time to think”. She was feeling so geared up to performing tasks and reacting to relentless challenges (whilst forever on her feet) that it felt almost impossible to pause and take time to reflect on her experience. Sadly for her, the opportunity to reflect has become so unfamiliar it becomes almost frightening.

Teachers absorb and digest the emotional psychological impact of working with vulnerable children often without knowing. If not given the chance to process and reflect on this experience they risk becoming psychologically blocked. This can begin to seriously compromise a teacher’s mental health. 

The consequent stress generated impinges on their ability to focus; it questions their self-confidence and invites self-doubt. Like the children they work with, teachers can become vulnerable to generalised anxiety in relation to their ability to perform the very task that they have made their life’s vocation.

## ‘Breathe between the thoughts’

Teachers need dedicated time to ‘breathe between the thoughts’ of their unrelenting performance and experience. This is not a luxury. It is a basic need.

When a counsellor works therapeutically with children it is an ethical requirement that they receive ‘supervision’ for an hour at least once monthly. It has long astonished and shocked me that teachers do not receive the same support to process their work experience.

We are letting down our children if we don’t properly support teachers to reflect on their experience. It supports and builds resilience in their own well-being, and therefore reinforces their capacity to build secure and trusting working relationships with the children they teach.

## The role of Place2Be

In response to this priority need, Place2Be has developed an online group wellbeing service known as [Place2Think](http://www.place2be.org.uk/supervision). Teaching staff at all levels, from head teacher through to mid-day supervisor, are given the opportunity - in small groups relevant to their role - to process the emotional impact of their work, step back from the psychological demands of continuous performance and make sense of what they have learnt. 

This not only informs better practice. It also ensures they are better able to manage and sustain their own mental health. We are fortunate to have funding to be able to offer this service for free to all Education professionals in [London](http://www.place2be.org.uk/supervision) and [Scotland](http://www.place2be.org.uk/Place2Think).

In addition, we are delighted to be able to offer our online [Mental Health Champions – Foundation Programme](http://www.place2be.org.uk/foundation)  for free to all UK based teachers and school staff. The 5-week programme not only focuses on the mental health of children and young people, but also crucially on the adults around a child including teachers.

During this traumatic time when teacher resilience is key to sustaining the mental well-being and resilience of vulnerable children, a ‘whole school’ approach to mental health should be part of the working fabric of every school throughout the country. This cannot wait until tomorrow when the pandemic has waned. Teachers need time to ‘breathe between the thoughts’ right now.

Place2Be blog

Matthew Audley

Breathe between the thoughts: Why mental health support for teachers is not a luxury but a basic need

Schools continue to do the most incredible job to support students and families. I’m very much in awe of colleagues who are offering high-quality teaching and support not only to students in school but through their remote learning offer to those at home. The professionalism, expertise and resilience exhibited under these circumstances is inspiring!

Students who rely on SEN support are potentially facing some of the greatest disadvantages in this latest lockdown period. Many of them are less likely to have a place to remain in school as a ‘vulnerable child’ compared to their peers with an EHC plan, and in many cases are finding remote learning more difficult to access and engage with this time around. This blog explores some ideas and strategies including how you can best make use of the Oak offer to meet the needs of students working at SEN support.

Inclusion lies at the heart of the Oak National Academy offer, with all lessons and resources designed to be accessible for all students. Our lessons have all been through robust quality assurance processes and have been tested by leading SEND practitioners and other organisations in the SEND community of practice.

Our accessibility features include:

-   Closed captions for all videos

-   BSL interpreted English & Maths lessons for our younger students (Y1 - Y3)

-   Considerations to colour palette / contrasts & font size

-   ARIA hints throughout the website to support navigation

-   Visual support & Makaton signs in specialist lessons

-   Full transcripts available for all lessons

SEN support learners will likely require a more personalised remote offer and additional support to access online lessons, which in turn can add pressure and workload for their teachers. With thousands of high-quality lessons available that can be matched and aligned with your own curriculum, our advice is to not reinvent the wheel. Instead, consider how Oak resources can be personalised to best meet the needs of your students when they can’t be in the classroom with their usual support.

To help you tackle the issue of supporting SEN learners, here are ten top tips on inclusive remote learning from our amazing community of practice:

1.  Compare your curriculum with Oak National Academy, and wherever you can, pick out the resources and lessons that match. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

2.  Year group references have been taken out of all lessons, so students working a touch behind their peers can access lessons without impacting on their confidence & self esteem. Use this to select materials for you pupils to personalise how you are meeting their learning needs.

3.  Consider the pace of learning e.g. break lessons down and spend more time concentrating on fewer lessons. Screen fatigue and concentration issues are becoming very common barriers to learning.

4.  Taking quizzes or test elements out of lessons can help reduce anxieties for some learners. Consider any anxieties that may be reducing their engagement. You can turn quizzes on or off when you share a lesson from the [Teacher Hub](https://teachers.thenational.academy/).

5.  Feedback has told us that repetition & overlearning has worked really well for many students with SEND (and in a number of cases has led to accelerated learning). Build this into lessons to establish routine and embed new learning.

6.  Oak’s lessons can be downloaded and adapted via the [Teacher Hub](https://teachers.thenational.academy/), providing opportunities to scaffold and develop further resources and activities to support students working at SEN support. Where you need to, use ready-made resources as a starting point to adapt for a learner’s needs.

7.  Using the C-STEP principle (see below) can help to further personalise Oak lessons.

8.  Using Oak lessons has allowed teachers to focus more of their time on giving feedback, checking wellbeing and connecting with students and families. Instead of spending too much time planning from scratch, make time to focus on the important things that only their own teacher can accomplish.

9.  Remote learning is very much a partnership in which student and family voices are key. Work with them to create the best remote offer for their context.

10.  Encourage families to make the most of serendipitous learning. Helping around the house, daily exercise and even playing in the snow has lots of educational value!

Hopefully our Oak resources and the ideas shared in this blog are able to support you in making your remote offer accessible and engaging for all students. Find the [specialist lessons](https://classroom.thenational.academy/specialist), [mainstream classroom](https://classroom.thenational.academy/) (without references to levels or year groups) and [Teacher Hub](https://teachers.thenational.academy/) on our website, as well as further support and guidance at [support.thenational.academy.](https://support.thenational.academy/en/)

SEN Support - Accessible remote learning & making the most of the Oak offer

C-STEP Principle 

Inclusion lies at the heart of the Oak National Academy offer, with all lessons and resources designed to be accessible for all students. We take a look at how you can make the most of Oak's SEN lessons and resources.

Alistair Crawford

*In the new world of online teaching, do you have to chose between live teaching and using recorded lessons? We invited guest blogger Tom Rogers ([@rogershistory](https://www.twitter.com/rogershistory "@rogershistory on Twitter")), History teacher, blogger for TES and founder and director of [@teachmeeticons](https://www.twitter.com/teachmeeticons "@teachmeeticons on Twitter") and [@edudateofficial](https://www.twitter.com/edudateofficial "@edudateofficial on Twitter") to describe his approach.*

“Those schools who try to do everything they would do in a face-to-face context in a remote context are going to come unstuck”, said Darren Northcott, the education lead for NASUWT at a recent webinar for teachers concerned about online teaching.

One of the most significant trends of this new world of online teaching that we find ourselves in seems to be the idea that the teacher needs to be ‘present’ all the time. This has been encapsulated in ‘live lessons’ – namely, teachers teaching their normal timetable live and on screen.

During Northcott’s presentation, he highlighted the lack of research around live lessons being better than pre-recorded, ‘non-live’ ones. And there’s certainly a broad interpretation of what’s ‘best’ in schools across the country. 

I entirely agree with Darren - we need to protect teachers’ workload and that we can’t do everything we do in a classroom. So I asked myself: does it have to be a choice between one or the other? Maybe the two approaches are not as mutually exclusive as the current conversation might lead us to believe.

There is space for a live lesson – where the students and teacher are present in the moment – that involves the teacher facilitating learning in a different way than solely delivering it all whilst also battling new technology, engagement, intervention and everything else.

My school has implemented a full timetable of ‘live’ online learning.

I wanted to come up with an approach to live lessons that would be as effective as possible whilst still allowing me a life! The idea of planning and delivering four or five live lessons a day, led solely by me, was out of the question. It’s just not a sustainable way for teachers to work. So I looked at alternatives.

I knew about Oak National Academy anyway from their work in lockdown one and quickly realised that if I could stream an Oak lesson through Microsoft Teams, then it would be almost like ‘team teaching’ the content.

As a history teacher, I knew they had most of the key content we were delivering, including the ‘medicine through time’ unit, covered.

So, my standard lesson plan is now as follows:

1. Starter/introduction/register – with a retrieval quiz activity
2. I play an Oak National Academy video lesson and pause at the points the Oak teacher says to pause (pause points are embedded in each video)! I encourage Q&A with students at these points. Pausing is used for students to complete comprehension questions and for me to answer questions and deal with any misconceptions or misunderstandings.
3. Students submit their notes and answers to any tasks set, including comprehension questions, as an assignment through the VLE.
4. I turn my own camera and mic on and lead a quiz, using something like menti.com which allows the students to submit answers that show up on screen for all students ‘live’.

(One thing to note is that you need to have the Microsoft Teams desktop app installed to be able to use the ‘share screen with audio’ button. I tried to do this originally using it through a browser and that button doesn't exist!)

The lesson is still ‘live’, so you have all the advantages of that – real time interaction with students, added accountability to attend and engage and so on. But – and this is key – using this approach means there is less onus on me, as one individual teacher, to facilitate quite complex and multi-faceted sessions, four or five times a day. 

I can ‘team teach’ virtually and add another knowledgeable, qualified, expert into my lessons. It has already saved me a huge amount of time and effort.

I am also always conscious of the student experience in my lessons, whether face to face or online, and wouldn’t want to use something that detracted from that or that I felt uncomfortable using. 

Every Oak lesson I’ve used so far has been excellent. They don’t overcomplicate things, they are easy to follow and are also as interesting and engaging as anything I could do myself in an online setting.

Thanks to all the Oak teachers and I hope this method might work for you if you are looking for a slightly different approach to lesson delivery.

And if it’s helpful to see it in action – I have created this little ‘how-to’ video here to show you how I do it: [https://youtu.be/JpBef73KO4c](https://youtu.be/JpBef73KO4c "YouTube video - How to stream Oak on Microsoft Teams")

There are many ways to approach remote education and we’re all adapting to the ways which work for us. 

For more ideas or information, Oak National Academy regularly hosts [free webinars](https://www.thenational.academy/webinars "Free webinars") to show the lots of ways schools are using the resources, and you check out and use all of their lessons for free on the [Teacher Hub here](https://teachers.thenational.academy/ "Teacher Hub").

In the new world of online teaching, should schools be trying to do more live teaching, or use more recorded lessons? Does it have to be one or the other? In this guest blog, Tom Rogers explores the options and approaches available to teachers.