As it is Children’s Mental Health week and Time To Talk day today, I am thinking about the notions of ‘pace’, ‘time’ and ‘breathing space’ in education.

Jamie Thom’s books- ‘Slow Teaching’ and ‘A Quiet Education’ have been hugely influential in my philosophies, giving strategies and frameworks for carving the calm out of an otherwise stressful working life, particularly when it comes to supporting those quieter and more introverted students who are likely to internalise how they feel.

The core negative feedback I would receive as a practitioner has been to ‘speed up’ my lessons, in the belief that pace equates to engagement- but it’s a false proxy. I am ‘guilty’ of spending 20 minutes on a starter activity, in what I would consider responsive teaching and honouring the importance of allowing students more time. I never have time for plenaries, because I always seem to find that there are more interesting ideas and learning to fill every nook and cranny of our collective space.

Student learning is not contingent on them constantly moving, when in fact often what they crave more than ever in their over-stimulated lives is space to think deeply and a reduction of their cognitive load- particularly our SEND and EAL learners (see John Sweller, 2011).  

At the crux of a lot of anxiety is a feeling of urgency. Anxiety leads us to believe that we have to act NOW otherwise _______ will happen. For young people, this may look like ‘if you don’t finish this task now then you will miss out on learning and struggle with your exams’. We forget that for learning to happen it must occur in a place of emotional stability and regulation- but when we put pressure on, it activates the limbic system and prevents the pre-frontal cortex from problem-solving or even access proper learning (See Dr Bruce Perry and The Child Trauma Academy, 2006-2011, and Dr Dan Siegel on Interpersonal Neurobiology- The Developing Mind, 2020). Attachment-informed teaching feels more important than ever; from experience I know just how much young people want to feel seen and heard, and be given unconditional time and attention (an important factor to facilitate healthy attachments).

And school systems often perpetuate this, due to the intensity of curriculum demands, standardised testing and occupational culture that causes top-down anxieties to filter through. Then we push this baggage onto our young people. I’ve certainly been guilty of this, and had to fight for my own mental space, to be self reflective enough to recognise when I am doing it. Perhaps this is why the leaders want to see ‘pace’- because it serves their own internal agenda that movement and action = achievement.

I’ll be honest, it’s a key reason why I left teaching in mainstream secondary schools- because I want to reclaim my mind and sanity back, and ensure I am respecting the ‘headspace’ of the young people I work with.

Outside of education, there are plenty of people who are pushing back on the idea that an ‘efficiency’ mindset is the best pathway for a functioning society. I have just finished reading Gabor Maté’s ‘The Myth of Normal’ and am currently reading Johann Hari’s ‘Stolen Focus’, both of which are making me more acutely aware of how systemic issues perpetuate the feeling that life must move at pace. Well, if we don’t have time to think, then we don’t have time to question, and we keep purchasing, and scrolling, and blaming each other, and seeking.

So thank you for indulging me as I flesh out some of the ideas that are swimming around my head- not least because I want to practice what I preach and be able to show up authentically for the teens I work with. To take #timetotalk very literally, and not just as a tokenistic phrase, we NEED to prioritise time above all. If addressed properly, time becomes attention, it becomes connection and it is central to nurturing well-educated and mentally healthy young people.