Board of Boarding Board of Life

Last week, Matt Haig released his book 'Notes on a nervous Planet'. The book offers his personal advice on dealing with anxiety and depression in today's modern world. Being a huge fan of Matt and his previous books (Humans, How to stop time and Reasons to stay alive) I have quickly devoured this book and wanted to parallel it with my own experiences within teaching teenagers inside a boarding school environment. Matt's 'Reasons To Stay Alive' was a book that I first read before I had any real serious experience of dealing with depression and anxiety within boys. I had witnessed and helped several girls with panic attacks and anxiety issues but boys were always thought to be exempt from these issues (how wrong could we be). Matt outlines his story of dealing with his own path of depression, anxiety and ultimately a near suicidal experience in Ibiza. 'Reasons To Stay Alive' is his own personal account whereas 'Notes On A Nervous Planet' is a ...

A question that I have been posing myself for some time now is 'why do boys self harm? '. Having never had a self harming thought in my life apart from maybe 'I wonder what it feels like to touch that electric sheep fence?', I have found this question one of the more difficult ones to get my head around as a Housemaster of Boys' Boarding Houses. Some of this article I shall be basing on academic evidence and some other areas will be my own personal experience of working within a boarding House and the ideas that I have ascertained from speaking pastorally to boys during my 15 years of teaching . 13 Reasons Why has been a phenomenon on Netflix. The first series saw an increase in boys asking me questions about mental health and actively encouraged a few boys to speak out and avoid any depression that they may or may not have been heading towards. The first series began a positive conversation within my boarding House and I was not one of the sceptics that saw it...

On the day that the Chair of the Independent School's Council has stated that the best GCSE grades do not go to merely the brightest, they go to the ones t hat work the hardest , is there a better time to look at the idea of grit, perseverance and resilience? I am currently reading Angela Duckworth's book entitled 'grit'. She is a former teacher, turned consultant, turned psychologist. In the book, she explains her fascination with the idea that hard work, passion and perseverance are more important that just 'talent' alone. Duckworth states that we, as humans, have a fascination with 'talent' yet often fail to see hard work and perseverance as a talent in itself. Barnaby Lenon today says that pupils that work for 7 hours per day should see a real improvement in exam results on the back of the productive work that they put in over the next 2 and a half weeks. I usually suggest 6 hours for pupils broken into two hour chunks but this still follows ...

I have always wanted to focus on the idea of resilience rather than purely on anxiety and mental health. This is why I was so interested in attending a course on AS Tracking and the idea that we can monitor pupils mental and emotional wellbeing, pick up on signals, set up sign posts and help pupils before any kind of mental health issue ever actually manifests. The ideas of what the course is saying is nothing new; it resolves around good pastoral care, pupils working with their tutors and Houseparents and good, clear, SMART action plans. The difference is that it offers early warning signs and the really helpful data is on pupils that often slip through the net until too late - the hyper vigilant pupil. Those pupils that care so much about everything that they overwork their hypocampus part of their brain, leading to burn out and ultimately an increased risk of mental health issues. The largest growth of mental health issues are in affluent teenage girls (those that are hyper vigi...

Headmasters and Headmistresses all over the Country are jumping onto The Pupil Voice Drive. The idea of pupil voice is core to the My School and my Boarding House as it allows pupils to take an active part in the decision making of the school. However, is this a good idea? Is it working? Does it help Pupils' education? and is it not actually just a way to make pupils argumentative and rebel against a system rather than help them to assist in the growth of a school. Thankfully, I have just gone through a week where pupil voice has worked brilliantly and where I can say that without a doubt, pupil voice (when done well) is a huge asset to any pupil and any school. On Monday, we hosted Wine Society in House. When two of the 6th form first approached me about this idea, I said that we could look at it but that they would need to get permission from the Head and would need to organise it themselves. On Monday, I saw the result of their efforts and I am proud to say that th...

A common issue in boys' boarding houses are boys that don't actually understand what it means to push themselves. They are so unfamiliar with pushing their academic boundaries that when the time comes to revise, a small amount extra seems like they are doing 'enough'. This goes alongside another issue, which is a pupil that is so worried about doing well they feel apprehensive to stop and worry about tasks like eating, sleeping and sport because it is 'wasting' revision time. For this particular blog, I am going to focus on the boys that are unfamiliar with doing enough work and need a real 'push' for them to understand. This issue is one reason why schools are increasingly putting mocks earlier as a kind of electric shock to the system. However, an early mock is also accompanied by a poor result soon being followed by a comment of 'well, I wasn't going to do well because they are so early and I haven't started working properly yet'. ...

Before anyone switches off, thinking this will be another rant about 'anxiety' and the facts about male mental health and suicides, please read on for a while and give this a chance.       The first thing I believe is that there is still room for the idea of 'manning up' (but not the term itself). The reason I say this is that if we are to build resilience, we need to know the difference between a boy that is crying over a bruised knee that they think is a fracture and the next boy that is suffering in silence as their own world and world view crumbles around them. I hate the term 'man up' (mainly because girls are usually much better at doing this and also because it is a massively outdated term) but the boy with the knee needs to get over it and the second boy, needs help. 3/4s of all suicides in the UK are male. This fact was discussed on the radio this week and it was suggested that this ratio is echoed throughout the developed world. The facts is...