Teacher fatigue it's real. Teacher fatigue on top of teaching students with emotional and behavioral disorders is really real. For many teachers, their career ends due to teacher burn-out, secondary trauma, heightened stress and lack of self-care due to increased demands. With hours beyond hours of time spent in the classroom, shifting standards, increased work demands, the reality of public opinions and working with students who are challenging the reality that teachers are leaving the classroom might not be far from fetched. So the question becomes, how can teachers engage in a healthy balance of work and home life to ensure they are prioritizing their mental health and well-being to be the best version of themselves for their students?
First off, if you take anything from this blog post, this is what I want you to take. Your students need you to take care of yourself. Your students need you to practice self-care. Your students need a teacher each and everyday refreshed. You need to be recharged. Your students need you to focus on your diet, health and sleep. Your students need the best version of you. Figure out what self-care means to you and do it.
Many of us work with students who may exhibit challenging behavior or come from difficult situations. When we as educators experience the first hand trauma of others, the pain they are feeling weighs heavy on us as we can begin to experience compassion fatigue or secondary trauma. Listening and responding to the traumatic situations and being impacted by the emotional toll this takes on us can create a sense of trauma for ourselves and begin to impact our daily lives and living scenarios. Ensure you are monitoring yourself for signs of secondary trauma and understanding the serious side effects this can have on our lives as educators.
Ok. Let's get one thing straight, self-care isn't all about bubble baths, lit candles and someone serving you a charcuterie board full of your favorite cheeses (let's be real, that sounds fabulous and I wouldn't be mad about it). However, self-care is something sustainable for your well-being. Something you can do on a consistent, daily basis that looks after your physical, mental and emotional health. So often we tell our students they need to develop a toolbox full of coping strategies. Can we practice what we preach? We also need to do the same! We need to develop things to do when we need to be energized, when we need to unwind or when we need to deal with difficult situations. So, now let's talk realistic ways you can provide yourself self-care!
1.) Boundaries: Create healthy boundaries between work and home. Are you always that person who is the last one to leave school? Always the one to stay late? I was that person. Especially my first 2 years of teaching. I felt the to-do list was never ending and I constantly found 'one more thing' to do or couldn't leave until a task was complete. I exhausted the clock at work and spent countless nights a week not coming home until 7 or 8 pm only to go straight to bed and do it all over again. At this point, my basic needs of a healthy diet and sleep were not being met. Create healthy boundaries. Have a time you stop each day from work. Maybe you work one late night a week to get your work done and leave after work every other day? Set timers and limits for yourself. You need healthy boundaries.
2.) Normalize saying 'no': I used to be that person to say yes to everything. I felt that if I wasn't saying yes then my administration or co-workers would look down on me as a member of the team. I would feel that 'teacher-guilt' that I wasn't working hard enough. That if I just put one more thing on my plate then people would understand my worth and dedication to my position. Stop setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm. Prioritize your responsibilities and ensure before you say 'yes' is this something you realistically can do and not sacrifice your mental health, time and self care? Is this something you can fit into your work hours of the day or will you be inputting your personal time that you need to be restoring yourself to complete this task? It's ok to say no to tasks. You don't have to validate your reasoning. Just know that self-care is an ok validation to saying 'no'.
3.) Non-negotiables: When making your to-do list for the week, ensure to list your non-negotiables first. What are things you HAVE to get completed? Lesson plans? IEPs? Data Collection? Whatever they are list them and do them first! Then you can analyze what time you have left to dedicate to other tasks or things you feel you can say 'yes' to. I often found myself getting super wrapped up in small details of wanting to get cute things done or more preferable activities done and then spending more of the time doing the non-negotiables last and becoming frustrated when I was having to spend late evenings on Thursday or Friday at work. A to-do list can help keep you on track with getting your job duties done to allow for more time to take care of yourself.
4.) Prioritize: One of the most important ways you can ensure self-care is prioritizing your time. Build in blocks of self-care in your calendar. Treat self-care as a non-negotiable. Dedicated to a workout class twice a week? Put it in your calendar. Need time to meditate? Put it in your calendar. Need to take a 15 minute break to get up and walk around every 3 hours? Put a reminder in your calendar or on your phone. Build in times of regulation for yourself. Put your commitments into writing and communicate your intentions to others.
5.) What is your self-care? Have you ever made a list of things you really enjoy doing? Can you break the list into categories? I challenge you to do the following: 1.) make a list of things that energize you. 2.) Make a list of things that you do when you need to unwind. 3.) Make a list of things you can do when you're dealing with difficult situations. Save this list. This is your self-care strategies toolbox! Here are things that I do daily for myself! Every morning before work I workout. It's my time to energize myself for the day and release the stresses I've been feeling whether personal or work related. It's one hour of the day I dedicate to my wellness and health. I unwind every evening with a walk with my dog and husband around our neighborhood. I do these simple acts for myself every day. I encourage you to make your lists and pick 2 activities that you want to try and implement this week.
Here is my list of self-care activities broken down into categories! This is my toolbox. I utilize this toolbox each and every day. I ensure to experience one thing from the energize list and one thing from my unwind list. Whenever I've had a tougher day than usual, then I pick things from the 'difficult situations' list. Actively engaging in self-care has made me a better teacher and more present everyday at work.
6.) Disconnect: Stop responding to emails past a certain time. It's ok to not respond to every email right away. Sometimes, it's better to not respond right away to emails. We can ensure and validate feelings before creating emotional filled responses. My rule for myself is after I leave the building I do not respond to emails. As soon as I get to work in the morning, the first thing I do is check my emails and respond accordingly. Yes, it's hard. We want to be available to our student's families and let them know we are. However, at what cost are we sacrificing our own mental health and personal time to do so? There are many ways we can ensure our families feel supported and responding to emails during our own personal time with ourselves and our families is not one of them!
7.) Leave work... at work: One of the hardest things for educators and being in the caring profession is carrying our work load and stressors home with us. As adults, we have to realize what things are in and out of our control. Worrying and bringing home the stressors of things beyond our control does not improve the situation. We have to stop and analyze the situation, what realistically can I control and do in my control to improve the situation? 9 times out of 10 we as teachers have already done those things for the student. We have to be ok with what we can control and leave that at work. When we begin to realize we have put our whole effort into the work place then we can be ok with leaving work... at work.
8.) You are human: and you need to realize it. We as humans need the basic needs to survive just like our little humans. Consider Maslow's hierarchy of Needs. Ensure the tiers of Maslow's needs are being met for yourself. Consider your physiological needs. Are you drinking enough water? Have you ate today? Have you taken time to control your breathing and meditate for a few minutes? Analyze your needs of safety and security. Do you feel healthy? What self-care tip can you incorporate into your life so you feel healthier? Do you feel safe in your work place? How can you ensure you do feel safe? Understand your social aspects. Do you have a safe group of friends? Do you have someone(s) you feel you can confide in? Do you have a social group where you feel loved and accepted? Have you found a support system for yourself? So often we as teachers focus on those basic needs for our students, but realize we are just as much as a human and need those exact same things for ourselves.
9.) Accountability Partner/Tracker: Have a self-care accountability partner! Or even a group! Find people with like-minded goals and work together to keep each other going. Get a workout partner or group! Start a book club with someone. Find someone who watches the same tv series as you. Find someone to walk with after work. You might not even find someone to do self-care with, but even someone to check in on you to ensure you both are practicing self-care. If you want to practice self-care by yourself, create yourself a tracker! Print out a calendar and write down the activities you are doing each day. Analyze your mood at the end of the month? How did taking the time to care for yourself improve your outlook of your month?
10.) Treat Yo Self: Yeah, I said it. Just as our students need positive reinforcements, so do we. Do you set weekly goals for yourself? If not, do it! Goals are great ways we can provide something to work for and ensure we are being reinforced in ways that are meaningful to us. Set weekly goals with self-care! Or maybe, you've had a really hard week and you just need to treat yo self. However way you feel the need to validate it, do it. If you don't feel the need to validate it, then don't. However way you do it, you are worth the time you invest in yourself.
Just as we ensure all of the basic needs are met for our students, are we meeting those same basic needs for ourselves? Remember, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs isn't just about our students, it's about us as well. Analyze the tiers of the hierarchy of needs. What needs do you need to make sure you are meeting daily? Meeting those basic needs is a level of self-care we all deserve and need to survive.
Self-care is hard, but is critical to our own mental, physical and emotional well-being. If we aren't putting the time in for ourselves, who else is? You need to take care of yourself, just as much as your students need you to take care of yourself. Teaching is hard, and it's even harder with the ongoing demands and stressors we are being given each and every day. What self-care are you going to begin building into your daily schedule?
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