Educator Support
Personal Well-being
You cannot give what you do not have. Whether or not a teacher improves over the years will depend heavily on the amount of attention given to his or her practice. At the same time, teachers’ ability to approach their work with enthusiasm will depend on how much care they give to themselves. Below are links to help in this endeavor:
Articles
- Simple Tips for Boosting Teacher Resilience: Tips for managing the daily stress of teaching and avoiding burnout.
- Teaching with Trauma: A short guide for teachers who experienced childhood trauma.
Books
Take Time For You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators
Teaching is an emotionally and cognitively demanding job, a fact that the public does not always appreciate. To cope with these demands and help teachers feel and do their best inside and outside of the classroom Tina Boogren encourages teachers to engage in self-care by attending to their physiological and emotional needs in their daily life and relationships. Boogren, an esteemed educator, instructional coach, and author of several books about teaching and student motivation, wrote Take Time for You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators. This book, organized around Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, is full of helpful strategies and thought-provoking reflection questions for leading a balanced and fulfilled life.
The Well-Balanced Teacher: How to Work Smarter and Stay Sane Inside the Classroom and Out
You’ve probably heard the advice put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. This is true both in airplanes and in classrooms. You have to take care of yourself before you can help someone else. If teachers are stressed out and exhausted, how can they have the patience, positive energy, and enthusiasm to provide the best instruction for students? Author Mike Anderson asked that question as a teacher himself, and the answers he found form the basis of The Well-Balanced Teacher. He found that teachers need to take care of themselves in five key areas to keep themselves in shape to care for their students.
In addition to paying proper attention to their basic needs for nutrition, hydration, sleep, exercise, and emotional and spiritual refreshment, teachers also need belonging, significance, positive engagement, and balance.
Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Donna Jackson Nakazawa shares stories from people who have recognized and overcome their adverse experiences, shows why some children are more immune to stress than others, and explains why women are at particular risk. “Groundbreaking” (Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance) in its research, inspiring in its clarity, Childhood Disrupted explains how you can reset your biology—and help your loved ones find ways to heal. “A truly important gift of understanding—illuminates the heartbreaking costs of childhood trauma and like good medicine offers the promising science of healing and prevention” (Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart).
The ACEs Revolution!: The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
John’s book does a superb job of giving hope on how to prevent ACEs and has remarkable results for every family that reads the second part of the book out loud together! Conversations will begin that are essential to heartfelt communication.
The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study details the significant impact of childhood trauma on the emotional and physical well being for the remainder of your life. John’s book does a great job of showing the impact of ACEs in all phases of our lives.
How to Survive Your Childhood Now That You’re an Adult: A Path to Authenticity and Awakening
As children, we learned to get approval by creating facades to help us get our emotional and psychological needs met, but we also rebelled against authority as a way of individuating. As adults, these conflicting desires leave many of us feeling anxious or depressed because our authentic selves are buried deep beneath glitzy or rebellious exteriors or some combination thereof. In this provocative book, eclectic teacher and therapist Ira Israel offers a powerful, comprehensive, step-by-step path to recognizing the ways of being that we created as children and transcending them with compassion and acceptance. By doing so, we discover our true callings and cultivate the authentic love we were born deserving.