Recently, I addressed two important heads’ conferences pertaining Mental Wellness. I spoke to Principals from Laikipia County at Semara Hotel in Machakos Town and then, the Deputy Principals at the Zebu Lodge in Narok Town.
Mental Wellness is worth exploration because lack of it affects Principals and Deputies, and when they suffer from mental illness, it can have a ripple effect on staff and students.
Foremost, Mental Wellness can be defined in three ways: One, it is a state of psychological, emotional and social well-being. Two, it is achieving optimal mental health. Three, it is being mentally fit and sound.
In heroic book the 5 A.M. Club, Robin Sharma writes about the four interior empires that work in tandem: to enhance Mental Wellness. One, there is mind-set, which focuses on psychology. Two, there is heart-set, which is the emotional side. Three, there is the health-set, examining physiology — fitness of the body. Four, there is the soul-set, which focuses on spiritual side. Meaning, Mental Wellness implies that all the dimensions are in picture-perfect order.
In addition, human beings are tripartite in nature. They have the body, spirit and soul. The soul is also triad consisting of will-power, emotion and mind or intellect. Ideally, sickness of the spirit has a negative impact on the body. Likewise, a sin-sick soul dents wellness.
Two aspects influence Mental Wellness. There is Emotional Intelligence and Stress Management. Dr. Daniel Goleman breaks Emotional Intelligence into self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social intelligence.
School heads who long to attain Mental Wellness must hone Stress Management. Stress can be eu-stress (positive) or di-stress (negative). In the distant past, William Shakespeare sagely said, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” This is true about Principals and Deputies managing secondary schools. They must think critically about Stress Management because if liquids have boiling points then human beings also have breaking points — as put aptly, by Francis Imbuga in Betrayal in the City.
In a broader sense, there are things that may stress school arrowheads, which include rejection in new stations, meddlesome school stakeholders, high expectations, overworking, burn-out, incorrigible staff, cash-crunch, students’ indiscipline, loss, grief, and many more. When distress piles up, it can spill to depression and suicidal tendencies.
Therefore, head honchos despite being powerful as some are, should never live in utopia or self-denial by thinking that they cannot breakdown due to psychological pressure that piles up. Instead, they should manage stress through practical approaches such as self-care, search for a strong support system, psycho-social support and spiritual support.
Moreover, school heads that long to attain Mental Wellness should purely prioritize capacity building in form of seminars. Then, there is nothing wrong with seeking professional and pastoral counselling. In Best Counselling and Practices, even practising counsellors are encouraged to attend debriefs. Then, there is the commitment to life-long learning and personal-development that happens through reading useful self-help books.
Our educators should not to be starving bakers. That is, making bread but starving of it. For instance, in that particular pow-wow I alluded to earlier, we warned listeners not to succumb to the ‘Destination Disease’. This is where professionals reach a certain point in the arc of life, and think that they are hunky-dory. They simply stop learning, and therefore become ‘illiterate professionals’.
Perhaps, this is what made Alvin Toffler to postulate, “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and re-learn.” Ideally, there are two types of people: know-it-all and learn-it-all. Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) espouses learning to learn as a core-competency. When you read the Basic Education Framework, the architects of the new curriculum contend with confidence: learning is a continuous process that begins at birth and ends at death.
There are four pillars of learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together. Learning to learn is the ability to pursue and persist in learning. It explores one’s personal organisation, effective time management and constant acquisition of knowledge. Then, this competence steers clear on gaining, processing and assimilating new knowledge and skills as well as seeking and making use guidance.
Prioritizing Mental Wellness means that Principals and Deputies read books such as Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence by Dr. Daniel Goleman, The Art of Institutional Leadership by Professor Laban P. Ayiro, Ikigai: the Japanese Secret to Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, and The Mozart Effect by Don Campbell.
Every school top-gun can prioritize Mental Wellness and this is what compelled us to recommend the following intervention as a way forward in the conference: That the school heads should sensitize and train their staff on Mental Wellness. For the sake of the Mental Wellness of students, we underscored the essence of staging periodic and sporadic pep talks and one-on-one counselling sessions.
Actually, it is a ministerial requirement that Principals constitute and consolidate functional departments of Guidance and Counselling in schools. In order to enhance effectiveness, all teacher-counsellors need in-depth training or retooling on Basic Helping Skills plus professional and ethical issues in counselling practices like confidentiality. The counselors should have functional peer counselors to help them attend to students with psychological needs. There is also need for having a resident or a visiting professional counsellor to handle referral cases.
Finally, Principals should form formidable welfares to handle issues bordering Mental Wellness like Post-Traumatic-Stress (PTS), loss and grief. We also impressed upon them to liaise with the church and chaplaincy department to handle psycho-spiritual and metaphysical issues such as cults and occults.
© Victor Ochieng’
The writer speaks in conferences convened for Principals and Deputy Principals. vochieng.90@gmail.com. 0704420232
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