Happy teachers tend to be wonderful teachers.

G. FAITH LITTLE
21st Century Learning & SEL Specialist


Did you ever get one of those letters? Those notes written in crayon or #2 pencil? Those sweet messages with a picture drawn at the bottom? Some of us remember those. We may have them tucked in drawers or taped in journals. Some of us remember emails or texts, sometimes years after our students graduate. They might have shared a memory or thanked us for a positive moment that stuck with them. 
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Those messages can help us float above the floor for a few minutes or keep us grounded for the day. What an encouragement! Here we are, in our next normal — whatever that looks like after whatever we’ve gone through. It seems like a good time for a letter from some of your colleagues with practical encouragement that builds our practice of supporting ourselves and each other. 

Dear Teacher,

Happy teachers tend to be wonderful teachers. To be happy you have to figure out how to take care of yourself. It's not selfish. The trick is to figure out how best to take care of yourself, and then be deliberate about doing it. Nobody can do this but you! (I learned this a few years ago — I was late to the party)! 

I think it's important to make time for yourself, otherwise you'll burn out. Even on my busiest weeks, I value taking a little bit of time to be human. That might look different for everyone, so find a practice that centers you — whether that's working out or gardening or just reading mindless BuzzFeed articles.
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Making time for yourself is essential; not optional. Whatever you do, MAKE the time — otherwise you will burn out and be of no use to anyone. 

With five minutes, you can:

• Get on the floor and stretch. Hold a plank for a minute, and hold stretches for 20-30 seconds. On your hands and knees, arch your back in both directions. Pull yourself back to sit on your heels to stretch your back and shoulders. Sit in a V and stretch side to side. Stretching is a healthy way to loosen tense muscles. 
• Take a quick breather. I like to water my plants. It’s a quick and easy way to clear my mind. 
• Soothe yourself with a scent. Add a candle and a bit of relaxing music to your bathroom/shower time.
• Take a screen break. This is important to me, especially since SO much of my work, school, and social life still happens over the computer. 
• Breathe. Take deep inhales and exhales. Lie down if you can, or sit where you are and deliberately take deep and life-giving breaths!

With 30 minutes, you can:

• Walk and talk! I have been calling a friend or family member while walking outside. So important to get some air, and to be in touch with people! And don't wait for someone to call you — if you feel like talking, just call them while you're walking.
• Take yourself or your pet on a quick walk. Lace up and get those steps in — sometimes stroll, other times go for a trot! When I feel overwhelmed, getting outside for a few minutes really helps to clear the mind and calm the soul. 
• Do yoga and/or another at-home workout. Yoga is the absolute BEST after being hunched over a screen all day.
• Find something short to read. Try something light and fluffy and/or a chapter of a young adult book)
• Catch up/check-in with a teacher-friend/colleague, especially if you have a shared planning time or break. 
• Simply stand, stretch, and move to get your body and mind activated. Stretch each part of your body from toes to hands, from neck to knees.

​With an hour, you can:

• Take time to read a book/article/blog that has nothing to do with academics. 
• Watch a TV show you love. 
• Call a friend/family member you haven’t spoken with for quite a while and catch up.
• Start a game. Play a board game, virtual break-out game, or virtual trivia game over Zoom with friends.
• Listen to a podcast or audiobook while doing work around the house to take a break from the screen! 
• Take your reading out to the park to enjoy some time outdoors.
• Enjoy a deep hot bath or hot shower. Add some epsom salt. Soak. Heat your body and when you’re done with the water, enfold yourself in a big, soft, fluffy towel. Moisturize in your favorite oils from head to toe — use your favorite essential oils and mix with almond, or vitamin E oil as a base. Paint your nails — even if you don’t normally, even if you're a cisgendered straight man! Choose your favorite colors and treat your body lovingly — it houses your soul.

Thanks for being a teacher! Take this letter and tuck it away or tack it up somewhere to remind yourself to care for yourself first. 

With love from your CPET colleagues,

Ashlynn, Faith, Laura, Marcelle, Sean, and Sherrish 
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Engage in reflection, gain self-awareness, and pinpoint an area you want to develop further.

G. FAITH LITTLE
21st Century Learning & SEL Specialist
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Our personal and professional lives collided during the distance learning, work from home reality these past months. We’ve lost some spaces to breath and decompress. The drive between our classroom and our own front door has been replaced, if we’re lucky, with a one-minute walk from desk to couch. If we’re even luckier, perhaps we can get in a 20-minute walk before we take care of our personal responsibilities, including managing distance learning for our own children. Gone are train rides home when we could people watch and listen to playlists or podcasts, shifting our focus out of problem-solving, answering and asking questions, grading and planning.

Perhaps you, like me, have searched for ways to create more space, and you’ve added a new practice or two to your routine, like taking scheduled walks, meditating before class, keeping a journal, or adding breathwork before dinner. Maybe the ideas you’ve uncovered don’t seem to integrate into your professional life. Sure, they’re great if you have all the time and space to engage in them, but let’s be honest — there seems to be even less time for that elusive self-care now that work days stretch from dawn until well past dark. Reading article after article on how to manage stress may have resulted in a lot of ideas, but little implementation. That’s normal. We all need support to take our next steps, and starting with the smallest thing could make the biggest difference.

K - W - L

As we move deeper into the year, we might look to practices that feel more authentic to our teaching selves. Using a familiar tool can provide a valuable structure, bridging the best of our personal pursuits with our professional realities. We may be familiar with K-W-L (Know - Want to Know - Learned), a reading strategy which serves as a self-propelling guide for students as they read through a text. Students begin by charting everything they know about a topic in the K column. They move on to generating questions about what they want to know about the topic. During and after reading, students document what they have learned. 
We can chart what we know, want to know, and have learned about anything at all, including our own professional development and the self-care habits we need to keep going strong. This process draws on our own prior knowledge, sets a purpose for our routines, reveals obstacles, and documents our progress, giving us the opportunity to both plan for our success and to celebrate steps we take along the way.

Below is my K-W-L example, which is focused on collaboration, because that is an area I want to develop in my professional life during 2021. My “texts” are a combination of reading and action. In one case, I was having trouble maintaining my boundaries with colleagues. I read an article that felt more personal in nature than professional, but when I took action to make self-care a priority, (#7 in the article) I found myself carrying over some practices into my professional life. I began to honor my own feelings instead of pushing them aside in deference to others. My feelings were signaling when my boundaries were crossed, and I could then address that within myself and with my colleagues.

Identifying your how

What it seems we have more than enough of is access to ideas on what to do, like this idea about using a K-W-L in a new way, but we’re short on the how. My how emerged out of my needs and came out in three steps:

• Identify what to focus on: At first, I was frustrated that even though I thought we had clearly articulated and agreed upon expectations at the close of staff meetings, we weren’t following through on them. My frustration turned to anger as I began to imagine others purposefully ignoring our agreements because collaborating felt too slow to them. While I was compassionate as to why they might be compelled to skip permission in favor of asking forgiveness later, I did not subscribe to that method of working together. I felt stuck.

 

• List what I want to learn more about: I trusted collaboration was more fruitful than working alone, but collaborating was becoming painful as I felt disrespected and ignored at the end of the day. I needed to articulate what I already knew or believed about collaboration and what I wanted to learn so collaboration might work for all parties involved, not just one or the other. I wanted to learn more about what to do when my boundaries were crossed. How could I maintain my boundaries without cutting off collaboration?

 

• Circle back: As I tried out a few ideas that emerged from my bit of research, I looked for connections between what I learned and my areas for growth. I asked myself what worked and what questions emerged and what I wanted to research next. They were baby steps since time was short, but I wasn’t stuck any longer.

Simple supports

Even when we know the how, we also need support. Support can come in many different forms. Consider a few of the following simple ways to create support for yourself:

• Be your own coach by setting an appointment to revisit your learning or thinking. Keep it positive. When you notice you’re starting to judge yourself harshly, remember to simply be curious. Ask yourself, “What happened? What do I want to do next?” Write it out, draw it in your sketchbook, paint, or make a video. Look for ways to explore more and judge less.

 

• Send a note to your future self. Treat yourself like you would your closest friends and drop a line of encouragement. You know what gets you down and what lifts you up. When you’ve determined what you want to try, like prioritizing exercise on most mornings, at that moment write yourself a note to read in a week or in a month. Be as encouraging to yourself as you would be to a friend. Put the note somewhere you know you will find it, either as a surprise or because you calendar an appointment to go look for it.

 

• Ask a friend. Look for support from your community. Consider asking a friend to mail you the letter you wrote to yourself or text you an encouraging quote every Monday morning or to meet up for a virtual happy hour to share what obstacles have come up (because they always do) and commiserate. 

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• Paper your walls. Take a marker or crayon and write down the words that encourage you. Short quotes, one word reminders, or visual representations of what you’re working toward go on the page and then up on the wall near your desk, in the bathroom, hallway, or on the fridge. Have fun hiding them in drawers so they surprise you with positive reinforcement.

Using a K-W-L structure is one way to engage in reflection, gain self-awareness, and pinpoint an area you want to develop further. Returning to the "L" column can help you feel a sense of accomplishment, or at least identify a new place to begin work. Whether you want to chart about any of the hundreds of self-care options out there or you want to chart your progress toward specific teaching goals, by using K-W-L as a way to drive inquiry, we can uncover some answers, more questions, and plenty of celebration on the small and large steps we are taking as we continue adjusting to the next normal.
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TAGS: CRITICAL REFLECTION, G. FAITH LITTLE, RESOURCES, SELF-CARE

By G. FAITH LITTLE

​​We walk through our days meeting the needs of our kids, our students, our partners, and our colleagues. When times are free from major conflict or loss, we can stay afloat or even find ourselves dancing under a beautiful sky of carefree moments. When times are tough, the margin we enjoyed shrinks. When times are as tough as they are today, we wake up almost daily to disheartening news, disturbing events, and distressing social media posts. We are overwhelmed and we may not know where to begin to make a difference when much around us seems to be crumbling or unfixable.

Restore your energy

Overcoming Overwhelm, an original CPET workshop, is designed to support a teacher’s self-care practice. It can expand to an all-day experience at one of our institutes, or its building blocks can be customized to accommodate a shorter time frame. The objective is for each educator to develop a unique plan to thrive through tough times. 

The live workshop engages participants in self-reflection focused on their current social, emotional, and mental space, with a lens on themselves as a human and in their role as a teacher/student/professional. Each person identifies areas of overwhelm and concern, explores their processes for dealing with the stresses resulting from challenges in both their professional and personal life, locates one leverage point for restoring their own energy, voice, and/or activism, and receives feedback and support from fellow participants. Participants come away from the workshop with a co-created self-care packet made up of their own writing and artwork, their colleagues' recommendations, and resources provided by our team (participants choose what resources they find most useful for their own packet, so it is a truly customized experience).

Connect to your body

What about today? This moment? How can you address overwhelm where you are right now? Body Connection is a simple practice you can follow to engage in a self-care — you won’t be surprised to hear this works great with kids of all ages as well!

TAGS: G. FAITH LITTLE, SELF-CARE