Building a Thriving School Community Through Teacher Wellness

Your HMW Question: How might we listen to teachers’ needs to create a thriving school community where staff wellness and culture flourish?

The Challenge You Identified

Teachers are carrying significant stress from personal challenges, heavy teaching loads, and health concerns. This stress manifests as negative demeanor, which impacts student experience and school culture. You recognized that teacher wellness isn’t isolated—it directly affects the entire school community.

Your Design Thinking Journey

Discovery: Through our conversation, you identified that while systemic issues (workload, grading, planning, meetings) are real, your most powerful zone of influence lies in human connection, presence, and care.

Key Insight: Sometimes the most innovative solutions aren’t about changing systems—they’re about creating pockets of support, compassion, and psychological safety within existing structures.

Your Solution: Five Actionable Experiments

1. Regular Check-Ins: Schedule intentional one-on-one conversations with teachers. Ask open-ended questions about how they’re doing (personally and professionally). Listen without trying to fix everything.
2. Practical Support: Offer coverage when teachers need a break or need to be away. This tangible support signals that you see their burden and are willing to help carry it.
3. Wellness Practices: Teach and model calming strategies and meditation practices. Make these accessible and normalize wellness as part of school culture.
4. Consistent Follow-Up: Remember what teachers share with you. Follow up on challenges they mentioned. Show that you’re genuinely tracking their wellbeing over time.
5. Visible Compassion: Demonstrate care through your actions and words. Let teachers know they matter beyond their productivity.

Implementation Timeline: December 2025 – April 2026

Success Indicators

How will you know this is working?

• Teachers initiate conversations with you more often
• You notice shifts in teacher demeanor (more positive, more present)
• Teachers report feeling more supported
• Student interactions with teachers feel warmer and more engaged
• Teachers express gratitude or relief
• Peer support among teachers increases

Potential Obstacles & How to Overcome Them

Your Takeaway

You’ve discovered that listening, presence, and compassion are powerful design tools. By creating space for teachers to feel seen and supported, you’re not just improving individual wellbeing—you’re building the foundation for a thriving school culture that benefits everyone, especially students.

Your role as a listener and supporter is not a consolation prize for not having systemic power. It’s a leverage point. When teachers feel genuinely cared for, they show up differently. And that changes everything.

Start this week. Pick one teacher. Have one conversation. See what happens. 🌱

A Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay has been the soundtrack to my journey this year — and it captures exactly where I find myself as Season 14 begins. Looking up at infinite possibilities, feeling both the magnitude of the work ahead and the wonder of where I’ve landed.

Last year, I was wrestling with a question that wouldn’t let me go: “How might we create a school where staff come to be well?” It felt like such a big, important question — one that mattered deeply but seemed almost too ambitious to tackle. I was asking it from the sidelines, wondering how change could happen, hoping someone would step up to make it real.

Then something shifted. The universe conspired, opportunities aligned, and suddenly I wasn’t just asking the question anymore — I was being handed the keys to answer it. I became the Well-Being Coordinator for KCS, a role I’d been working toward for years. With it came something I hadn’t fully anticipated: endless energy and ambition. When your zone of influence grows to match your sense of purpose, it’s like discovering you’ve had superpowers all along.

But here’s what I’m learning: having influence means getting serious about impact. It’s not enough to launch initiatives and hope for the best. I’m in that critical evaluation phase now — determining which efforts should continue and grow, and which aren’t moving the needle. I want to measure engagement in meaningful ways, not just count attendance at wellness events. I want to know if staff are actually feeling more supported, if the culture is shifting, if people feel safe to be vulnerable about their struggles.

The work is both strategic and deeply personal. Every morning, I walk the halls solving the staffing puzzle — making sure we have the right people in each classroom, ensuring our foundation is solid so everyone else can do their best work. There’s something fulfilling about being the person who makes sure we’re ready for the day. It’s logistics, yes, but it’s also care in action.

Looking ahead to Season 14, I’m thinking bigger than just KCS. I want to build a Well-Being Coalition through Cohort 21 — a network of educators who understand that staff wellness isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the foundation everything else is built on. I want to use this community as my learning lab, gathering thinking partners who can help me refine what meaningful engagement actually looks like and how to measure it authentically.

The question that launched this journey — “How might we create a school where staff come to be well?” — is no longer just a question. It’s become my north star, my daily practice, my contribution to the constellation of educators working to transform how we care for each other in this profession.

KCS isn’t quite a place where staff come to be well yet, but it’s better than it was. And now I have the influence, the energy, and the community to keep reaching toward that sky full of stars.

My Cohort 21 journey centered around the question: “How might we create a workplace that supports and nurtures our well-being?” This focus emerged from a deeply personal place—my own mental health struggle and subsequent recovery. Through that challenging experience, I discovered strategies that made a profound difference in my life, and I felt called to share these approaches with my colleagues and the broader school community.

 What I Did & Its Impact

My Action Plan involved implementing several wellness initiatives in our school environment:

– **Morning Yoga Sessions**: Daily 7:30am sessions for staff members
– **Dedicated Meditation Space**: Transformed our conference room into a daily sanctuary for mindfulness practice
– **Mindful Minutes**: Integrated meditation and breathing techniques into weekly school-wide assembly announcements
– **Gratitude Classroom Sessions**: Facilitated structured opportunities for expressing appreciation
– **Thank You Cards**: Encouraged recognition and acknowledgment among community members
– **Act of Kindness Duty Relief Schedule**: Created a formal structure to support acts of service and compassion

These initiatives aimed to weave well-being practices into the fabric of our school culture, making wellness accessible throughout the workday rather than something to be pursued only outside of work hours.

What I Learned

Perhaps my most significant learning came through observation: while many colleagues expressed enthusiasm for mindfulness and well-being practices, they struggled to prioritize time for these activities during the workday. This revealed an important tension between recognizing the value of well-being and actually integrating it into our professional lives.

This realization led me to a crucial insight: “I need to spend time listening to what our staff need so that I can meet them where they are.” Rather than simply implementing solutions that worked for me personally, I discovered the importance of understanding the unique contexts, pressures, and preferences of my colleagues.

I also embraced the mindset that creating cultural change requires persistence: “I must never give up.” Workplace well-being isn’t achieved through one-time initiatives but through consistent, compassionate effort over time.

Resources to Share

Several key resources shaped my thinking and approach:

– **”The Anxious Generation”**: This book provided valuable insights into the nature of anxiety and its impacts, particularly relevant in educational settings.

– **”The Tools” by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels**: This practical guide offers specific techniques for personal transformation and psychological healing that can be applied in various contexts.

– **”Rewire”**: This resource focuses on changing neural pathways and habits, which connects directly to establishing new wellness practices in the workplace.

## Big Takeaway

My most profound realization through this journey can be distilled to a simple yet powerful truth: **”Serving others is the meaning of life.”** This insight transformed how I view workplace well-being—not merely as a set of activities or programs, but as an expression of care and service to my community. It reinforced that creating environments where people can thrive is deeply meaningful work that connects to our fundamental human purpose.

Lingering Questions

As I reflect on this journey, one question continues to resonate: **”How do I inspire others to do it?”** Having developed and implemented various well-being initiatives, I now wonder how to move beyond implementation to inspiration—how to catalyze a movement rather than simply manage a program. This question will guide my next steps as I continue this work.

Final Thoughts

My Cohort 21 experience has fundamentally shifted how I approach professional development and community building. I’ve learned that creating a workplace that nurtures well-being isn’t just about specific techniques or scheduled activities—it’s about fostering a culture where people feel valued, heard, and supported in bringing their whole selves to work.

This journey has reinforced that meaningful change starts with personal transformation but flourishes through community engagement. By sharing my own experiences and creating spaces for others to explore well-being practices, I’ve discovered that vulnerability can be a powerful catalyst for collective growth.

As I move forward, I carry with me a deeper appreciation for the interconnectedness of personal and professional well-being and a renewed commitment to serving others through creating environments where everyone can thrive.

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Value Mission Statement Versus, How might we question.

How might we practice mindfulness techniques to help us, make good decisions, respond rather than react, restrain from finding fault, and provide unconditional support, while at the same time unlocking the potential inside ourselves?

I’ve done some thinking over the holidays and thought I would change my how might we question to the above. After a little retrospective thought, I think the above is my overarching goal, mission, or values statement.

My cohort 21 2025 path will continue to be focused on the staff in my school.

How might we make our workplace somewhere we come to be well?

90% > 100%. Giving up 10% of your workday to intentional mindfulness will increase your productivity well beyond what you give up. (48 minutes/day = 10% of our workday)

Intentional mindfulness can be practiced following this schedule but certainly needs to work for each individual. This is the schedule that works for me.

15 minutes yoga at school 7:30-7:45 am

15 minutes meditation (recess 10:25-10:40 am)

15 minutes conversation with colleagues at lunch or a walk 12:05-12:20 pm

3 minutes of breathing techniques (Box – Sip – Nostril – 4/7/8 – Hiss – Gratitude)

The uptake has been slow but I believe in the cause and hope I’ve made a positive impact on the well-being of our faculty and staff. I intend to find a way to help our teachers find the benefits of mindfulness for themselves in order to best deliver a whole school mindfulness program for all of our students. Without buy-in from the staff, my sphere of influence is small. With the help of my colleagues, I can grow the sphere of influence to the whole school. I’ve got patience and a hunger to learn how I can best deliver this program. Important things take time, effort, iterations, hard work, and help from others.

“Our being is the currency of our doing.”

This quote sums up why I consider my mental well-being as the most important and most urgent. How I show up in the classroom every day dictates the outcome of my impact. If I prioritize mindfulness by intensionally making it urgent, everything else slides to the not urgent section of importance. The productivity associated with being “well”, creates time for us to complete tasks before they become urgent. When we are “well”, we are more likely to handle crisis scenarios in our schools with a sense of calm, clarity and stoicism.

I intend to focus my cohort21 experience on leading change through well-being. Our well-being influences our engagement. If our kids aren’t engaged shouldn’t mindfulness be the most urgent important?

The best year of my life. My connection to my wife, my kids, friends, colleagues, students, our community, and strangers on the street has been strengthened. I’ve created a better version of myself. I’ve unlocked an ambition in myself that I don’t recognize. I’ve changed. I’m a new person. I’ve changed my perspective on life and realized that being grateful and providing service to others is the most important path I can take. If you told me 5 years ago that intentional breathing exercises, meditation, journaling, living by higher values, following perspective life tools, and showing gratitude would change my life, I would have said politely that this sounded nice and carried on with my day without a second thought. I was good, I was happy, and I was productive until I was not. Anxiety popped up inside me sometime in 2019 and stayed with me for several years until I recognized the beast and started to learn and use mindfulness practices to try to tame it.

How might we offer mindfulness practices that unlock our potential and create a better version of ourselves?

Cohort21 Season 12 Action Plan 

This, how might we question, is as much for me as it is for those who I try to share my action project with. The service component of my action plan has a two-fold benefit. It can help others navigate life with mindful clarity and calm. The second benefit is selfish. Helping others gives me a boost of energy which helps to hold me up. Maybe this is because I’m 47 and I’ve traveled around the sun 47 times and now I have life experiences, both good and bad, which I’ve learned from. I’ve had an awakening that is going to fuel me for the last half of my life. Cohort 21 helped me to synthesize my thinking and build a research-based mental health resource aimed to provide help and direction for those who may need to Ignite the Spark inside themselves. Ignite Spark is a 6-pilar course over 10 weeks for 7 grade 6’s who have elected to take this course. The 6 pillars of ignite spark are:

1. Meditation
2. Journaling
3. Yoga
4. Thinking tools
5. Calming techniques
6. High Values

Students who select this course this year commit 1000 minutes to these practices between March and June of 2024. This is the start, this is my passion.  I can’t wait to take my next step.

How might we offer mindfulness practices that unlock our potential and reveal a better version of ourselves? 

You may wonder why not say “best” version of ourselves. I have struggled with this concept and have landed on a Neil Peart Quote, “The point of the journey is not to arrive.” Trying to attain perfection is part of the problem. We need not strive for the best version of ourselves. We just need to take small steps toward better. Better is possible for all of us. Best is possible for nobody. 

I want to pass on what I have learned about my own mental wellness with everyone willing to listen or interested in getting help from me. I want to help everyone. I realize this is a big idea, but I am up for the challenge. I am up for the challenge because I know the power of mindfulness practices firsthand. A few years ago, I found myself breathless. I could not catch my breath during everyday activities. Usually, I would be fine in the morning, get a good run in, but sometimes by 9am I would be unable to catch my breath. I found myself hiding from interactions with colleagues at work because I was not confident that I could catch my breath. I realized that I could not even sing Oh Canada during assemblies. To be completely honest I still struggle with this which is why I emphasize “better” in my how might we statement. I could not even catch my breath between bites while eating. I had a respirologist who could confirm asthma but not the debilitating symptoms that I was suffering from. I was sure this was a physical problem stemming from an asthma disorder.  

That is until I watched the episode of Ted Lasso where he started to have a panic attack. I realized in that moment that I had what he had. I was experiencing panic attacks. I was in a constant state of panic for almost 2 years without realizing, despite my wife and 2 colleagues telling me they were certain it was panic. It took Jason Sudeikis’ excellent recreation of a panic disorder to get me to alter my mindset and start to seek help. 

That was two years ago, and, in that time, I have gone to a therapist, read some impactful books, meditated every day, had consistent yoga practice and have written in a journal every morning. My “practices” as I call them, have unlocked my potential, and revealed a better version of myself.  

I have built a resource which I call “Ignite Spak” that works similar to a recipe for living my best life. I work at it every day so that I am calm and moving forward. It is not about being happy all the time, it is about learning and moving forward. I have grown in my relationship with my kids, wife, friends, and colleagues more this year than any other year in the past. Up to this point I have used these practices for my own benefit. I would like to now try to branch out and help others with what I have built. I am not naïve and do realize that just because it works for me does not mean that it will work for everyone else, but I have to try. One of the pillars to my mental recovery is “action impact”, the pursuit to help others. The best way to help yourself unlock your potential is in the service of helping others. My focus on mindfulness in this next phase of my recovery is to share with, and help, everyone. I recently came across a quote from Jimmy Carter that sums up my thoughts. “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”  

Question 1:

I chose to come back to cohort21 this season because I have changed my outlook on life and how I choose to live it. For much of my teaching career I’ve been happy and satisfied but lacked a feeling of moving forward towards a particular goal. Satisfaction had always been my motivational and driving force. Doing a good job, taking care of myself and my commitments to my family had always been enough.  In the past couple of years I have found that serving others provides a much more meaningful existence. I have this internal desire to lead. Cohort21 is a room full of leaders and what better place to learn to lead than right here. I’m here to learn to lead from leaders.

Question 2: 

Leading change through wellbeing speaks to my current focus. Learning happens when students and teachers are well. My focus this season will be to enhance the mental well being of those around me. I have struggled with my own wellness in the past. I know how it feels and how difficult it is to complete simple tasks when feeling unwell. In the past few years I’ve learned strategies that have propelled me to a place and clarity I’ve never felt before, and it is wonderful. So wonderful I want to share it with everyone.   If I can support our staff and students with a tool kit of strategies, I hope to improve the lives of those around me. What is important? I need to build on my current knowledge so that I can best provide support. What is urgent? I need to be able to identify who needs help so that I can provide it or help guide where that help might come from.

I want my grade 5 science students to solve the world’s greatest problem.

How might we invent a product using renewable energy sources to reduce our carbon foot print?

Research and Introduction

Important environmental science topics will be learned through research and discussions in our grade 5 classroom. Ideally students will learn the answers  the following essential questions throughout the research phase of the LAUNCH sequence. The learning goal is to be able to answer all of the essential questions.The project goal is to use their learning to invent a product which will reduce our dependence on burning fossil fuels.

10 Essential Questions

1. What are fossil fuels?
2. What is climate change?
3. What are renewable energy sources?
4. How does the green house effect work?
5. What type of gases make up our atmosphere?
6. How does burning fossil fuel effect our environment?
7. What is a carbon foot print and how do I calculate it?
8. Does the production of meat as food effect the atmosphere?
9. How does having too much carbon dioxide effect our atmosphere?
10. How does using renewable energy sources effect the environment?

Recognizing “The Problem”

Our dependence on fossil fuels and overindulgence in meat consumption is causing climate change.

How might we ….

How might we invent a product using renewable energy sources to reduce our carbon foot print.

Ideation:

Students will complete a crazy eight activity to come up with a product which will help to reduce green house gas emissions. 8 minutes and 8 squares, 1 minute per square.

After 8 minutes students will be asked to select their best idea and create a story board to show how they may create this product.

Gallery

Students will place their idea on the wall and provide feedback on other ideas. Students will be asked to post their critique on top of each storyboard.

Prototype

Everyone will build a model of their product.

Sharing with the world

Students will share their idea with the class in any form they would like. Some may want to create a commercial for their invention. Students will have the opportunity to share their product with the school in a showcase display for their products.

My hope

At the conclusion of this project students will have created change. Their knowledge of our effect on the environment will impact the decisions that they make when managing their own energy consumption.

Power of Three

Step 1:

Now that November approaches and it is time for progress reports to be finalized I have had enough time to be able to know my students enough to reflect on their pressing needs.

1. Science Collaboration – students need to take advantage of the time they have together. Having one or more lab partners is necessary to complete many of our experiments. Some groups of student can become engaged in conversation outside the realm of science discussions, this results in wasted time.

2. Recognizing the need for math extra help – There is a wide range of student understanding within my classroom. Some concepts come easy for students while some students struggle. Those that need reinforcement beyond our class time have 3 extra math help opportunities to attend my math help sessions. Some have not taken the initiative to come in for one on one help to practice their skills. I am hoping that all students feel welcome and encouraged to drop in when concept are difficult.

3. Encouraging perseverance among phys ed students who lack athletic confidence. Those students who have had limited access to sports equipment are often very tentative which makes skill development difficult.

Step 2:

These are the questions that I have asked particular students.

1. Who do you work best with. What lab partner do you think you would get the most work completed with?

2. Would you like to attend extra math help tomorrow morning or any morning?

3. What is your favourite sport? What sports would you like to improve? What games would you like to play in gym class.

Step 3:

the outcomes

1. Buy giving the chance to reflect on past lab partners and a choice to who they work best with I have found their reasoning mature and effective. The specific student who I questioned let me know that his partner was seldom on task and required constant redirection on his part to complete work. I moved him to a different partner and he appreciated it and his teamwork improved.
2. Some students simply require more one on one help in order to consolidate concepts. Asking students to come in regularly for early morning extra math help does make a difference but parent communication is essential for consistent weekly help. The student group that I targeted for extra help was attending extra math help inconsistently until I reached out to the parents. After parent contact attendance improved which helped the group consolidate their learning together.
3. Taking an extra moment to ask struggling phys. Ed. students what their favourite sport is seemed to get them to come out of there shells. I asked them for their favourite gym game and made sure to incorporate their game within a class or warm up. Making these students more comfortable in their class seems to increase participation.

The power of three process helped to better fulfill the needs of my students producing a better academic outcome while communicating with parents to ensure they are being help accountable for their learning.