“We Can Only Expect Peace And Happiness In Our Students If That’s What We Are Also Experiencing”
Primary teacher and yoga instructor Helen Clare on the benefits of a mindful approach to classroom life
- by Helen Clare
Does teacher mental health affect pupils? Yes.
It is commonly known that we feed off the emotions of the people around us. Have you noticed how the energy in a room can lift, as soon as someone wearing a beaming smile enters? In contrast, the mood dips when someone is negative, complaining, angry or irritable.
Children and young people subconsciously respond and react to the adults around them. Considering that they spend a great deal of their daily lives around their teachers, the mood and wellbeing of the teacher will be conveyed and transferred to the pupil.
In my experience, as both a school teacher and yoga teacher working in schools, it is often the calmer classes that have calm teachers. Conversely, it is apparent that a more disruptive class often has a more stressed teacher at the helm. This then creates a cycle of more stress in the teacher and greater disruption from the pupils.
My role is primarily to provide yoga and mindfulness to children and teenagers within education settings, both as an alternative, non-competitive physical activity and to offer a hugely beneficial toolbox of techniques to help calm, relax, self-regulate emotions and build confidence.
Yoga and mindfulness have been shown to boost self-esteem, improve sleep patterns, effectively calm and regulate emotions and increase an overall sense of wellbeing.
For the last seven years I have been focusing on young people, fully aware of the rising mental health epidemic in our youth. However, over the last year I have become more and more interested in raising the awareness of the benefits of yoga, mindfulness and meditation in teachers. This is for their own health and wellbeing (which is clearly and understandably under stress) and because their mental health directly impacts on that of their pupils.
Consequently, I have begun more CPD training courses with an underlying emphasis on building teachers’ personal yoga practice. We can only teach what we already practise. We can only wish for and expect peace and happiness in our students if that is what we are already experiencing in our own lives.
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According to the Big Yoga Survey, carried out by the University of Westminster, 98% of participants found yoga ‘helpful in managing stress, anxiety and depression’. There is also evidence to show that a teacher’s mindfulness practice has a positive impact on their students. In a study conducted by Dr Daniel Siegel, they discovered that a mindful teacher has a much greater positive impact on the pupils around them than a teacher who merely tries to teach mindfulness techniques without practising themselves.
Having studied the effects of good and poor mental health and the response from those around, it is evident that a teacher suffering with poor mental health will be unknowingly negatively affecting their young people and colleagues, consequently affecting the entire learning environment.
As teachers we have demanding jobs, with enormous pressure and expectation, but taking care of yourself first means you can better serve and educate your pupils. Otherwise, isn’t all the stress really just a waste? Make time for yourself by scheduling in a yoga class, massage or gym session. Read around the topic of yoga and mindfulness and how it can boost your mental health and that of those around you.
Helen Clare is a senior yoga teacher and primary school teacher based in Cornwall. She has taught yoga to thousands of children and teenagers around the country, as well as trained dozens of teachers. Helen is the founder of Class Yoga, a yoga teacher training school with an online video library of yoga and mindfulness classes designed for schools. This blog post was in response to a teacher mental health survey we ran in conjunction with Leeds Beckett University. Find out more and see the results here. Browse resources for Mental Health Awareness Week.
