The Banal, the Craven and the Sinister at a College Staff Well-being Day

It’s the first day of the October half-term break and, despite my college’s recent attempt to secure my emotional well-being, I’m shattered.

Any sixth form teacher will tell you that the week before the October break is the most tired they’ll get. The dark run-in to Christmas is bearable because, well, it’s Christmas, when staff and students are carried along on whatever their version of seasonal goodwill is, and teachers’ moods during subsequent terms rise with the lengthening days. But that first half-term? Oh, my.

It’s been nine weeks since the arrival of excited enrolees, clutching their GCSE results like a Willy Wonka golden ticket. Nine weeks of lesson preparation, resource manufacture, evenings of marking and the relentless trudge, trudge, trudge of exactly 164 lessons delivered with an increasingly taut smile as the summer-charged internal battery begins to deplete. Throw in the Continual Professional Development, the briefings, the departmental meetings, the student consultations, the Evening and Saturday Open Events and come that ninth week, staff wander the corridors like disembodied wraiths, barely able to mutter a “Morning” to their colleagues.

So, management’s decision in recent years to allocate the Friday before half-term as a staff ‘Well-being’ day in a college free from teenagers ought to be seen as a welcome respite. The day usually consists of a series of ‘fun, stress-busting’ activities in the morning and a ‘motivational’ speaker and associated workshops in the afternoon. I wander from room to room, discovering that this year’s collection of morning treats, delivered by exhausted teacher volunteers, is even more esoteric than usual: an intense psychology teacher offers wax sealing, whatever that might be; the balding history teacher has lugged in his record decks and paltry collection of Northern Soul singles in an attempt to recreate his Wigan Casino youth; the preening art teacher is leading a session on folding paper animals; a member of the admin staff offers ‘Laughing Yoga’. It’s when I find myself watching man-bunned colleagues taking up the offer to ‘Paint Your Own Tote Bag’ that I ungraciously find myself thinking that similarly aged men once went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The institution’s idea of well-being is clearly very different from mine, but each to their own, I tell myself, and slope off for a walk around the college grounds.

If the morning’s activities were banal, albeit inoffensive, then the afternoon’s ‘motivational’ speaker is anything but. Following an ebullient introduction from the ‘Director of People and Culture’, whose jamboree this is, our man emerges from the side of the stage to receive the lukewarm applause. He wears the uniform of the motivational speaker: a sharp black suit, crisp white open-necked shirt that reveals just a bit too much of his chest, and the de rigueur chunky black-rimmed glasses. Any long-serving employee of large institutions will have been forced to sit through talks from his ilk: their intention to inspire a sense of belonging or greater productivity through tales of working-class tenacity, or overcoming the modest beginnings of the Windrush generation, or how they got their chaotic lives in order so they might charge a bundle for elevating us lesser beings. The slide behind him shows a beautiful, smiling black woman beneath the title The Person You Mean To Be. I’m wondering if I’m meant to be the radiant young woman of the slide or the louche speaker who stands silently looking at his feet, his hand cupping his chin as he waits for quiet and the Muse of Inspiration to descend. I also want to shout out that it’s a bit too late for me as my habits have hardened into all I’ve got, to paraphrase Larkin, but it’s still early and I’m feeling generous.

He begins slickly enough, his well-honed opening a predictable melange of pop psychology and fake bonhomie. Quickly though, his presentation becomes awkward as he stumbles between slides that seem to lack coherence: in quick succession he rambles between resilience, psychological safety and diversity, each jarring turn punctuated by the same silent chin-stroking meant to signal his profound ruminations. An audience of teachers, however, recognise this for what it is: we’re witnessing in real time every teacher’s anxiety dream of being completely unprepared in front of a class of expectant students. There’s some sympathy as we realise that his intended performance has been hijacked by management to shoehorn in – alongside well-being – two more Ofsted hobby horses: psychological safety and diversity. You can almost hear the screech of mangled gears as he shifts guilelessly between an emotive story of his poor O Level performance and ‘psychological safety’. Just as we’re digesting the meaning of his news that he only achieved O Levels in geography and art and “never went to university”, we’re now being asked to consider which of the five Ds of bystander intervention (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay and Direct) we’d employ in a series of increasingly outlandish workplace scenarios: you witness a white colleague asking if she can touch a black colleague’s afro hair; a wheelchair-bound woman is unable to reach the coffee maker and you overhear colleagues making fun of her; a transwoman at a committee meeting asks where the ladies’ toilets are and is met with the chairman’s reply: “You can use the gents – you won’t find any monsters in there, love.” Dear reader, I sniggered as a picture of two heartless colleagues letting down the tyres of the poor wheelchair-bound woman popped into my head. I’m not proud, but this is what this stuff does to you. There’s confusion as we ascertain how the chairman (or is it the transwoman?) could be Distracted, and what exactly are we Delegating in the hair micro-aggression? I’m not alone in wanting to employ a sixth D: Disappearing home. By way of a final inspirational flourish, he tells – with the intensity of emotion that only a charlatan can employ – the hackneyed starfish on the beach homily (Google it) which I first heard 30 years ago when I began my teaching career. I wonder if this is my cue to retire gracefully from the stage. At this point, my being is not well. A desultory round of applause and we file out to our workshops to “further explore issues.”

This is where things take a turn for the sinister. 

I’ve made the mistake before of assuming that my colleagues will have the same misgivings as me: surely they’ll have seen the same charlatanism; have witnessed the grifting of a man earning money for old rope? Again, I’m about to be disappointed, especially as my workshop group consists of younger members of staff who, in their willingness to ‘get with the programme’ and lack of world-weariness, tend to be suckers for this kind of thing. The bright-eyed geography teacher facilitator reads out the fresh scenario for our deliberation: “You are walking down the corridor and overhear a student say: ‘Diversity has destroyed this country. Everything’s gone downhill because of it.’ Using the fives Ds of bystander intervention, you, as the professional need to decide how to address this moment.” Our facilitator – with the air of one who believes that their views must be self-evident to all – gets the ball rolling with her passionate declaration that “I have very strong views about this sort of thing and I would be very Direct in challenging the student’s opinion. My knowledge of geography has shown me how important diversity is to this country.” I’m tempted to ask her to provide sources for this, but the rising hum of approval from most of the company warns me against it. What follows is a two minute hate session directed at the imagined student, for whom I’m now feeling sorry. A counsellor chips in with her assertion that she would surreptitiously get the child’s name and Document the “crime” for evidence. Another young teacher agrees that it would be important to Document this to possibly bring up at the next parent consultation evening. A personal tutor would Delegate the task of re-education of the evil miscreant to a trusted, presumably more liberal student within the same tutor group. By now, there’s a near frenzy of self-satisfaction that the Wrongthink of the world’s wrong ‘uns can be solved by the judicious application of our speaker’s five Ds. I’m asked for my opinion. Given the obvious groupthink of the meeting, I’m increasingly feeling like Winston Smith and consider whether to keep my powder dry, but I can’t help blurting out: “We seem to like diversity except when it comes to diversity of opinion. What are you going to do with this documented evidence? Put him on trial? It’s an opinion, so let him air it rather than shut it down where it might fester into something really unpleasant.” The group looks towards me with the unblinking stare of youthful Khmer Rouge members who have noticed that I’m wearing spectacles. I offer a thin smile and retreat back into silence, watching them reconfiguring their view of nice, funny old Dave into a rampant racist. Workshop over, a few mumble, “Have a nice half term” in my direction without making eye contact, and we make for our cars. Again, I’m still searching for this elusive well-being.

I’m home now, my mind and body still wired from the assault of the last nine weeks. But I’ll get out in the garden for a tidy up when the rain stops. I might fit in a couple of jogs along the autumnal canal. There’s a new novel to be read and a few glasses of Malbec to sip to a soundtrack of Radios 3, 4 and 6. Hell, I might even mark a few coursework folders. I’ll sort out my own well-being, thanks.

Dave Summers is a sixth form teacher and his name is a pseudonym.