In the fifth article in our Wellbeing Around the World series, we chat to John Cortese, principal of Notre Dame College in Victoria, Australia, about how he took advantage of a team of wellbeing workers to ensure that staff have time and space to talk - and the positive impact this has had.
Why is wellbeing important to you?
I truly believe that it’s the staff that make the school. Of course, it’d be lovely to work in a palatial mansion, and we’ve got magnificent buildings here, but all of that’s totally irrelevant because great staff can teach in a tent.
A great school is made up of high functioning staff. That includes their knowledge of the subject, their relationship with the students, their own wellbeing and being able to support the wellbeing of the kids.
If you lose that wellbeing of staff, that’s where the issues start to arise. If you don’t have those high-performing staff, that great school quickly comes down.
Are there any wellbeing issues unique to your region?
Here in Australia teaching is no longer the flavour of the month. It’s simply not the job of preference for many students any more.
When I was first principal, 25 years ago, if you had 250 seniors in the school, at least 15 to 20 per cent would have been looking at teaching. This year we’ve got 250 senior kids finishing and we’ll be lucky if two or three of them are looking at teaching at all.
In one of Sir Ken Robinson’s old TED talks, he explained that teachers are their own worst enemies. We don’t get invited to barbecues and parties on weekends because we’re always talking negative.
If we talk the positive, people are going to hear that this is a magnificent profession. And the more we talk the thing up, the more we impact on wellbeing, too.
This was one of Sir Ken’s big things. He said, “Get out there and talk it up.” It’s the greatest profession. So we’re trying to bring some of that positivity into teachers working lives.
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What initiatives are in place to support wellbeing?
We’re in a fortunate position in that we have a dedicated wellbeing team of seven, which consists of psychologists, counsellors and welfare workers.
Where previously they would be tasked with identifying kids who might be struggling, since Covid they’ve been able to support the whole community, including parents and staff.
During Covid the team introduced a communication tree where they identified a certain number of people who, in the coming week, would get in touch with an additional six to eight people at least twice.
Rather than sending an email, this would involve picking up the phone or scheduling a Zoom meeting.
We found the more people ask that question, “How are you going?”, people opened up and talked.
At the end of it, they’d often finish off with “Thank you, that’s made a big difference to how I’m feeling.”
How did this idea come about?
The team was already in place when I arrived. In terms of having people responsible for wellbeing, I’ve only had one in all the other schools I’ve been in. When I first arrived here we had five, and at first I thought that was extravagant, but, in fact, we quickly took it up to seven.
We’ve probably restructured what they’re doing. And it’s actually made us start to review how the team operates, and it’s made us realise that we probably need to be a bit more proactive, rather than responsive.
After Covid settles down, we’ll move into creating small group and large group programmes to try to address things before they come up.
What was the impact and how did you measure this?
We’ve sent out three or four surveys to staff about how they’re feeling. Quite regularly in the surveys there are positive comments about the personal help that they’ve got.
I think we’ve done reasonably well at trying to understand what’s going on for them and making some adjustments.
How will you change your approach going forward?
The wellbeing team before was all about student assessment and student support. We’re reviewing the set-up because obviously into the future, there needs to be some significant amount of time spent on staff.
And you know, back to my very first point, if your staff aren’t travelling well, your kids aren’t going to travel well - they’re not going to get a good lesson in class.
How do you look after your own wellbeing?
I tried to go for a walk each morning and do some exercise. My faith is important to me. So that’s helped me help me along the way. I do some real basic meditation and relaxing.
I’ve also been very fortunate that in the national football competition, my team won this year for the first time in 57 years. So that’s given my wellbeing a boost you wouldn’t believe!
John Cortese is principal of Notre Dame College in Victoria, Australia