Making Time For Us

As you all know, here at St. Helen’s College we put pupil well-being at the core of everything we do. If we have happy and healthy children attending school, they will go on to thrive surrounded by loving parents and our supportive school environment with all that we offer.

Staff well-being is also core to us and I hope that any member of staff to whom you speak would testify that we look after and look out for every member of staff, to enable them to give their best to your children every day.  

It is more difficult to reach every parent to ensure that your well-being is in a good place to enable you to be the best version of yourself each and every day. Our parent body is incredibly diverse and you all have many, varied commitments as part of your lives. We all live very busy lives and sometimes, in our commitment to our families and our work, we adults can forget about ourselves.

I enjoyed talking about adult well-being with parents at this week’s PA coffee morning and with staff on our return to school following half term. It was gratifying to hear that many of us are making time to look after our own well-being, perhaps away from partners and children. Spa days, weekends away with friends, attending yoga sessions, going swimming and morning runs before work are just a few ways that some of us make time for ourselves.

Many parents have taken advantage of some of the provisions we offer from a school’s perspective. Our Teddy Talks, for example, were put together in response to a parent survey about which areas of parenting you would like some support with. Our team were very brave in embarking upon this and we created a series of videos on a range of topics including early speech and language development, growing a love of reading and supporting healthy eating to name but a few. Do take a look, following the link, if you have not seen these short videos. Any further suggestions for future talks are most welcome.

Other parents have signed up for the Mindfulness in Schools course ‘.begin’ to give them a further understanding of how they may embed a more mindful approach to life’s challenges. See the link here for future course information.

Many families are enjoying ticking off the list of '100 Things To Do In Our Centenary Year', which we sent home with each pupil earlier this term. Do let us know how you are getting on with this and feel free to share photographs of you and your children enjoying any of the activities. The list was written by Mrs. Smith to enhance our well-being by encouraging us all to spend time appreciating the world around us, especially the great outdoors. I know that staff are enjoying working their way through the list with their families too!

This week was Mrs. McLauglins’s first week of running the next block of our ‘Baby Mindfulness’ sessions. The sessions are a bespoke six week course for mothers and babies, which we have been running at St. Helen’s College since 2021. You can click here to read a blog written last year by one of our current parents who attended with her newborn baby.  Mrs. McLaughlin loves running these sessions and they are open to anyone in the local community, not just St. Helen’s College parents. (The Teddy Talk where Mrs. McLaughlin explains her classes is here). This course is unique and there are no other such classes available to new mums in the Hillingdon area. If any of you are currently expecting a baby or know of new mums who you think would benefit from this class then please do contact Mrs. McLaughlin at pmclaughlin@sthelenscollege.com for further information. 

It is so important that we adults look after our own well-being and make time to gather our thoughts, re-energise and just be ourselves - not someone’s parent, not an employee or boss, not a husband or wife - just us! It is when we give ourselves permission to take this time that we may become the best version of ourselves and this can only benefit everyone around us.

Enjoy and cherish that time!

Have a great weekend.

Ms Drummond