On the first INSET day of 2025, Sarah Creegan continued her mission to deliver Menopause Awareness training in every school in the UK. To clarify, she was booked for the 90-minute session by North Mead Primary Academy. She didn’t just rock up, uninvited, ladened with curly wurlys and squidgy people.
Like many primary schools, North Mead’s team is predominantly female and approximately 50% are over the age of 40. They’ve been having some discussions amongst the team, but they felt the time was right for everyone to become more aware of the challenges that some people face when going through menopause.
The main aims of the session were to:
- Make menopause less of a taboo subject, only whispered about in corridors by women of a certain age
- To help people better understand the signs and symptoms of perimenopause, as well as the impact that these can have when you work in a school
- To help people think creatively about ways that they can help themselves and others
Although we don’t laugh at menopause, Laughology’s approach is always to have fun. This helps people feel that they belong, but also to learn and remember. Most importantly, it encourages them to take action when they go back to their day job.
Everyone took away one small target; something that they aim to do differently from now on. For example, one person was going to track her symptoms and book a GP appointment. And, as a school, they were going to think about what they could provide in the women’s toilets for anyone who gets ‘caught short’.
This is what one of the women fed back:
“I went into the session not knowing a great deal about the menopause, but I came out of it with so much information. The delivery of the session by Sarah was brilliant!”
And this was from one of the men:
“Thanks for answering questions, dispelling myths and making us laugh. You've started the conversation for us all.”
If you’re interested in having a menopause awareness session in your school, reach out to Doug – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - and he’ll talk you through how we can help.
