The Good Enough Teacher: What Winnicott Can Teach Us About the Classroom

I loved teaching but it took me a while to embrace the concept of being good enough. Not good enough but good enough. What I mean is to be comfortable with being good enough, to have boundaries, to maintain a work-life balance, to work smarter rather than harder and to have a personal wellbeing target on your annual appraisal which was more meaningful than ‘go for a ten minute lunchtime walk once a week’. (This was a real target!)

A lifetime ago, when I was a young Mum at home with her three very small children I stumbled across a copy of D W Winnicott’s book The Good Enough Mother and it changed my life. Some time before I had been gifted Gina Ford’s The Contented Little Baby (AKA Infant Boot Camp) I love a routine but this one read like a survival manual written by a drill sergeant and so I had successfully ignored other parenting manuals until I came across Winnicott in a charity book shop.

Winnicott offered relief. Guess what? You don't have to be a perfect mother. In fact, he argued, you shouldn't try to be. What children need is "good enough”; someone who meets their needs closely at first, then gradually, tolerably, fails to meet them, giving children room to discover their own resources.

Like all good ideas it's a simple but with large implications. And it turns out that it translates remarkably well from home to school.

It's Half Term in Wiltshire and for teachers and retired teachers (even those who've been called back to cover for absent colleagues) a time to lean into familiar February rituals. There’s a comfort in spending a few days doing familiar things. One of the most important features of rituals is that they do not only mark time; they create time. Time to connect, time to reflect, time to slow down and take control.