5 Tenets of Teacher Self-Care (and the mistakes that helped me discover them)
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Here it is: we are not superhuman.
Educators, as an occupational whole, tend to submerge this truth. We ignore it, push it away, and look the other direction even as it sinks down into the recesses of our thinking.
And so, we educators require frequent reminders of our vulnerability- and more than that, encouragement that our humanness is a spectacular mark of endurance, bravery, and triumph. After all, we’re living the process: trekking the course, failing forward, making small (and giant) moves toward success. Heck, we’re shaping spectacular generations of tiny humans and young adults.
Isn’t that enough?
One might think. We might think. So, how are we such experts at forgetting our own freaking fabulousness?
Ladies and gents, it’s time to turn a page, to support one another, and to make it a movement. We owe ourselves some delicious self-appreciation. We need to be reminded that perfectionism is not our ally in teaching. In fact, sometimes a bit of disaster or delay or detour is its own kind of perfect. Sometimes, these are healthy indicators that authentic learning is taking place.
We didn’t sign up for a competition of Pintrest-y brilliance or TPT worthiness. We signed up to grow young people into decent, well-rounded adult human beings. How can we possibly expect that process to be neat and tidy? Anyone have completely a drama-free kiddo out there? ‘Cause I’ve never known one. In any event, why would we want a totally systematic, predictable standard for education? Sounds pretty dull (and not particularly effective).
On this rant about perfection: what is it exactly that we’re aiming for? Who are the chosen few who get to decide what that is or what that looks like? Show me a perfect textbook, a perfect curriculum, a perfect approach- and I’ll show you fifteen people ready to argue against it. So again, where are we going with this whole ‘be the best’ race?
The best is us, teachers. Right now, as we are and as we are growing to be. And damn it, we’re not the kind of perfect that rubrics were made for.
So we’ve got to give ourselves some grace. We’ve got to let the sweat run down our cheeks without being embarrassed about it. This business that we’re in requires effort. A ridiculous amount of it. Sometimes it overwhelms us. And that’s ok. (I know I’m not the only one to fight back- or fail to fight back- some super sneaky tears in the classroom.)
When we follow the good advice of putting our own oxygen masks on first, our students are the beneficiaries.
Let’s start simply, by embedding these simple practices into our daily craft:
1. Do unto yourself as you do unto others.
How are we inclined to talk to our students- with sarcasm and criticism or with kindness and encouragement? How do we view our students- from a deficit lens or an asset lens? How do we define our students’ success- by a narrowly prescribed definition or according to gains along a personalized growth trajectory?
Yeah, we know the response. We’re educators, right? So, let’s turn it around on ourselves. Imagine: What if we talked to, reacted to, and supported ourselves in the same manner that we do our students?
This is harder than it sounds. We’ve trained ourselves into becoming hypercritical of our teacher-self-worth.
Stop.
What did you survive today? What went incredibly right? How has your craft improved over the last year, month, or week? Whose morning did you turn around with a hug, smile, or kind word? Who did you potentially spare from a not-so-great decision?
Take a few moments to celebrate you. Check yourself in your self-talk. Would you say this to your student? Reframe, rephrase, and fill up your cup. You’ve earned every last bit of it.
2. Embrace collectivism.
Like it or not, folks, we’re in this together. My favorite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.”
Sisters and brothers of our craft, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. So, seek out people that you want to be on this ride with. Who makes you excited about your role and the work that you’re doing? Who’s your venting ear? Who’s the cheerleader? The joker? The advice-giver? The walking ELD standards encyclopedia? The mentee under your wing?
Find and foster these relationships. You don’t have to be besties outside of school. Shoot, you don’t even have to have each other’s phone numbers (although that’s fun, too).
Then, put yourselves on the same team. You’re all going for one goal- student success. Everybody on the team has a role, which is to meet students where they are from his or her unique vantage point and with his or her unique set of tools. Each person is necessary to the others in the aim of achieving the goal.
In this context, competition is irrelevant. Not only this, but it can also compromise the team’s ability to reach the goal. Leaning exclusively on neatly-packaged curricula also loses its meaning. We are the tools we need to reach and teach our learners. The textbooks and Google slides and lesson plans and Zoom sessions aren’t the master plan- they are supplementary materials.
Learn about your teammates’ strengths. Instead of aiming to outdo their efforts (guilty as charged), learn to leverage these assets in building consistency and getting through to kids. Ask for a shared sub day and spend an hour in one another’s classrooms if you’re able. Allow a few minutes within team planning time to just be present in cultivating relationships. You might look outside of the building, too. Twitter is a great place to expand your professional learning network and maybe even discover a few new members of your clan.
Also, don’t be an ass. Your tribe doesn’t need it, and neither do you.
3. Set down the assessments (just for a minute).
Here are a few bright spots in my teaching career: I consistently had the lowest standardized testing scores of all same-grade classrooms at our school over a nine-year period, and I was barely rated an “Approaching” level teacher six years into my practice.
Ok. Let’s talk about this. Those low scores- 100% of my students each year were refugee and immigrant newcomers. Heck no, they weren’t able to keep up on those tests (*at first…but watch them soar now). “Welcome to America, kids... here’s your test.” Then, the digital assessments came around. Jiminy, half of my kids had never used a desktop in their lives. The first thirty minutes of an online test is an exercise in how not to sword fight with a computer mouse.
You know what those tests didn’t show (or at least, didn’t make room to celebrate)? Growth. Like, crazy out of control multi-year gains in nine months kind of growth.
How about those teacher evaluations? Three weeks before that mediocre evaluation I was rated “Effective” by a different district evaluator. And two weeks after the “Approaching” mark (which I cried and whined to my tribe over), another administrator found me to be “Distinguished” (the highest-rated evaluation score in our district).
So, which one am I? Best guess... probably somewhere in the middle, leaning toward pretty freaking good. I mean, I sure didn’t jump the scales of expertise in 2 weeks- and I probably wasn’t as ineffective as I’d led myself to believe after that ‘off’ evaluation, either.
Here’s the deal: assessments and evaluations are what we make of them. Do we learn something? Do we make a plan to improve and grow? Great.
Should we give away our power to them and let them stress us out? Nope.
We encourage our students to see their self worth as something that is independent of an isolated data point (or any other statistic, for that matter). Dear educators: if we’re going to pull that equity card, then we’d better start making room for ourselves in that grand philosophy, too. Um, are you listening in on this, too, admin? That also goes for what we put on our Ts.
4. Maintain high expectations, but lower the risk.
Here’s another one we practice with our students, right? We know that in order to enable our learners as positive risk-takers, we need to:
Create an environment of safety and trust;
Offer choice and support; and
Not make it a super freaking scary thing to do.
So where’s the self-love?
Again, let’s go back to how we treat others. How do we make leap-taking a little less intimidating for our students?. We provide high yield opportunities in low-drama settings. We encourage multiple means of demonstrating proficiency. (What works in one class setting may not be what my newcomer students- or what your kiddos- need right now.) We model cooperative learning and constructive conversation... including those talks with the ol’ self.
We, teachers- we’re great at a lot of things. Self-care isn’t usually on that list. It’s like it’s part of the standard educator’s playbook: students first = self last.
No and no. Take that page out. Burn it. Start a new story.
Yes- hold yourself accountable. Do aim for greatness. But damn it, give yourself some freaking wiggle room. Wrap your own anticipated growth up in the same fabric of fun and curiosity that you would for your students. Anxiety should not be a badge of teaching honor.
5. Recognize discomfort, but don’t let it define the situation.
Quick story: Long ago, in my first year of teaching refugee newcomers, I had the brilliant first-day-of-school idea to sit eight students from Myanmar (Burma) together at the same table so that they could “help each other out”. How’d that work out for us, you ask?
Well, it didn’t. The eight students spoke five different languages and came from six distinct cultures. They were also at literal war with each other in the real world.
Talk about a hitch in the classroom-management flow. But here’s the thing: we got through it. We eventually adjusted, learned some new ways of coping, adopted a few healthy communication tools, and had a really awesome year. Some of those nine-year-olds even became viable bridges between the tribes that existed in their own apartment communities.
That discomfort was like a fertilizer for our growth. And, of course, the best fertilizer is a pile of... super smelly business.
Let’s not sugar coat the situation. Our work is hard. Like, really freaking hard. Some moments are rougher than others. Some days we come up short. And sometimes, there’s not a dang thing we can do about it.
But did we go back into the ring?
If the answer is yes, stop there. That’s the game-changer.
Thanks, educators, for doing what you do: for showing up for our kids, for creating safe spaces, for co-constructing our collective futures. Now, go take care of yourself for a minute, will you?
You deserve it.
