Wellbeing in (and out of) the Classroom

 If you work in education and feel stressed, you are not alone. 72% of all education professionals described themselves as stressed.

 In fact, over the past two years, 57% of all education professionals have considered leaving the sector due to pressures on their health and wellbeing.

 At Opogo we are on a mission to keep educators in education.  Education Support is the only UK charity dedicated to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of education staff.  They recently released the Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019, this latest research points to wellbeing as a real and present obstacle for educators.

 Working With EDUCATE To Get It Right

UCL’s EdTech Accelerator programme, EDUCATE, has also identified wellbeing as a research priority.

 One of the biggest challenges in tackling wellbeing is the scope of the concept. Wellbeing is a broad term and can mean different things to different people. But now mental health and wellbeing are firmly on the political agenda, resources are finally being siphoned towards proper, in-depth research.

 As members of EDUCATE’s EdTech Accelerator programme, Opogo is being partnered with best-in-class research and high quality evidence. EDUCATE are effectively paving the way for educational technologists like us to design and deliver technology that makes a tangible difference to the wellbeing of teachers and education staff.

Don’t Go It Alone

As a powerful first step, our Opogo Social app gives educators a safe space to connect with fellow education professionals. We tell our members not to go it alone, so let’s take our own advice and start talking to one another, making connections and sharing our experiences, ideas and solutions.

 In the last year over half the UK’s education professionals said they had trouble sleeping due to stress. 48% experienced mood swings, and 44% felt tearful at work.

 Opogo Social is a digital space exclusively for teachers and education staff.  There’s a library of content written by education professionals talking about issues like how to take care of your mental health and how to cope with anxiety

 Our journey to create the best, most useful and dynamic tools to support hard-working educators is a priority for Opogo.  Over the past two years we have delivered the TeachFit program to schools with great success.  The program was designed to support children’s mental health in schools, it includes the “teach the teacher” program so this important work continues after Opogo leave the classroom.

Over the Spring term we will be launching the Teach Wellness program aimed at the mental health and wellbeing of our much-loved Educators.  Our team is dedicated to supporting educators so please let us know if you have any ideas of what tools you would like to see on the program and platform.

·       Figures in this blog have been gathered from Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019. ·       UCL EDUCATE is the UK’s leading research accelerator programme for education technology (EdTech