The Teachers' Podcast
Mental health and movement: Darryl Walsh and Dr Martin Yelling, founders of Stormbreak
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Episode notes
EPISODE NOTES
In this episode, Claire talks with Darryl Walsh and Dr Martin Yelling, founders of Stormbreak: a registered charity promoting movement and physical activity to improve mental health in primary schools.
Despite their quite different backgrounds, Martin and Darryl came together with a shared interest in using movement to equip children with sustainable, transferable skills and coping strategies that can be drawn upon to promote good mental health into adult life. The result was Stormbreak which works with schools, children and staff to deliver training and coaching programmes to up-skill teachers and equip children with a variety of useful strategies and inclusive approaches.
Martin and Darryl discuss how important movement and physical activity within schools is and how useful it can be for the development of good mental health for both children and adults. They share some great tips and advice including addressing some of the misconceptions around movement in education and how some activities in school might be adapted or further developed.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Little and often is best for long-term gains.
Rather than just having mental health focus weeks, or infrequent wellbeing activities or days, building in discussions about mental health within day-to-day teaching and normalising conversations on these topics can have real long-term benefits. Too often, mental health and wellbeing can get lost, forgotten or be inadvertently treated as an ‘add on’. The key is considering what needs to be in place to achieve sustainable improvements rather than have a ‘sticking plaster’ approach.
- Get teachers to be confident with movement.
There can be a perception that you need to be ‘good’ at sport or physical activity to be able to bring movement into your teaching or routines more generally and beyond the elements found within PE. However, there is no such thing as being ‘good’ with movement, especially in regards to introducing it as something that can benefit mental health. It should be something that all teachers can feel confident with doing at any point.
BEST MOMENTS
"It was really clear to me that that teachers get very little or no training on mental health at all in their in their training. Yet the prevalence of need for children within schools was quite high."
"For me, there needed to be something different. Something sustainable. Something that looked at prevention at scale. Something that looked at supporting children and giving them a toolkit: skills and knowledge to be able to support themselves with their mental health as they work their way through childhood to adulthood."
"We work with five different mental health concepts: Self-worth, self-care, resilience, relationships, and hope and optimism. And you can't work with those concepts with the children, talking about those things with the children, without reflecting on them for yourself."
"What we see when we do our programmes with teachers is they say to us, 'I need this so much for my own wellbeing.'"
"Why do we wait until we are grownups to realise that [movement] is a benefit? If we see movement through the right lenses, and we're helped to understand how it can support us in so many different ways, then we can build it in to our life."
"As adults, we often rediscover that movement is something that is helpful to support our mental health. But why should we have to wait until we're adults to be able to know that?"
"What we see is that when you place wellbeing at the heart of the life of the school, other things really flow as well."
"A really important thing about moving is there's no need to be good. What is good? There shouldn't be an elitism around movement. You don't need to be 'good'. You just need to do it."
"I don't care how fast you run a mile. I don't care if you keep going or not. What we care about is 'what's the quality of the conversation you're able to have with your friends around you?'"
"Teachers are under intense pressure at the moment. Teachers' lives are busy and children are coming full of uncertainty and anxiety. The emotional feeling in the classroom is charged in a way it's not been charged before. One thing a teacher can do is just allow themselves the opportunity in that day to have a small window of time to listen."
VALUABLE RESOURCES
Stormbreak website: https://stormbreak.org.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellostormbreak
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellostormbreak
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/darryl-walsh-5a29b32b
Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST
'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley
Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing.
Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide.
In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance.
Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion.
In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks.
The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.
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