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Second Step® Insights

Making Educator Wellness a Priority

October 2, 2024 | By: The Second Step® Team

This is a recap of the webinar Making Educator Wellness a Priority with Rachel Kamb, Committee for Children’s senior product manager, and Amy Walker, director of strategic partnerships.

An opposing pair of yellow quotation marks.
Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.

Helen Caldicott, physician and author

Being an educator can be tremendously rewarding, but it can often be equally challenging. While prioritizing wellness can seem like another task on a long to-do list for educators, self-care is essential for many reasons. In this webinar with Rachel Kamb, Committee for Children’s senior product manager, and Amy Walker, director of strategic partnerships, we explore some common challenges and provide a few actionable strategies educators can use to prioritize their own wellness.

Before sharing a few helpful strategies, it’s important to acknowledge the common challenges educators face in their work.

Common challenges for educators

It can be isolating
Despite the social nature of education, being an educator can be isolating. We estimate that educators tend to spend less than 5% of their time collaborating with their peers. Meetings when educators are all together are often a luxury, or they come at the expense of other pressing duties—supervising the lunchroom during off periods, lesson planning, or grading, to name just a few. Over time, these feelings of isolation can take a real toll on an educator’s outlook and well-being.

It’s a huge responsibility
Outside of the family, educators are some of the most important figures in a child’s social and emotional development. While it’s a privilege, it’s also a huge responsibility. Many educators are driven to the profession out of a desire to take on this responsibility, but the challenges that come along with it are real.

There’s scrutiny from many sides
Educators also face high levels of scrutiny. Their performance, curriculum, grading, even how much time they have off are seemingly up for public debate. The scrutiny can be exhausting, even for the most experienced educators.

Teaching is stressful
So yes, teaching is stressful. That stress can affect educators’ feelings about their jobs and overall well-being, and these negative effects can eventually lead to burnout. A Gallup poll conducted in 2022 indicates that 44% of K–12 teachers report significant stress and burnout, which is higher than workers in any other industry. In terms of attrition, more than 43% of new teachers leave the profession within five years of starting. Ultimately, all of this has a negative impact on student learning. When teachers are stressed, it can negatively affect student achievement and well-being as well.

But there is a bright side
The point in naming these challenges is not to discourage educators, or to dwell on the negative side of things. Rather, acknowledging the many stressors educators face can remind us how essential it is for them to prioritize their personal wellness. Thankfully, research suggests that a few self-care strategies can go a long way in supporting personal well-being. Here are a few tips to help educators take care of themselves in the midst of many challenges.

Simple self-care strategies

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.” —Unknown

Name emotions to tame them
Educators experience a lot of emotions throughout the day, from the highs of teaching a great lesson to the lows of a conflict with a challenging colleague. How can educators manage strong feelings when they occur at school? One simple but powerful strategy is what we’ll call “Name it to tame it.” As the name says, it’s simply naming the emotion when you’re feeling it. Identifying and acknowledging an emotion when it arises in a stressful situation can alleviate the intensity of our physiological response. Rather than denying or dwelling on negative feelings, naming them can help us view situations more objectively and move forward with intention and clarity.

There’s power in sleep
“The number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without impairment, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.” —Dr. Thomas Ruth

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults get seven to nine hours of quality sleep per night. This may feel like an unrealistic goal, but even small increases in the amount of sleep you get can make a huge difference.

Lack of quality sleep not only affects our moods, but it is also related to negative health outcomes such as memory loss, a weakened immune system, and increases in junk food cravings. According to the National Institutes of Health, one out of three adults are sleep deprived. For educators who often work long days with early start times, this number may be even higher.

Quality sleep is another self-care strategy that is often easier said than done. The best place to begin is to make a sleep plan. Write down the sleep habits you would like to change, and work toward improving them a little each week. That could mean reading in bed before going to sleep instead of scrolling on your phone or going to sleep an hour earlier. Commit to small but clear changes and check in at the end of each week to see how you did and how you feel as a result. Tracking your own progress and noticing any improvements is a great way to maintain momentum with a new healthy habit.

Prioritize nutrition
It’s widely known that maintaining a healthy, nutritious diet is a key factor in promoting physical health and well-being. This section is not about being on any special diet but about making the connection between what you eat and how you feel.

Nutritional deficiencies are associated with an increase in negative psychological outcomes such as mood swings, depression, and fatigue. One study found that participants who ate a diet of whole foods like fruit, vegetables, whole grains, etc. were better protected against the onset of depressive symptoms and that participants who ate unhealthy foods such as sweets, processed foods, fried foods, et cetera, were more vulnerable to the onset of depressive symptoms over time.

So, if you want to improve your nutritional habits, try making one change at a time. If there is an eating habit you would like to improve, commit to trying this habit over a couple of weeks. Write it down, try it out, and check in with your progress.

Keep active
We all know physical activity is important for our bodies, but it’s also critical for our cognitive functioning. Whether you do an intense workout or take a gentle walk, your brain releases endorphins during physical activity, and these amazing chemicals can make you feel less anxious or depressed and can increase positive moods. Exercise can also aid cognition, increase energy levels, and improve sleep quality, which is a good reminder that these strategies are interconnected. Finally, it reduces stress.

In terms of planning for becoming more physically active, everyone is different. No matter how physically active you already are, adding just 10 minutes of light exercise to your daily routine has been shown to be beneficial for both physical and mental health.

Stay self-compassionate
What is self-compassion? Compassion is defined as the feeling that arises when you’re confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Self-compassion is when you turn this feeling inward toward your own suffering. Educators spend a lot of their days caring for other people. It can be easy to sometimes forget that you might need some relief and you might need to give yourself a break as well.

Challenges are opportunities for self-care

Educators face no shortage of challenges in their work, but by prioritizing their own wellness, those challenges become opportunities for self-care.

You can find more strategies and resources to support educator and student wellness in our library of on-demand webinars, in our Winter Well-Being series, and in Second Step® programs themselves.