13 Teacher Health
Martina Vasil
The COVID-19 pandemic chewed teachers up and spit them back out. In the aftermath, the national conversation around self care increased, particularly for those in helping professions (i.e., teachers, nurses, therapists, social workers, etc). The purpose of this chapter is to reinforce the important of taking care of yourself FIRST. Only then will you be able to be the even-tempered, reliable, patient, and kind adult your students need you to be.
Have a Strategic Plan and Sunday Planning Meetings
Having a plan helps you maintain some control over your life and schedule, helps you prioritize, and helps you say “no!” This, in turn, will help you feel like you are moving toward goals that are important to you and let go of things that don’t contribute to your life in the way that you want. Creating a strategic plan and having a Sunday planning meeting can help you do this. You can even try these steps now as a college student. I just learned how to do this over the summer and it has changed my life. I’m not just being dramatic!
Create your strategic plan. This plan can be organized anyway you want. I tend to think of mine in semesters, but you might think of it according to quarters. Identify what your big personal and professional goals are and roughly outline how that can be broken down, week-by-week for the time frame you picked. Doing so focuses your why and helps you take control of your schedule and prioritize things according to your needs. For more go here: https://www.facultydiversity.org/webinars/semesterplan23 I know the video is long and very much geared toward professors, but I think the information and strategy is useful for anyone!
Dr. Vasil’s 12-Week Summer Strategic Plan
This summer, I had 12 weeks that I planned for. I had a few main professional and personal goals. My professional goals were based on what I need to do to reach full professor status: teaching, research, and service. In the summer, I don’t teach and didn’t have service commitments, so my focus was only on my research (writing). My personal goals were things I wanted to make progress on that were personally important to me.
Research/Writings Goals
- Write an alternative textbook for MUS 260 (you’re reading it now!)
- Submit modern band article for publication
Personal Goals
- Prepare for my Fulbright trip to Liberia
- Interview my mom about her journey to the United States from Czechoslovakia (I want to write a book about her experience immigrating)
- Reduce social media time
Once you have a general strategic plan in place, it will change. It should! Be flexible with it. I actually had one more writing goal over the summer, but realized I didn’t have time for it.
Hold Sunday meetings. Then, every Sunday, spend 30 minutes planning out your week. The purpose of doing so is to ensure that you are taking small steps every week to contribute to your long-term success and happiness. It helps you avoid getting distracted from seemingly urgent tasks (but unimportant) throughout the week.
- Create your skeleton (5 minutes). Block out all of your commitments for the week. As a college student, this would be the classes and rehearsals you attend, perhaps a job, and student organization meetings. When you become a teacher, this would include teaching time, planning time, school meetings, after school rehearsals, etc. Include non-work items that you have committed to a specific time and place, such as a meal you planned with friends, a family commitment, etc.
- Brain dump (10 minutes). Write out all of your to-do items for the week. This includes short-term tasks that need completed that week as well as tasks associated with your strategic plan. As a student, this would be your homework, practice time, and other short-term tasks for the week. As a teacher, it may be scheduling time to respond to parent emails, working on what lessons need developed for the following week, and scheduling time for yourself to exercise and decompress at the end of the day.
- Introduce your tasks to your calendar (15 min). Look at your calendar and assign your brain dump tasks to specific times in the week. You likely won’t be able to fit them all so you need to prioritize.
- Decide what to do with everything that doesn’t fit (5 min). For tasks that won’t fit, you might delegate, lower your standards, compromise, renegotiate a deadline, and/or let things go.
- Commit to executing your plan. You may not follow your plan exactly, but try. If you find yourself resisting doing something at the time you wrote in your calendar, reflect on the why. Are you doing other tasks to procrastinate? Why do you feel that resistance? Is it a fear of not succeeding? For example, I find that I avoid writing/grading by checking my email. Now I set aside specific times to open my email and I have specific goals in mind. Sometimes I open it and think “ok, I’m only going to respond to emails from graduate students, because I have my Director of Graduate Studies hat on.”
Physical Health
Exercise. Choose a time that works best for you for being physically active 3–5 times a week. If you have never exercised before, you are not alone. I didn’t get into exercise until my second year of teaching. That’s when I discovered running after a bad break-up. It made me feel better.
Hydrate. Teaching can be exhausting and we often pump ourselves up with caffeine and sugar to stay awake. But don’t forget to drink lots of water as feeling tired can sometimes be a symptom of dehydration. You also want to be sure you don’t lose your voice, and hydrating it will help.
Eat. There may be times you are so busy, you forget to eat at work. Do meal preps for the week and pack lots of snacks so you can grab a quick bite throughout the school day. Do your best to keep a healthy, nutritious diet.
Sleep. Teaching is exhausting and you’ll experience some of this during student teaching. It’s even more tiring when you are on your own! Figure out how much sleep you need and stick to a routine. I typically need about 7 hours, so I go to bed at 10pm and get up at 5am. When I was younger, I usually went to bed by 11pm and needed to get up by 6am to drive to my school that was 50 minutes away.
Choose what is best for your physical health. I get a massage monthly because I hold stress in my neck and shoulders and over time that leads to pain for me. I also do yoga at home, because that helps release tension I hold in my body.
Mental Health
Do something for you first thing in the morning. When you first get up in the morning, do something for yourself. This may be going to the gym, having a cup of coffee and looking out the window, or doing a short morning stretch. Avoid looking at your phone the first thing in the morning, although that may be tempting. Charge your phone across the room away from your bed.
Don’t take things personally. This is a hard one. If you do, it has a huge mental toll on you. Kids acting out is usually due to something that has nothing to do with you.
Choose what is best for your mental health. I see a therapist a few times a year; that increases in times of stress. Also, since I have mild OCD, I tend to fixate on things. I practice telling myself “Is this going to matter in a year?” or if I have a conflict with someone, “Is this really that important for me to fight over, or can I let it go?”
Do your best to leave work at work. This is hard your first year of teaching, but it will get easier over time. It is important to leave time for yourself after you leave the school. Create that work-life boundary.
Have hobbies outside of your job. I love to run, do yoga, read, and scrapbook. I also love cosplay and attend a Doctor Who convention and renaissance fair annually.
References
Fox, P. K. (2021, April 8). Burned out or bummed out? Teacher self-care: Diagnosis and remediation. National Association for Music Education. https://nafme.org/blog/burned-out-or-bummed-out-teacher-self-care-diagnosis-and-remediation/
Rockquemore, K. A. (2010, September 19). The Sunday meeting. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/09/20/sunday-meeting