Without exception

It makes my heart sad. Every education professional who knocked on my door during the final weeks of the school year could no longer manage the sprint to the finish line. One by one they went on sick leave. Without exception. There was no difference between teachers, care coordinators, head teachers or management. The scenario was always the same. The energy was gone. The spark had gone out. Those few weeks were an unbridgeable gap. Their resilience had been reduced to zero. Their motivation had flown away. The pain was too great. The powerlessness unbearable. Self-care a challenge. The sighs about the system overwhelming. Two months of holiday offered no prospect at all. ‘I can’t go on. I don’t know if I can ever go back’, was the general tenor.

It makes me sigh. I think of the seemingly hopeless struggle these people are feeling. I think of the pupils who deserve lively, motivated and enthusiastic teachers. I think of how these education professionals once chose this profession out of love. I think of the educational constellation we did about two years ago, in which the outflow of teachers was a fact, in which the remaining teachers experienced extra pressure and eventually ended up in the same dead end as their colleagues. This cannot possibly be the intention.

I cannot bear to watch it and I cannot resign myself to it. There are many programmes for pupils with all kinds of difficulties. But what about programmes and coaching for teachers and head teachers who need a helping hand? Surely we cannot simply let so many good forces in education wither away?

The pounding of the taiko

I know those sighs. I have experienced it myself: an overload of complicated events and stimuli undermining my balance. My emotions resembling a resentful, stormy ocean, my legs feeling more like matchsticks that might snap at any moment, my body permanently in a state of alarm, alert to whatever might happen next, and my heart pounding like a taiko, a Japanese drumming technique that gallops right through your body. The crash close at hand…

Fortunately I know the symptoms from my own experience. Nothing in these stories surprises me. Fortunately I have learned, time and time again, how to rise above difficult situations and draw strength from them. What better could I do than share my experiences? The growth I have made my own in the educational landscape where I worked for many years does not belong to me alone. That growth is there to be shared with everyone who is searching for well-being and who wants to work in school with enough energy, or better still, with a lively energy. It makes me happy when I see the downward movement in the teachers and head teachers I guide turn into an upward, transforming consciousness.

Do you recognise yourself in these symptoms? Then know that you are not alone. Then know that the tide can be turned. Then know that your growth and transformation also have an influence on ‘the system’. Then know that pupils are longing for teachers full of the joy of life, and that staff have confidence in a head teacher who has come back to life.

From one door to the next

The symptoms are actually bearers of good news. They knock on the door of your consciousness so that you will open it. They ask you to close the previous door. You have outgrown the old patterns. They no longer work. Your symptoms push you to face this and to leave it behind you. It is precisely because we hold on to what no longer works that we experience pain and resistance. The step from one door to the next is the hardest. It feels like no man’s land. All sense of direction is lost. It is the moment when you want to give up or when you fall ill. The situation changes as soon as you open the new door. The landscape through the open door looks brighter. New possibilities show themselves. You become curious. About yourself as well. Your appetite for life starts to rise again. You can smile at what you did not know back there behind that previous door. You no longer want to go back. Only forward.

Your advanced self

Are you someone who does not want to sink away, but wants to learn new things that make you feel better? Every day we ask pupils to learn new things. And you? Are you willing to get acquainted with the consciousness that lies slumbering within you and that wants to be woken up so it can commit itself to an education that opens hearts and consciousness? Are you ready to meet your advanced self and to connect with her? Can you hardly wait to blossom open, to experience love and consciousness and to share all of this in your teaching assignment? Are you aware that every new door erases a little more of your ignorance and replaces it with something we call connection, strength, source, essence or conscious BEING?

The essential summer class for teachers

Would you like to learn, as I have, to give soul to your lessons from your being-present? Would you like to be ready for the new school year from a place of relaxation? Would you like to master the basics of teaching powerfully and lovingly, and still have energy left for your family in the evening? Do you realise, as so many others do, that a new inspiration is needed in schools? We can no longer pass the essence by; we may reconnect with it. Your essence is to be found within you. Nowhere else. Would you like to take that essence with you to school? Would you like to inspire pupils to live and learn from their essence? What would that mean? What kind of education would you create then? Do you dare to open that door? Would you like to learn all of this from me?

You are welcome in my summer class for teachers on 19 and 20 August. With Teaching by being we spend two beautiful days replenishing ourselves in a green and conscious setting. From your restored connection with your essence, you look forward to 1 September full of confidence.

A school year with less pressure in the boiler

For those who want to keep going further in their connection with the essence of themselves, the essence of the pupils and the essence of education, there is more. Why would you go on performing under pressure? What is the point of it? None!

Would you like to develop yourself further? To learn to open your eyes and ears? To activate your senses? To use your wider consciousness so that schools themselves can also open new doors with beautiful educational landscapes behind them? What would it be like if you consciously brought love, heart connection and soul consciousness into the school? You know full well that you would then become irresistible. And what if you were now to make systemic insights your own? They make you look at school and all its participants as you have never seen them before. As if you were being shown the scenario behind the scenario. Illuminating and, above all, de-stressing.

You are welcome on the programme A systemic view beyond stress at school that starts in September, and of course at the Educational constellations of 1 December. For more intimate personal guidance you can turn to Pedagogical coaching.

Replenishment for head teachers

Teachers need head teachers with vision and charisma, who indicate the direction and inspire their staff. Teachers are not the only ones laying their wishes on the head teacher’s desk. They are tugged at the sleeve from all sides and their diary is bursting with deadlines. Self-care for head teachers is not included in their hours. How do you keep the connection with the essence of your inner leader if you do not even have the time to drink your coffee while it is hot?

What I know from my own experience as a head teacher, and from the contact I have had with head teachers, is that all too often they harden their hearts in order to be able to meet the demands of the job. What they need is to feel their heart beating. To feel that their heart is the centre of love and that schools with their pupils need warm-hearted lessons and warm-hearted approaches. The heart? Love? I do not mean this superficially, but as an essential part of the curriculum and of where teachers position themselves. If the office of the leader were the beating heart of the school, what would our education look like then?

Every leader is welcome on the transformation programme From self-management to school management. Connecting, coming to rest, getting into motion,… together with others who understand what your job involves.

You can come to me for systemic educational advice, coaching, educational constellations and programmes.

On 11 and 12 October you can find out what an Educational council for head teachers involves.

The changing consciousness is announcing itself.

When a new electronic gadget comes onto the market, or anything else our heart desires, we are quick off the mark to get ourselves one. We want to keep up.
Are you becoming aware that our consciousness, both collective and individual, is changing? Do you notice that we are being invited to live what is essential? Do you already know the manual of the essence? Do you know that it is very simple?
Are you making the choice now to explore your conscious being and to spread it within the school? Would you like to be part of it before others get ahead of you? Then I would love to see you at one of the training courses, and I will gladly share everything I know about this, so that next school year becomes one to remember, in the positive sense.

With a zest-for-life greeting

Hilde Van Bulck

Speaker, writer, consciousness coach, systemic constellation facilitator and advisor
(with 26 years of experience in education)
Author of De eigenwijze kikker (The Headstrong Frog)
Facilitator for education at Organisation Of The Future
AMI Activating, Motivating, Inspiring