by Cassandra Clark
There is a moment in almost every school year when someone says, “We should really do something about wellbeing.”
It usually comes after a difficult incident, a spike in behaviour data, a staff wellbeing survey, or a tired look exchanged in a leadership meeting. And it is almost always followed by the same response: “Let’s add something”
A new program. A new initiative. A new assembly theme or wellbeing week. A new set of lessons, posters, toolkits, acronyms. Some snacks.
Wellbeing, in many schools, becomes an add-on. An intervention. A separate entity running alongside “the real work” of teaching and learning.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth leaders already know:
Wellbeing is not about constant happiness or comfort. Schools exist to stretch, challenge, and grow people. Learning is demanding. Teaching is demanding. Leadership is demanding. Moments of discomfort, challenge, and frustration are not signs that wellbeing is broken; they are often signs that meaningful learning is taking place. Strong wellbeing cultures recognize this reality and ensure that challenge is matched with support, clarity, and trust.
Wellbeing is not about removing difficulty. It is about intentionally building the conditions that allow people to navigate difficulty well. It is about ensuring students and staff have the capacity, support, and clarity to cope with challenge, recover from setbacks, and function effectively under pressure while continuing to learn, contribute, and belong.
If wellbeing only exists as extra, it will always be the first thing squeezed out by time, pressure, curriculum demands, and exhaustion. Wellbeing should be something students and adults actually experience. The kind of wellbeing that actually changes behaviour, relationships, engagement, and learning doesn’t live in programs.
It lives in how a school operates.
One of the biggest mindset shifts everyone needs to understand, align, and agree on, is that, wellbeing is not owned by the pastoral team or by one role. Counselors, pastoral leaders, mentors, and safeguarding leads matter deeply. When wellbeing is treated as the responsibility of a specialist, the rest of the school opts out. Sustainable wellbeing only exists when leadership behaviours, systems, and expectations across the whole school are aligned.
This aligns directly with the EiM Leadership Capability Framework and the LYIS Leadership Impact Framework, which places safeguarding, wellbeing, clarity of systems, ethical leadership, and staff capacity at the heart of effective school leadership and a core leadership responsibility.
As leaders, we have to ask the uncomfortable questions and one of those is: Where is wellbeing being undermined by our systems?
Because students don’t experience school in silos. They experience it as a stream of interactions:
- how adults speak to them when they are late
- how behaviour is corrected
- whether feedback feels fair
- whether expectations are predictable
- whether someone notices when they are struggling
- whether belonging is conditional or unconditional
That is where wellbeing lives.
Behaviour, safeguarding, communication, and leadership consistency are all wellbeing strategies.
When wellbeing is embedded into the daily life of a school, you tend to see and hear the following:
- Students understand expectations and consequences without fear or confusion
- Adults use consistent language when correcting behavior or offering support
- Students approach trusted adults early, not only in crisis
- Teachers focus more energy on teaching and relationships
- Leaders spend less time firefighting and more time coaching
This aligns with findings from the 2023 research article “How Do IB Schools Safeguard Students?” written by Leila Holmyard, which highlights that students are more likely to disclose concerns when relationships are strong, pathways are clear, and adults are predictable in their responses.
Schools often talk about behaviour, wellbeing, and academics as separate conversations.
They aren’t.
Behaviour systems communicate values faster than any poster ever will.
At Dehong, we reframed behaviour as punishment to behaviour as communication. That doesn’t mean lowering expectations, it means being predictable, transparent, and restorative.
We clarify:
- What happens when expectations are met
- What happens when they are not
- How students are supported to repair harm
- How parents are informed
One small but powerful change is aligning our language across staff. When a student hears the same message from a subject teacher, a form tutor, and a grade leader, something important happens:
They stop testing the system. Consistency builds trust. Trust creates space for learning. That is wellbeing, quietly doing its job.
Safeguarding also strengthens because of this alignment. Safeguarding systems often look impressive on paper and fragile in practice. Flowcharts. Policies. Training slides. But the question that really matters is this:
Would a student actually tell an adult if something was wrong?
At Dehong, safeguarding improved because we simplified pathways to reporting and strengthened relationships. Students know:
- who is their trusted and safe adult
- how to ask for help
- what would happen next
Staff know: what to do, what not to do, and who holds responsibility
Clarity reduces hesitation. Clarity reduces fear. Clarity reduces burnout. Wellbeing is about reducing uncertainty for everyone.
Staff wellbeing initiatives fail when they are disconnected from leadership behaviour.
You cannot mindfulness your way out of unclear expectations.
You cannot yoga your way out of inconsistent decision-making.
You cannot wellbeing-week your way out of a culture where people feel unheard.
At Dehong, some of the most impactful wellbeing shifts came from leadership decisions rather than wellbeing activities
- Being clearer about the problem we are trying to solve and our solutions
- Simplifying processes
- Being clear about how we can and will support staff and students in different areas
- Responding to feedback with visible action
Teachers need leaders to reduce unnecessary noise and simplify systems. That is wellbeing in action and this reflects broader international research which consistently shows that teachers experience higher wellbeing when leadership reduces uncertainty, protects focus on learning, and uses coaching rather than compliance-driven accountability.
When wellbeing is embedded, leadership conversations sound different. Leaders are more likely to ask:
“What pressure is this system creating for students or staff?
“Whare are expectations unclear or inconsistent?”
“What problem are we actually trying to solve?”
“What can we simplify or stop doing?”
“How does this align with our core values and Pastoral Principles?”
| When Wellbeing is Embedded | When Wellbeing is Fragmented |
| Clear expectations reduce anxiety | Confusion increases stress |
| Consistent behaviour language | Mixed messages and testing boundaries |
| Early student disclosure | Crisis-driven intervention |
| Staff focus on teaching | Staff focus on managing systems |
| Leaders coach and plan | Leaders firefight and react |
Here’s the contradiction most leaders eventually face:
The more initiatives you add to support wellbeing, the less well your people feel.
What actually Elevates Wellbeing is alignment. When systems speak to each other. When adults send the same messages. When expectations are fair, clear, and consistent. When values point in the same direction.
One of the places misalignment in schools becomes most visible is in our partnerships with parents.
When parents hear one message from marketing, another from policy, and a third from day to day practice, uncertainty fills the gaps. That uncertainty can quickly turn into mistrust, heightened emotion, or reactive communication because systems are unclear.
At Dehong, we invest time in aligning our communication around:
- Shared behaviour language
- Clear communication expectations
- How and when to access support
When parents understand when and how the school responds, conversations become calmer, more collaborative, and less reactive. Shared language builds shared trust. Shared language between home and school builds trust, supports student understanding, and reduces anxiety, especially for students who are navigating challenge or change.
At Dehong Shanghai, wellbeing has improved because we have been deliberately trying to stop treating wellbeing as a separate thing and instead treat it as the lived experience of school for students and staff. Intentionally aligning our practices and decision making with our Pastoral Principles, grounded in the EiM Student and Staff Wellbeing Framework and informed by every day reflection.
Our work is not finished. We are still learning. We are still refining. We are still noticing where systems create pressure rather than reduce it, and where good intentions unintentionally add complexity. But we are committed to asking the right questions, listening carefully, and aligning our leadership behaviours with the culture we want our students and staff to experience.
And when that alignment begins to take hold, something important happens. Wellbeing stops competing with academics and it starts strengthening them.
Students feel safer.
Teachers feel steadier.
Leaders make clearer, more consistent decisions.
Everything begins to point in the same direction.
This matters deeply in the context of a global wellbeing crisis. Across the world, schools are grappling with rising student anxiety and wellbeing issues, staff burnout, leadership fatigue, and increasingly complex systems. The instinct to respond by adding more is understandable, but it is rarely sustainable.
Perhaps the more urgent leadership question is how can we move on from the continual need to introduce more and what can we align, simplify, and lead more intentionally?
References
- LYIS Leadership Impact Framework
- Holmyard. L. (2023) How do IB World Schools Safeguard Students?
- EiM Student and Staff Wellbeing Frameworks
- EiM Leadership Capability Framework
Cassandra Clark, Deputy Head of Secondary School (Pastoral) / Child Protection Lead, Dehong International Chinese School Shanghai
Join Cassandra at #LYIS26:
LYIS is proud to partner with WildChina Education
