The Invisible Backpack: Common beliefs your staff and pupils may be coming into school with

When someone enters your school, you don’t know what has happened to them before. They may feel emotionally vulnerable and therefore be wary of interacting and communicating.

This can show itself in different ways here are some of them:

For a pupil:

· the child struggles to speak confidently to teacher with answer or idea

· they refuse to speak if they are struggling as they think it could be disrespectful.

· child attempts to be the authoritative figure to be just like their parent. Dominates other children.

For a colleague:

· the staff member struggles to communicate that they are not sure about something as it may make them seem incompetent

· they seem shutdown when interacting in staff meetings

· negative self talk and low or high ‘venting’ may be heard in the staffroom as they are using to deflect or release some of the pressure they are feeling.

Mindsets and beliefs they build are likely to be some of the following:

· Belief that their opinion doesn’t matter

· Other peoples opinions are more important

· They look for others to give them answers

· Procrastinate as they are usually told what to do or scared of doing it wrong and making mistakes.

· Can seem argumentative or resistant to new ideas and change

As you can see, none of us, not one human in the world could possibly predict what any person comes into the school with as we are all deeply programmed.

We are diving deep into this at our Conference in June 2023 as this is not a quick conversation. If this information caught your attention then you are the type of person we want at our event as we dive deeper into how to identify, enhance and overcome the Mental Health, Wellbeing, Behaviour and Learning challenges that educators face on a daily basis.

Megs and Bry x