The pastoral landscape has changed hugely during the six years that I’ve been in my current pastoral role. Pressures on the young people of ‘Generation Z’ have never been greater – partly due to the incessant noise and demands of social media and partly due to today’s expectations of young people to achieve.
Being able to cut it socially online, with enough ‘friends’, ‘followers’ and ‘likes’, is a full-time preoccupation which leaves too little time for focusing on things that matter so much more – your own mental and physical health, your sense of self-worth and self-esteem, and the real world rather than the virtual one. And this is combined with the stresses, pressures and expectations of peers, parents and the wider world – to achieve academically and succeed in exams, and not to let yourself and those who care about you down.
So, what can a school do to help the young people in the face of these challenges? They need to be able to manage these pressures, to develop self-discipline, resilience, and the confidence to deal with upsets and failures and to speak up if they are struggling to do so and at the same time to aspire to success and expect to be happy in life. Quite a tall order, all things considered.
A school like BGS needs to educate its students to identify potential threats to their mental wellbeing, to develop confidence in their sense of self-worth, to have a clear understanding of what good and poor mental health looks like and the language to talk about it. They also need to know who to talk to within the school.
When writer and activist Natasha Devon came in to the school last term during Mental Health Awareness Week she put a lot of emphasis on the need to get young people to talk about mental health, and in particular to get boys to recognise that ‘it’s strong to talk’ rather than keeping quiet and failing to let someone know when they’re struggling. Natasha presented five key things which all of us need for good mental health in life – love, purpose, achievement, belonging and to be understood. It’s the belonging that’s a tough one for many young people. They want to fit in, to be liked and admired, to belong, and they often see social media as the means to do this.
I don’t think anyone is honest when they go online. We’re all trying to present the best versions of ourselves and we’re continually reflecting and responding to other people’s expectations. We build an online persona – a cooler, better looking, more impressive version of ourselves. Maintaining this online image so that we never fall short or fail to respond to comments, likes and conversations can become both time-consuming and emotionally wearing. You fret if you’re dropped in a Snapchat exchange, you worry if you post a photo and don’t get any likes, you lose sleep keeping up your voice in a chat group: all of this becomes another pressure on your time and your self-esteem. If you step back from an online group that you’re involved in or go quiet in an online exchange, you will seem uncool. The demands of social media are relentless and don’t stop at the end of a school day but go on 24-7. It’s very hard to walk away, or not to care, if you feel you’re being laughed at, judged or criticised online.
Society recognises that 2019 isn’t an easy time to be a teenager and we know that parents and teachers are not always best placed to support and advise young people. However, those closer to them in age understand their world better and have first-hand experience and knowledge to share. BGS is therefore launching a new system of peer support for our students, with the introduction of our first ever Pastoral Prefects, who will work alongside a team of School Prefects this year, but with a rather different role from the traditional one. Pastoral Prefects will work with form tutors and Heads of Year to deliver messages to younger students about wellbeing and how to look after yourself. They will in some cases be teamed up with individual students as mentors but will also be involved in events, activities, assemblies and form time where they can build relationships with younger students and be there for them when they need support or advice.
I am a great believer in ‘sideways talking’, so the Prefects will look for opportunities to hang out with younger pupils and chat to them, doing things like running our lunchtime board games club, spending time with form groups and helping with events where it is easy for younger students to chat and open up to them. We’ve found this is a better way to encourage conversations rather than the drop-in sessions, used in the past by our sixth form mentor team. You need quite a lot of courage to walk into a room and present a problem or a question to an older student, but if you are spending time with them in another context, the conversations build and relationships and trust develop.
Like all other schools, we have children here whose mental health is not always robust, and who suffer from anxiety and depression, some using self-harm as a coping strategy. Our Pastoral Prefects will be trained as Youth Mental Health First Aiders so that they will know when to pass on a safeguarding concern and how to identify and pass on concerns they might have about a child’s wellbeing or safety. The staff on the Pastoral Team (tutors, Head of Years, nurses and counsellor) are very much looking forward to this new wing of pastoral support at BGS and to their helping our students to navigate the pressures and stresses of Generation Z’s teenage years.
“Like all other schools, we have children here whose mental health is not always robust, and who suffer from anxiety and depression, some using self-harm as a coping strategy. Our Pastoral Prefects will be trained as Youth Mental Health First Aiders so that they will know when to pass on a safeguarding concern and how to identify and pass on concerns they might have about a child’s wellbeing or safety.
The staff on the Pastoral Team (tutors, Head of Years, nurses and counsellor) are very much looking forward to this new wing of pastoral support at BGS and to their helping our students to navigate the pressures and stresses of Generation Z’s teenage years.”
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