#blog: From Meltdown to Understanding: Six Ways to Support Students in the Moment
| By Kathryn Kennedy |
Originally published with Gale.
Whether you’re in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the school year or just starting, summer may feel like a distant memory and December break far away. You may also be supporting students who need additional help. They may be disengaged, consistently melting down, or exhibiting anger or some other overwhelming emotion. Just like us, our students are human beings and experience all things. Oftentimes, they don’t have the tools to work through what they’re experiencing. While not an exhaustive list, here are six ways to support students in the moment.
1. Understand the why and start with compassion and empathy.1
Taking the time to understand the why behind the behavior is vitally important when working with a student (or anyone) who is feeling overwhelmed. If possible, provide some space for your other students to engage in activity while you take time with the student who needs support. Many times, the student wants someone to listen. Other times, they just want space to decompress and let the overwhelm come out in some way. Show compassion for the student as well as yourself as you create a supportive space for your student. Practice empathy by actively listening, withholding judgment, asking open-ended questions, and exhibiting empathic body language. A great resource to support educators with supporting students is Dr. Mona Delahooke’s Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges.
2. Create a safe space.2
Sometimes students who are overwhelmed just need some space to work through and/or decompress from what they’re feeling or experiencing. To support them as they are doing that, we can create a small space within our room. If possible, this space can include comfortable chairs or pillows, paper and markers to draw on, fidget toys, calming music, and other supports that can help a student calm themselves and feel safe. You can encourage your students to go to the safe space as they need to, emboldening them to support themselves by listening to their mind and body.
3. Encourage pendulation.3
Pendulation is the act of moving toward something as you feel safe to do so, and moving away from it as you feel overwhelmed. In pendulation, there’s an intentional check-in to see how the mind, body, and the nervous system specifically, are feeling—when moving toward, we feel okay to expand; when moving away, we acknowledge the need for bolstering ourselves before choosing to move toward again. The art of pendulation is a way to expand the nervous system’s capacity as well as contract it as needed. Sharing this practice with your students gives them another tool to use as they feel a sense of overwhelm. In the moment, if your student would like some space to process, invite them to go to the safe space and come back to talk when they’re ready.
4. Practice daily mind-body check-ins.4
Throughout the day, engage your students in regular mind-body check-ins. These intentional pauses can support the nervous system in not only self-regulation but co-regulation processes. During these mind-body check-ins, encourage students to notice what’s happening in their minds and bodies without judgment. This act of slowing down and noticing can also be a welcome pause for you as well. Check-ins will then become a go-to strategy that your students can use at any time when they start to feel out of sorts, especially when they feel too much too fast too soon. In the moment of overwhelm, support self- and co-regulation with practices from these mind-body check-ins.
5. Promote resourcing.5
In the moment a student is feeling overwhelmed, you can support them by inviting them to think of things that are good, such as a new dog they just adopted or a favorite activity they enjoy doing at recess. By inviting students to think of things that are good or safe, we provide them with another opportunity to support themselves in calming the nervous system until they’re ready to work through what they are experiencing that brought them into the space of overwhelm.
6. Implement joyful moments, play, and acts of kindness.6,7
Using joyful moments, play, and acts of kindness can be another option for promoting resourcing. While it might not help in the moment, you can create reflection opportunities for your students that include joyful moments. Ask them to share a time when they felt joy in their day or over the weekend. Remind them that they can always revisit those moments of joy when things feel overwhelming. You can also implement an activity that focuses on students engaging in acts of kindness. This can be at the classroom level and/or at the school level so that it promotes a culture of kindness and offers another opportunity for co-regulation.
There are many more examples of strategies for supporting students in the moment at Greater Good in Education and Momentous Institute. Continue to meet students where they are and practice understanding the why behind their behaviors.
Neff, K. (2015). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. New York, NY: William Morrow Paperbacks.
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Levine, P. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Wellness Library. Wellness for Educators.
Levine, P. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
The Science of Kindness. Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/the-science-of-kindness
Meet the Author
Kathryn Kennedy has cultivated her two primary passions for 20+ years. She serves as founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators and is the founder and principal consultant of Consult4Ed Group. Her recent publication, The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness, is the first in a four-part book series.
#blog: Educators’ Light and Shadows: The Power of True Rest and Pause
by Taylor Ann Gonzalez
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
Teachers are applauded for all they do but their inherent humanity is ignored when they are not given time to rest and recover.
Like the school bell that marks the beginning and end of a year, our journey may have its ‘ding’ moments, but we all know teachers work their magic year-round. Teachers are “on” from before the first day of school until after the final bell rings. And after the final bell signals the end of the school year, that is when educators are cleaning, reflecting on the last year, and then immediately planning for execution for the next year.
As many of us in the social justice and social change sector know, project plans are the frameworks that help move the needle of our work forward. We need ample time for research and design, reflection and adjustment, execution, and then integration; rinse, repeat…
Unfortunately, educators don’t have this sacred portal of carved and built-in time for resourcing, planning, or designing. Researchers such as Hilda Borko and Richard Shavelson have summarized studies that reported 0.7 decisions per minute during interactive teaching. Further, in his book, Life in Classrooms, researcher Philip Jackson said that elementary teachers have 200 to 300 exchanges with students every hour (between 1200-1500 a day), most of which are unplanned and unpredictable calling for teacher decisions, if not judgments. Are we going the math here? The mental fatigue teachers face daily rivals that of the World Series when all bases are loaded and the last batter is walking up to the plate. But not just one time a year. All day, every day, all year long.
It’s safe to say that teachers are applauded for our production and execution.
We’re applauded for the ‘doing,’ the ‘outcomes,’ with little to no kudos for the toll it has on us.
This is only further underscored by the stereotype that teachers have summers off or that they work shorter days. We could riff on that, but that’s a digression for another post.
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During my second year in the classroom, my first as a second-grade teacher, I tore my meniscus. The meniscus is a C-shaped pad of cartilage in the knee that acts as a shock absorber. Ahead of the surgery, I planned nearly a month of substantial, informative, engaging lessons and experiences for my students. I made copies, bought math tools, and set books aside so that someone could comfortably support my students’ learning so I could support my body’s healing.
Less than a week post-op (no, truly, my surgery was on a Thursday and this happened the following Tuesday), I got a call from my principal to “Please, come back!” Even though all the plans were put in place weeks ahead of my scheduled absence, the substitute was pulled in another direction.
To reiterate, less than a week out of major knee surgery, I was requested to come back to the classroom: a classroom on the second floor of a building without an elevator.
Instead of focusing on my healing, I searched frantically for a wheelchair I could borrow and solidified logistics with my administration to be able to teach a room of second-graders while completely doped up on pain meds, without the ability to hold myself up. Oh! And, my principal informed me that I had been bold in asking for time off in the middle of the year instead of during a break… as if I could have planned that or would want to plan that.
That healing experience was less than ideal, however, what I want you to take away is that instead of holding my firm boundary, I was asked to push it down and cast myself aside, all to prioritize the service of others.
To this day, I hold anger and resentment around that. I told myself, if there was ever a next time, it’d be different.
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Fast forward to 2022. Two orthopedist visits later, an MRI confirmed that I had a tear in my shoulder labrum. To be able to compete and train in the ways I wanted to, I would need to undergo surgery. I knew this healing experience would be different. I wouldn’t push down my needs, or my wants; instead, I would use this as an opportunity to slow down, to be in alignment with the season of slowing down, and see how I may move, live, do, and be different.
Post-op, I was quite literally forced into rest. I wasn’t able to go for a run and escape my day. I wasn’t able to get on my yoga mat and tune out. I was very much told to sit, heal, relax.
As I moved through this major healing experience, I witnessed how my body didn’t just crave this deep rest but was indulging and luxuriating in it. The magnitude of quiet allowed me to embrace aspects of myself that I had built walls around: shame, judgment, criticism, and fear.
As I noticed these walls, I became curious.
What was this shame? Where did this shame reside and live in my body? Have I always felt this way? When and where did it begin? Who received feedback in ways that felt wrong? What parts of self have been neglected, turned off, told they don’t belong?
As I navigated these waters, I noticed they were dark shadows that were begging to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be witnessed, and perhaps...dare I say, to be honored.
I came to understand that holding space for darkness didn’t dim the light; oh no, in fact, it allowed me to see the light more clearly.
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I realized that my injury was a metaphor for the highest level of being comfortable in my body, embodiment. It forced me to take a magnifying glass to who I was, and how I was moving in this world—physically and emotionally. And I’ll be honest: this focus on production/doing/outcomes that I was living daily as an educator wasn’t me. It didn’t fit, and I needed to make big changes in my life.
As educators, we’re shown the ideal social media spotlight of what is a successful teacher and we’re holding up a bar of expectations that we can’t possibly meet 24/7. We become hyper aware of all the things we’re not doing or could be doing better. Most critically, this unrealistic image of a successful teacher sends the message that there’s something wrong with us, shaming our selves into burnout.
What’s wrong with being inherently human? It doesn’t fit the description of what a “good teacher” is.
I know other educators out there are told they’re not doing enough; those are the ones who risk burnout, lose their shine for education, and leave the profession. The more we tell ourselves this narrative of not enoughness and only applaud when things are shiny and bright, the darker the shadows become.
I know my story of healing from this shape-shifting, pushing down, or shame around our authentic human BEINGness isn’t just my story.
I know there are educators and teachers out there who desire a new way to live, be, teach, and lead.
The entirety of our experiences—the dark shadows, the bright light, and the entire spectrum in between—should be explored, tasted, and showcased.
To truly heal, to truly embody who we are as humans, as educators, and as teachers, we must allow ourselves to rest, to unplug, to disconnect. And not for an emphasis on being able to do more, to plug back in, or to connect. But merely because we’re human, too; we deserve carved containers of rest and pause.
About the Author
Taylor Ann Gonzalez (she/hers)
CEO & Founder, Body Alchemy Project
Taylor Ann Gonzalez is a human BEing, runner, trauma-sensitive yoga teacher, and lifelong educator. She believes that the body remembers AND can unlock the healing within us.
#blog: Unpacking Teachers’ Invisible Backpacks
by Taylor Ann Gonzalez
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
For teachers to thrive, they need to know that their basic needs—food, water, restrooms, sleep—will be met on a daily basis. It's not as easy to achieve as it should be.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a known theory of motivation. Maslow's theory states that our actions are motivated by specific physiological and psychological needs that progress from essential to complex. The base level of this pyramid is our physiological needs which are equated with human survival—food, water, shelter. According to Maslow, we must meet our physiological needs first.
As educators, we are aware of the invisible backpacks our students carry. However, what about our own invisible backpacks?
If I asked you right now, do you have your basic needs—food, water, shelter (warmth/rest)—would you say that your needs are met? I’d bet you would most likely say “yes.” Yes, you know where you call home. Yes, you know you have food in the kitchen. Yes, you live where you can run your tap water and drink it immediately. This allows your nervous system to evolve from survival to thriving, from physiological to self-actualization.
In the grand scheme of things, this makes sense. Right? Our nervous system should know it can exhale and calm down because our own needs are being met. However, I’d push back on Maslow and let him know that I think he’s missing a critical component.
You can know you have access to all the basic needs and still have an activated sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop, fatigue, flood)—overwhelmed, struggling, burning the midnight oil so that even a “small” thing throws us into a tizzy.
Why? Because—and here’s my push to Maslow—you need to know not just in the grand scheme of life, but on a daily basis:
When you’re eating ALL your meals
When you’re able to use the restroom
When you’re able to and how long you get to sleep
When you can access potable and drinkable water
As classroom educators, we don’t always know when this will happen. Roll with me, and let me know how many of these may resonate:
Lunch is spent shepherding your class in/out of the cafeteria.
Lunch is spent making last-minute copies and revising lesson plans.
Lunch is spent running to the bathroom AND eating something very quickly.
Lunch is spent with remediation work or acceleration work.
You are holding in your bladder because your next “break” isn’t for another two hours and the thought of calling down to the office, yet again, makes your skin crawl.
You didn’t sleep too much last night because a student is having trouble at home and you’re not sure what more you can do.
You stayed late after school to help with extracurriculars so by the time you get home, you’re exhausted and starving.
You brought grading home with you and are on the couch eating leftovers while trying to maintain focus.
You’re coaching an athletic team, or maybe a debate team, after school; you haven’t had lunch, and you are unsure when you’ll get dinner.
You skipped breakfast because you weren’t that hungry anyway, and it’ll be a few hours until you make it to lunch.
I mean, I can keep going here, but I think you get my drift.
This is exhausting. This is depleting. This is not sustainable.
How can we meet the needs of students on a daily basis, if our needs as educators are in limbo or not being met at all?
Already we’re experiencing elevated physiology, with the added layer of not having the carved container for nourishment, sleep, and connection → it’s no wonder that even with our physiological needs met in the grand scheme of things, we are struggling as we move toward Maslow’s idea of self-actualization.
This isn’t linear, it’s foundational and evolving. We have to know WHEN food, water, and shelter are happening on a DAILY basis not just in the grand scheme of life.
When we have the set containers:
It allows us to turn on our parasympathetic nervous system—rest and digest.
It allows us to turn on our groundedness.
It allows us to turn on our focus to the task we’re engaging in.
Test it out tomorrow and see what it’s like when you begin to empty your invisible backpack.
Carve your container for breakfast. Eat before you leave the house.
Take your lunch. Throw headphones on, and read. Focus on what you’re eating.
Leave at your contracted time. Leave school work in the building.
Have a nourishing and enjoyable dinner.
Make a list of all your have-tos and must-dos.
Drink water throughout the day (at least three cups).
Use the restroom—call the office if you need coverage. Allow your body to be a body.
Students can feel our energy. They will absorb not only what we teach them but also what we show them through our presence. Show up nourished and fulfilled. Show up regulated and overflowing. Show them that it’s possible so that they can see it represented for themselves too.
About the Author
Taylor Ann Gonzalez (she/hers)
CEO & Founder, Body Alchemy Project
Taylor Ann Gonzalez is a human BEing, runner, trauma-sensitive yoga teacher, and lifelong educator. She believes that the body remembers AND can unlock the healing within us.
#blog: How Schools Can Respond to the Student Mental Health Crisis
by Stephanie McGary
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
Schools can take these proactive steps now to serve as psychological safe places for both students and educators throughout the year.
In this back-to-school season, our doors are reopening to welcome students who are carrying invisible backpacks full of trauma and stress responses. With all of the traumatic events happening in our world today, the most vulnerable of us—our young people—are experiencing the effects of this reality each and every day.
In President Biden’s last State of The Union Address, he made it clear that youth mental health is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration stating “we owe them greater access to mental health care at their schools,” but what does that look, sound, and feel like?
Schools are seen as the primary source of providing wrap-around services to students whether they are equipped to do so or not. Attempts have been made to support the mental health of students—including incorporating social-emotional learning, revamping discipline practices, and hiring more clinical staff—but it still feels like it isn’t enough.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to helping students who are struggling with their mental health, there are proactive steps schools can take to serve as psychological safe places for both students and educators.
Moving from Self-Regulation to Co-Regulation
For example, many schools and districts believed that social and emotional learning (SEL) would be the answer to behavioral problems by teaching students how to self-regulate, how to become more self-aware, socially-conscious, and make better decisions. But social emotional learning can give false hope, specifically around behavior. Brain development can not be rushed. You can spend all day teaching students how to self-regulate, but—because of where they are developmentally or due to the effects of trauma and stress on the brain—they may have limited access to the part of the brain (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC) responsible for self-regulation. Instead, we should teach young people skills of self-regulation while simultaneously teaching adults the art of co-regulation.
Providing quality professional development and support to educators when a student is unable to access their taught skill of self-regulation can be a game changer.
Addressing Emotional Health and Academics Together
School districts must also think strategically about behavioral support. The student who struggled last year may still be struggling this school year, and we should not wait for their behavior to reveal this need to us again. Now is the time for schools to develop methods to intersect emotional health with academic health.
There are times when academic and behavioral conversations are held separately but research shows us that students who have three or more traumatic experiences have six times the rate of behavioral problems, five times the rate of attendance problems, and three times the rate of academic failure. This means the conversations need to happen together, especially for students who are having challenges in all or one of these three areas. Small shifts can be made to traditional Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) meetings and Behavioral Intervention Plan (BIP) meetings.
Momentous Institute, a community mental health nonprofit where I used to work, collaborated with educational and mental health professionals to create the Strategic Intervention Model (SIM) which can be downloaded for free. The SIM manual can be used on its own to amplify already existing protocols in your school environment.
Partnering with Community Mental Health Services
Schools can not support the mental health of all students alone, nor should they have to do so. Schools can identify community mental health agencies, mentoring programs, and after-school programs that they can partner with throughout the school year to be proactive in addressing school-wide mental health concerns. There is no need to wait until a crisis happens to create a community plan of support.
Schools are a part of communities, and in order for us to tackle the youth mental health crisis, we have to plan ahead and work together. Both our students and educators need us and deserve better.
About the Author
Stephanie McGary
Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor and Registered Play Therapist
Stephanie McGary is a licensed professional counselor-supervisor and registered play therapist who finds joy in advocating and training around the mental, social, and emotional wellness of children, youth, and educators. A Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, Stephanie is currently the director of clinical programming at Communities in Schools of Dallas Region and the owner of Tots N' Teachers Counseling and Consultation where she focuses on the mental health and wellness of children and educators.
#blog: 7 Small Changes to Support Your Mental Health This School Year
by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
Teachers can sustain their mental health and well-being throughout the school year with these seven small but foundational research-based strategies.
It’s almost time to head back to school. How did that happen?! Where did the time go?! I know we ask that question every year, but seriously, summer sometimes feels like an epic time warp! Am I right?! Nevertheless, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the summer not only with your family and friends but also with yourself.
As we start the school year, you may feel a bit of excitement and perhaps some trepidation stirring inside of you about what the year is going to bring. You’re not alone. That’s totally natural, especially given the unpredictability we’ve all experienced over the past few years. We’ve endured a lot and continue to do so, and healing and supporting ourselves takes time and continuous intentional effort. Healing prolonged stress and trauma does not happen overnight; it’s an ongoing journey, not a final destination.
Before we start back to school, what if we laid some foundational supports for ourselves? I know, I know … oftentimes, once the school year starts, our best-laid plans derail quickly! But what if we start small, using seven strategies that can be foundational for sustaining your mental health and well-being throughout this school year and beyond? And—BONUS—you might already be doing some of these! Here they are in no particular order.
1. Clear Your Plate
We as educators, as you know, have a lot on our plates all of the time. What if we take some time before heading back to school to intentionally look at what we have on our plates? Is there anything you can let go of, either personal or professional? Is there anything that you can ask your school leader to take off your plate? Is there anything that’s not absolutely necessary? If so, take it off your plate to make room for things that will help you sustain your mental health and well-being. And make this intentional plate-clearing process a practice every month (if not more often) throughout the year. Look at it as a time to reflect and reevaluate your plate to see if there’s anything that can be cleared.
2. Play Every Day
Back in 2019, collaborative research from The Genius of Play and Fundamentally Children found that 75 percent of children were not getting enough play. If that’s the case, can you imagine the percentage of adults? According to Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, “Play that is based on our inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting satisfaction in our relationships and professional work.”
There are many benefits of play: it boosts creativity and problem-solving abilities; reduces stress; builds resilience, improves relationships; nurtures community; and much more. Given all of the benefits, it’s important for us to bring play back into our lives. So how do you get started doing just that? The activities that we find fun are unique to each of us. The National Institute for Play encourages adults to:
Identify what is playful for you. Everyone is different, so find what works for you!
Develop lifelong play habits. Habits typically take 40 days to become routine in our lives, so try to incorporate play at least once a day for 40 days to see what sticks!
Recognize how you feel when there’s not enough play. Practicing intentional check-ins to see how you’re feeling is important, and doing specific check-ins on how you feel when you play and not can help you see the benefits of play in your everyday lives.
Model healthy play habits in your communities. Establishing a sense of play and modeling it for others, including the other adults and little ones in your professional and personal lives, can help make play an integral part of your day-to-day life.
3. Define and Establish Your Safe Spaces
According to trauma and somatic psychology research, to heal ourselves and support our well-being, we need to have a felt sense of safety. This means safety in mind, body, and all other critical aspects of our being and lives. As you begin the school year, think about these various elements of your safety and identify ways you can support yourself to feel safe. Just as our students need to Maslow before Bloom, so do we as adults. And safety, inside and outside of ourselves, is priority number one!
4. Build and Bolster Trusting Relationships
Once we have established a felt sense of safety, we can build and bolster relationships with others we trust. Trusting relationships provide us opportunities for co-regulation. Co-regulation is a way for your nervous system to work with another being’s (human, animal, plant, or otherwise) system to calm and ground. The more relationships we have that support co-regulation, the better.
5. Create and Cultivate Your Supportive Communities
Taking relationships one step further to create and cultivate a supportive community allows for more opportunities to support overall well-being. Each community or network you are part of provides specific support for each component of your well-being. Take some time to reflect on the communities you’re a part of and how they support you, as well as how you support them (giving back is just as important as getting support from others). Are there any communities that you think you’d like to add or even create to provide yourself better support?
6. Learn Something New
Stepping out of our comfort zone and learning something new can spark creative energy, which in turn provides us a chance to reclaim our power and voice, and heal. Each day, see if there’s something small you can learn that is novel to you to help light up your curiosity!
7. Explore and Engage in Short Restoration Activities
We as educators are busy a majority of the time. When possible, take short bits of time to downshift, to rest, to reset, and to restore your mind and body. Perhaps you can check out yoga nidra, restorative yoga, yin yoga, and guided meditations that take anywhere from five to 60 minutes. These restorative activities help to refresh yourself and cultivate renewed energy.
This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but I hope these and other small changes can help support you as you jump into this school year and many more years to come!
Dr. Kathryn Kennedy (she/her/hers): With one foot in digital and online learning and the other in mental health and wellness, Kathryn has been cultivating two primary passions for over 20 years. She serves as founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group and founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators. She is author of the forthcoming book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness (expected publication date: March 28, 2023), which serves as the first in a four-part book series.She lives in Ithaca, New York. You can follow her on Twitter at @Kathryn__EDU and @well4edu.
#blog: How Teachers Can Unwind and Recharge after the School Year
by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
Mental health research shows that we are not equipped to sustain good health when dealing with ongoing stress, and teachers have had little time to rest and recharge lately. Three practices can help.
Final assessments complete—check!
Cleaned up learning space—check!
Bulletin boards taken down—check!
Organized digital files—check!
Packed up Marvin (the class bearded dragon) and his cricket and spinach treats—check!
All of the end-of-school-year tasks are complete—check!
You’re ready for summer! All systems go! Full speed ahead!
But wait…
Have you been in GO mode, or even SUPER GO mode, since the beginning of the school year with little time to rest and recharge? Do you feel like a human doing instead of a human being? The majority of educators like you were under a lot of pressure and stress already, and then the pandemic hit! You were forced into overdrive and had to stay there to take care of everyone around you like you usually do and not have enough time to care for yourself. The difference with the pandemic and the stress and overwhelm caused by it was that the high-speed mode you were in never let up; instead, it increased and sustained for over three years.
The field of mental health tells us that some amount of stress is good for us and that we have the ability to deal with short-term stress by using healthy coping mechanisms, such as sleep, boundary setting, deep breathing, and emotional release, among others. However, we are not equipped to sustain good health when stress continues for an extended amount of time.
According to research, when we are in a state of prolonged stress for over six months, and we can’t or don’t slow down to take the time to heal and work through the emotions associated with our stressful and/or traumatic experiences, we can succumb to burnout and in some cases experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder. In these prolonged stress states, our ability to learn and function can go completely offline (see Dr. Stephen Porges’ The Polyvagal Theory and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.)
The fields of neuroscience and neurophysiology have found that prolonged stress or trauma (using Dr. Peter Levine’s definition, “Trauma is anything that our system can’t handle or process,” anything that puts us outside of our ability to cope) is not only a cognitive experience, but also a bodily experience. Research from Dr. Stephen Porges and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains how the body stores the majority of these stress and trauma experiences that eventually lead to aches, pains, and illness in us. This is why it’s vitally important to take the time to heal. Van der Kolk and other neuroscience and neurophysiology researchers also talk about hypervigilance arising when your mind and body are on high alert for an extended time; this leads to our nervous system getting used to that overwhelmed state and consequently staying there if we don’t take the time to downshift and heal.
So instead of jumping into summer and continuing in “GO” mode, what if we slowed down a bit to reset, to downshift into a calmer state of being? After a time when stress has set up camp in our minds and bodies for an extended stay, we can choose to take the time to heal. What can you do to downshift and heal your prolonged stress and/or trauma? Here are three ideas:
1. Guided Meditations
These practices have been used for thousands of years in a variety of cultures and disciplines and can support healing on a cellular level. Research on yoga nidra, or “sleep with a trace of awareness,” has been shown to have a significant impact on stress, sleep, and overall well-being and the feelings of sleeping for three to four hours when only practiced for 45 minutes. Below is an example from the Wellness for Educators’ Wellness Library. This practice involves a bit of storytelling, where you go on a journey to a forest. For this practice, I suggest listening to the audio recording available:
Educator Wellness Roundtable · Yoga Nidra - 40 Minutes
To fully reset the nervous system, enjoy guided meditation once a day for at least a week.
2. Artistic Expression
In its many forms, art can support the healing process and your nervous system in general. Art, such as painting, drawing, and coloring, has been shown to raise serotonin levels; impact brain wave patterns, emotions, and nervous system; interpret, express, and resolve emotions and thoughts; and allow for nonverbal communication of emotions and experiences. Sound or music can release dopamine, a naturally occurring happy chemical in our brains. If you’re not a fan of singing, humming and/or listening to music also help to support the vagus nerve, which in turn can help support the nervous system. Dance and movement practices also provide opportunities for nonverbal communication and release of emotional energy. Through the use of journals, gratitude notes, and poetry, to name a few, writing can also be a healing support. Writing can ease emotions attached to trauma and prolonged stress and can offer another form of unspoken expression.
3. Intentional Movement
Movement is important, but in the healing process, it helps to intentionally check in with the cognitive side of how the body is feeling and what emotions might be arising as we move. As you’re engaging in movement, ask yourself the following, observing without judging:
What do I notice in my mind?
What do I notice in my body?
What do I notice in my feelings?
What do I notice in my thoughts?
What do I need at this moment to feel supported? (Observe without judgment and give yourself what you need to feel supported.)
This last bullet is especially important because as educators and human doings, we tend to bypass our body and mind’s requests for us throughout the day and throughout our lives. In this practice, you can choose to make a conscious shift to listen to and support yourself.
You can learn more about intentional movement in my recently published book called The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness.
The suggestions for healing prolonged stress and trauma shared above are definitely not an exhaustive list of supports. I encourage you to find what supports work best for you and add those to your day-to-day living.
So before you dive into the hustle and bustle of the summer, set aside some time to downshift. Enjoy your summer, and come back even more refreshed for a new school year in the fall!
Dr. Kathryn Kennedy (she/her/hers): With one foot in digital and online learning and the other in mental health and wellness, Kathryn has been cultivating two primary passions for over 20 years. She serves as founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group and founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators. She is author of the forthcoming book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness (expected publication date: March 28, 2023), which serves as the first in a four-part book series.She lives in Ithaca, New York. You can follow her on Twitter at @Kathryn__EDU and @well4edu.
#blog: “Keep a Swing in Your Step and a Song in Your Heart": Music as Self Care
by Dr. Rebecca Itow
Cross post from the NGLC blog.
Educators know they need #SelfCare, but how can they do that in a profession that inherently encourages putting others first? These examples make self-care concrete and implementable.
We're all a little tired of hearing that we need to practice #SelfCare. We're told as educators to take time for ourselves, to take time off, to say no. Well let's face it, the reality is we are in a profession where we care for growing humans through their learning. We cultivate relationships and use our experiences and our presence to make those relational connections with students and families stronger. Our positions as educators inherently encourage us to put others before ourselves.
And while we are all trying to give ourselves a little #SelfCare, our efforts are met with a conflicting narrative in local news and within communities that educational institutions are subversive, and that the educators within them are bad actors, teaching too much of this but not enough of that, that we are not serving the children in our care well (e.g., Contorno, 2023).
We educators really do need to practice filling our cups so we may fill the cups of others (well4edu.org), but doing so is challenging amid the social and political conflicting narratives that add even more layers of stress to our teaching efforts. Sometimes it can feel like we don’t have the time and tools to practice #SelfCare as we support the children in our communities, strive to meet their individual needs, and reconceptualize what teaching feels like and learning looks like, as I’ve written about before in an article for the Indiana Association for School Principals.
Perhaps what we need is not just a promotion of #SelfCare, but a useful and useable #SelfCareExample (or five) that can make this notion of #SelfCare concrete and implementable.
I'm still no good at taking time off. But I've gotten pretty great at giving myself moments to take time away, even if I'm sitting at my desk.
A Lifetime of Strategies
I have Tourette Syndrome, OCD, and ADHD. In the very beginning when the source of my behaviors was a mystery, my wise parents helped me build strategies for controlling impulses, staying focused, and using what could be a debilitating set of challenges as stepping stones rather than roadblocks.
I have carried those strategies into my adult life. They have evolved as I have grown.
When I stepped into my first classroom as a teacher, I quickly realized that all of the beautiful energy, excitement, and behaviors that are the manifestation of students’ learning and growth—while inspiring—made it challenging for me to filter sensory input, control my tics, and focus on the task of teaching. I had to figure out a way to make my body and my mind be still so that I could do the good work of facilitating a welcoming, engaging, and wonderfully challenging learning environment.
Over time, I developed a large set of self-care strategies that simultaneously helped me be a successful teacher while improving the learning environment for my students. These strategies continue to evolve, and I use them daily. I’d like to share one #SelfCareExample in this blog post and more examples in future posts. Rather than try to mimic what I do, I encourage you to use my examples as inspiration to develop your own set of self-care strategies. What works for one person won't work for someone else, so make these your own.
I offer here examples of how I build space within my professional routines, throughout my day, to breathe. I'm still no good at taking time off. But I've gotten pretty great at giving myself moments to take time away, even if I'm sitting at my desk.
Music shifts my mood and helps me get into the task I'm doing.
#SelfCareExample: Use Music to Transition, Breathe, Reset
When I was a kid, I used to sign everything with "Keep a swing in your step and a song in your heart!" I wrote it on everything. Cards, yearbooks, as a doodle in my notebook … this phrase represented my basic attitude then and remains the lens I use as I walk in the world. There is a constant soundtrack accompanying my daily activities; I have different genres of music—and some specific songs—that I call up when I am excited, nervous, studying, focusing, or cleaning my house. Music shifts my mood and helps me get into the task I'm doing.
And I'm not alone. A body of research has demonstrated that music and strategic music interventions are effective in reducing stress and can be used to impact mood and as a coping strategy.
Strategically Connecting Personal Passion with Professional Practice
Being an educator is kind of like playing mental ping pong all day, everyday, and I found it challenging to move from one class period to the next, to “switch my brain” during a seven-minute passing period. As the day went on, the chaos would continue to build, my stress level would increase, and I would have more and more difficulty focusing.
I developed a crucial self-care strategy to address this challenge: to use music before, during, and between classes to help me transition from class to class. I used music to help me leave the stress of last period behind so that I could be fully present for my next group of students. And the same strategy that helped me transition smoothly throughout my day helped my students do the same, while enriching their learning experience.
I am no longer in a classroom, but I use this same strategy throughout my day as a school principal. For instance, on the drive to work I put on some music that will prepare me for the day ahead: I choose one set of songs when I need to be pumped up for a new project and other songs to help me focus and clear my head to face a challenge. And I don’t work hard at this…I really just flip through my “liked” songs until I find the ones that will move me today. (The trick to establishing and actually using a self-care strategy is to make it doable!)
The music helped us all be present and engage in the immediate learning task more fully.
When I entered my classroom—now my office—I played music that set the tone for the lesson, matched the theme, or was a musical version of whatever we were studying (my favorite). Here is an example of what this looked like:
When my students were researching the history and current relevance of superheroes and supervillains in society, music selections included the Superman theme song, Batman, and the obligatory Star Wars soundtrack. As I prepared for my day, I let my mind think about the character development discussion I would lead while listening to the Imperial March. Students walked in the door hearing Superman soar above the clouds. We all listened as the students copied the agenda on the board, and I took attendance and assessed the wellbeing of the room.
The music helped all of us leave behind the morning ride to school, that thing that happened during the passing period, the parent phone call I needed to make at lunch, that test next period. The music helped us all be present and engage in the immediate learning task more fully.
In my role as principal, I keep my music in my ears more than on an external speaker, but I still keep my soundtrack going. I skip the songs that don’t move me in the moment, and I don’t limit myself to a single genre or artist. When I need inspiration, I choose a song I’ve had on repeat for a bit and start a Spotify radio station with it.
I am bringing my team back to work in person more frequently, and will curate my playlists to inspire collaboration, positivity, and kindness to oneself and each other. As we engage in different projects, the music will shift. My staff’s contributions to the office playlists will enrich the work environment just as learners’ contributions help an educational environment blossom.
I invite you to adapt this #SelfCareExample into a #SelfCareStrategy that meets your individual needs today. It will grow, it will shift, it will evolve. As in all learning, building up this strategy will take thought and time and practice and iteration. Be open to ideas. And consider this: If the #SelfCareStrategy helps you cope, destress, or transition from one task to the next, it will likely do the same for your learning community. Multiple benefits, one strategy! That’s my kind of #SelfCare!
About the Author
Dr. Rebecca C. Itow (she/her) is principal of IU High School Online. She earned her Ph.D. in learning sciences from Indiana University and was a public high school teacher. Driven to facilitate safe spaces for learners to navigate their academic journeys in valuable and valued ways, Rebecca researches, designs, and implements responsive online pedagogical practices in digital learning environments. Her work guides current university and community partnerships that innovate online teaching, learning, and design.
#blog: School Was My Safe Place: Prioritizing Safety for Learning
by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
* Please note this blog post contains descriptions of domestic violence which could be triggering for some readers.
School leaders and educators can use a number of strategies to cultivate safe spaces for learning in their schools and classrooms.
How School Became My Safe Place
When I was a kid growing up in Boston, my friend Diedre and I would play this game. We’d pretend the floor was wicked hot lava. We’d jump from one piece of furniture to another to avoid the floor, trying not to knock things over as we leapt around her room. Each time we landed somewhere other than the floor, we’d say, “I’m safe!” We’d laugh and smile at each other. At the time, I was eight years old and didn’t realize the vital role safety would play throughout my life.
A couple of years before that, my Dad tried to hurt my Mom. He held a knife to her throat as she laid on the couch in the living room watching a TV show. I was laying down on a couch on the opposite side of the room. I saw everything play out in front of me. Within a few minutes, other family members intervened, saving my Mom from being physically hurt. Because I was so young and couldn’t process what I was seeing, my mind protected me by suppressing the experience. I was 37 when my oldest sister told me I was actually in the room when it happened.
Just before my ninth birthday, my Dad moved my Mom and me to Florida to get away. He didn’t want to take medication or see a therapist to support his struggles with bipolar disorder. I started fourth grade in Florida and acted out because I just didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be in Boston where the rest of my family and friends were. My teacher that year didn’t really take the time to get to know the why behind my behaviors, so I got in trouble a lot.
In fifth grade though, I met Mr. Weaver. He spent time getting to know me and my classmates. He knew our interests and passions and got to know us as human beings. He also made us feel safe. We trusted him. Because of him and his intentional approach to creating a safe space for learning and cultivating meaningful relationships and community, I improved academically, socially, emotionally, and mentally. I likely healed some too. This is when school became a safe place for me.
Because I felt safe there, I continued to find ways to engage at school for long periods of time. I became a year-round long-distance swimmer and runner, which kept me practicing about seven hours a day. I also immersed myself in clubs and other organized activities. I spent as much time at school as possible.
When I was in ninth grade, my Dad tried to hurt my Mom again, and I was the only one in the house at the time with them. I interrupted the interaction when I came out of my bedroom and startled my Dad. The next morning, my Mom and I flew to Boston to stay with family, but six months later we moved back down to Florida with my Dad. Living in the same space as my parents, I couldn’t find a safe place to support my healing. I continued to depend on school to be my safe place. It took finding safe places and safe relationships to truly and meaningfully heal.
Recently I was reading a number of sources that claimed safe spaces are dangerous for students and educators because that sense of safety might encourage them to atrophy instead of grow. Given my personal experience and the research on the need for safety in the healing process as well as in the learning process, I see the opposite to be the case. According to trauma research, safety is the foundational piece of not only the healing process, but it’s also the foundational piece for learning. Creating a safe place for learning is even more vitally important for students and educators of color and those who identify as LGBTQIA+. How can schools and districts prioritize safety for learning?
School as a Safe Place: Strategies
Some safety issues are more systemic, such as gun violence, racism, and gender discrimination, but there are a number of strategies school leaders and educators can begin to implement at the school and classroom levels to start cultivating safety at school:
School-Level Strategies
Employ more licensed mental health professionals to support not only students but also educators and staff.
Regularly seek feedback from faculty and staff to understand what they need to feel safe, and take action to provide for those needs.
Ensure there is representation for both BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ on your faculty and staff.
Co-establish values for the learning community where all stakeholders have input.
Encourage respect of differences.
Let go of shame and replace it with self-compassion and empathy.
Provide calming spaces where people can go to reset.
Think differently about roles and how to clear some things off people’s plates.
Classroom-Level Strategies
Provide space for educators and staff to create and cultivate trust-based relationships with students.
As much as possible, encourage educators to practice calming techniques with their students so that everyone is supporting each other.
Incorporate books and other learning materials that represent diverse cultures, races, gender, etc.
This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but these steps are a good start to creating safe spaces for learning.
Dr. Kathryn Kennedy (she/her/hers): With one foot in digital and online learning and the other in mental health and wellness, Kathryn has been cultivating two primary passions for over 20 years. She serves as founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group and founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators. She is author of the forthcoming book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness (expected publication date: March 28, 2023), which serves as the first in a four-part book series.She lives in Ithaca, New York. You can follow her on Twitter at @Kathryn__EDU and @well4edu.
#blog: A Single Slice of the Pie: Relieving Educator Overwhelm by Consolidating Roles and Expanding Opportunities for Teacher Leadership
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy and Dr. Rebecca Itow
Teacher exhaustion is not new but it is now pervasive. Greater autonomy and consolidating roles can support educator wellness and strengthen school culture.
Educator stories of overwhelm and exhaustion are continuing to create buzz across education social media circles. The same school-level and systemic factors from the 1990s and 2000s hold true today as major sources of stress, including but not limited to high-stakes testing, excessive workload, large class sizes, inadequate resources, student behavioral challenges, initiative fatigue, and lack of support. One of the most cited contributing factors to educator attrition is educators wearing too many hats (Viac & Fraser, 2020).
Many educators have asked their schools to consider taking tasks off their plates. Because of the many requirements that schools have to meet at the district and state levels, we know that this is often not possible.
What is possible for schools, however, is the opportunity to consolidate educator roles. Doing this not only helps alleviate the pressure that educators feel when trying to juggle many roles, but it also provides teachers an opportunity to step into teacher leadership. Take a moment to think about the following examples:
A school asks an educator to shift to an SEL coordinator position that works collaboratively with teachers to support students.
An educator really enjoys writing lessons and aligning them with standards, and they feel empowered to take on a role where that is their sole job, working collaboratively with teachers to support them across various classrooms.
An educator loves working with students to set academic goals and coaching and networking them to achieve those goals, so they take on a coaching position that supports all or a portion of students in the school. Or perhaps they take on a position coordinating and supporting a group of coaches.
An educator takes on a coordinator role of a project-based learning approach for students that additionally frees up teachers to serve as mentors for certain components of student projects.
We hear often of excellent teachers who we wish could influence more than the students in their building. Another prevalent narrative is of teachers’ wish to revise or update their skills and courses, which they would happily do if they had the time and opportunity. The following example demonstrates how local and state support is helping one talented business teacher reach more students by giving her the space to learn and grow. With triangulated support this teacher is currently (a) leveraging her brick-and mortar teaching experience to (b) design useful and usable learning opportunities in virtual courses. As she does so, this teacher is (c) increasing access to both the course content and her talent, (d) building both her individual and the school’s capacity to support learners in virtual environments, and most importantly (e) recognizing that her past experience is valuable. By building a dynamic and relevant virtual course, this educator is simultaneously honing her craft while teaching more students in increasingly relevant ways.
A talented brick-and-mortar business teacher took on the brave challenge of working with a digital pedagogist to design a virtual course. She is using her years in the classroom to re-envision what learning and teaching look and feel like for the purpose of developing up-to-date, useful, and usable virtual curriculum so that more students have access to the content she teaches.
However, the teacher’s confidence to realize this goal was, at times, unsteady. Significant institutional constraints and already impacted professional routines were compounding in unsustainable ways. As a veteran teacher of a course that had recently been moved one whole grade level down, she found herself designing assignments that met the standards but were somewhat lacking in relevance given the developmental difference between the age of her former students and the age of her current ones. This combined with the challenges of learning to teach in a virtual environment and the rest of her professional responsibilities was making it difficult to focus on the challenge she undertook. In fact, the overwhelm was making the whole job difficult.
When asked how she might re-envision her role to help her focus on design and generally escape the overwhelm, the teacher envisioned letting go of enough other responsibilities to spend time updating her courses; her courses would facilitate relevant learning in both brick-and-mortar and virtual learning environments. She would consolidate her role to center around curriculum design. To try on this role consolidation, the teacher and the pedagogist spent 45 minutes brainstorming strategies the teacher could use to engage students in meaningful learning of useful and usable concepts in both learning environments.
Throughout the working session, this teacher let her creativity flow. She developed curricular approaches that (a) meet academic standards, (b) address students’ needs, (c) draw on learner’s expertise, and (d) could be made appropriate for both face-to-face and virtual settings. Her tone turned joyful as she innovated. She began designing new materials and teaching strategies. It became apparent that, if allowed to do what she loves and is trained to do—that is, if she could re-envision her role to be one that gave her enough space to creatively design —both she and her students would experience learning that is useful and usable, valuable to those learners, and valued by others. The experience is helping this teacher—and the school—build the capacity to consolidate her role, which in turn is beginning to relieve the overwhelm and reinvigorate her excitement for teaching.
And because this teacher has the local and state support to continue working and learning in this way, she is able to focus her energy on something she is passionate about (relevant curriculum design) while increasing her school’s (and the state’s) capacity to ensure students’ access to it.
This option of role consolidation also illustrates the power of educator autonomy: opening up space for educators to innovate and be creative. When educators feel empowered and supported, their job satisfaction rises, and subsequently, they are more likely to stay (OECD 2014; OECD 2019). We see this role consolidation not only as a way to retain educators but also as an opportunity to bolster educators and strengthen school culture. We’d love to hear your examples of role consolidation as a method of lightening educators’ loads. Share your creative ideas with kathryn@well4edu.org and, with your permission, we’ll feature them in future blog posts.
About the Authors
Dr. Kathryn Kennedy (she/her/hers): With one foot in digital and online learning and the other in mental health and wellness, Kathryn has been cultivating two primary passions for over 20 years. She serves as founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group and founder and executive director of Wellness for Educators. She is author of the forthcoming book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators: Intentional Movement for Wellness (expected publication date: March 28, 2023), which serves as the first in a four-part book series. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
Dr. Rebecca C. Itow (she/her) is principal of IU High School Online. She earned her Ph.D. in learning sciences from Indiana University and was a public high school teacher. Driven to facilitate safe spaces for learners to navigate their academic journeys in valuable and valued ways, Rebecca researches, designs, and implements responsive online pedagogical practices in digital learning environments. Her work guides current university and community partnerships that innovate online teaching, learning, and design.
#blog: “Time does not heal all wounds…” A Call for Healing and System-Level Changes
by Dr. Kathryn Kennedy
Cross post from the NGLC Blog
“Contrary to conventional belief, time does not heal all wounds since humans convert traumatic and stressful emotional experiences into organic disease.”
–Dr. Vincent Felitti, ACEs Study, 1998
Schools that acknowledge the trauma and stress of the past two-plus years can support educators, students, and parents/caregivers to heal with three wellness and mental health strategies.
In 1998, Dr. Vincent Felitti, the director of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, and a team of doctors from the CDC and Kaiser Permanente published a groundbreaking research article focused on the effects of ACEs on over 17,000 participants. The study highlighted that our minds are not the only part of us affected by trauma and prolonged stress. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk put it, The Body Keeps the Score; that is, the body stores traumatic and stressful experiences in its tissues (2014). When not worked through, these “issues in our tissues” come up later on in life.
Source: Tori Press, @revelatori, https://www.instagram.com/revelatori/
Many in the field of education want to “go back to normal,” but many educators, students, and parents/caregivers have not had the time to heal the trauma and prolonged stress they endured for almost two-and-a-half years (and, for many, even longer).
The lack of focus on healing and the importance of it are major reasons we are seeing so many mental health concerns today, not only in the field of education specifically but also in the world at large.
Back in 2020, I feared this is where we were headed.
The Trauma of Schools During the Pandemic
As someone trained in online and digital learning, when the pandemic hit, I was involved in a number of projects focused on shifting in-person learning to online learning. At the same time, I was sharing concerns about educators’, students’, and parents/caregivers’ mental health and wellbeing.
Every stakeholder in education was thrown into something they weren’t prepared for. Educators had to punch the gas pedal and couldn’t let up. It was constant “GO” mode from the start:
School leaders had to learn about remote, online, and/or hybrid/blended learning environments in order to figure out how to best lead and support their educators, students, and parents/caregivers. Some also had to shift their schools and districts into spaces that provided just-in-time and wraparound community supports.
Teachers had to learn how to teach and support their fellow teachers, students, and parents/caregivers in a remote, online, and/or hybrid/blended environment. They not only had to learn technologies that they weren’t familiar with, but they also had to learn how to use those technologies to teach and connect with students and parents/caregivers in meaningful ways. Additionally, educators were asked to provide social-emotional learning supports for students and parents/caregivers.
Students had to learn how to learn in remote, online, and hybrid/blended learning environments using technologies in ways that they weren’t used to.
Parents/caregivers had to support their children as they learned in remote, online, and hybrid/blended learning environments.
Everyone did the best they could during all of this while the undercurrent of the pandemic, and the plethora of reverberations from it, raged on. But the education system was continuously on shaky, unsafe ground for over two years.
And now, as if that wasn’t enough, the same stakeholders who desperately need time to heal are in another “GO”-mode situation, being shamed by continuous conversations focused on “learning loss” and “learning gaps.” A recent Rand report found that pandemic learning loss is the top job-related stressor for educators (Steiner et al. 2022).
Source: Rand Corp. via The 74
In 2021, during one of the book studies Wellness for Educators hosted with educational leaders in Alabama, we heard from a number of the leaders about how they were feeling, and one of the educators stated so poignantly:
I wish everyone understood that educators are human beings also. We have the same struggles as everyone else and are susceptible to all that goes along with being human. We carry the weight of every child, faculty, and staff member in addition to what we carry ourselves. Kids are definitely first, but we as educators do matter and we aren’t expendable.
–School Leader in Alabama
Given the situation we are in now, we cannot underestimate the effects of trauma and prolonged stress. There will continue to be consequences if we do not take the time to heal.
The push to go back to normal as quickly as possible, and avoiding talking about topics like “trauma,” “social-emotional learning,” and “mental health” anymore is sending a message that what we experienced was not traumatic or stressful. But with many educators heading for the exits of the field, the system really has no choice but to heed the warning signs.
Dr. Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, explains:
Trauma has become so commonplace that most people don't even recognize its presence. It affects everyone. Each of us has had a traumatic experience at some point in our lives, regardless of whether it left us with an obvious case of post-traumatic stress…Because trauma symptoms can remain hidden for years after a triggering event, some of us who have been traumatized are not yet symptomatic…In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation. Denial is so common in our culture that it has become a cliché.
3 Educator Wellness and Mental Health Strategies
It was in late 2021 that I heard some educators start to acknowledge that what they experienced was traumatic and stressful. Despite that, some schools will continue to ignore the need for healing, but those who acknowledge it can use the following guidance to support educators, students, and parents/caregivers.
1. Acknowledge educator wellness is not an individual effort, and affect system-level changes.
More than anything, the field needs to acknowledge that educator wellness is not an individual effort; it’s a system-level issue. As one of my teachers, Dr. Albert Wong, a somatic psychotherapist, said during one of my certificate programs, “Challenges within communities or systems need interventions at the level of communities or systems.” Viac and Fraser (2020) emphasized many factors that contribute to educator wellbeing in their OECD white paper. Some examples include large class sizes, low pay, and initiative overload. In addition to these, educators also need to feel heard, respected, valued, and have room to be creative, among other things. Also, issues such as racism, gender identity discrimination, misogyny, and gun violence also need to be acknowledged as issues that factor into educator wellness, as they show up at the system level as well. These issues are complex, and won’t be solved overnight, but even small steps to change these conditions can go far for educator wellness.
2. Acknowledge that when we don’t take the time to heal, it affects our ability to learn.
When we’ve experienced trauma and prolonged stress and do not take time to heal, our learning processes are affected. Specifically, the amygdala activates, and the hippocampus shuts down. The hippocampus is crucial to learning, memory encoding, and memory consolidation. As van der Kolk shared, the trauma and prolonged stress that we do not work through has the ability to affect our physical bodies but it also changes our brain and our nervous system so that we experience our lives in different ways. Schools can consider taking some tasks off of educators’ plates to provide them time they can spend in collective healing with other educators as well as time that they can take individually to refuel on their own. As one of Wellness for Educators’ former Board members, Dr. Cathy Cavanaugh, shared, “The ripples of our own healing can support the healing of others. Educators are helpers by nature. Sometimes motivation to care for oneself comes from the opportunity to help others.” Some schools and districts are partnering with organizations that can provide just-in-time therapy and coaching to support educators’ mental health and wellness. Additionally, some schools and districts are collaborating with mind-body practitioners to provide healing opportunities through practices such as play, Qigong, yoga, art, etc.
3. Emphasize that it takes a collection of tools to heal trauma and prolonged stress; provide opportunities to engage with those tools.
In his 2014 book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, van der Kolk explains that cognitive-based therapy, such as talk therapy, alone cannot be the only method to support healing from trauma and prolonged stress, especially because the body also “keeps the score.” Mind-body education and practices, such as yoga, breathwork, art, music, dance, meditation, Qigong, and more can be used to release the “issues in our tissues.” As one of The Trauma Foundation’s videos conveys, “Many of the activities that we intuitively know make us feel better—like spending time in nature, practicing yoga, dancing, helping others, and more—can help the autonomic nervous system become more regulated and resistant” (7:20).
While mind-body practices can help educators, students, and parents/caregivers heal trauma and prolonged stress, there is a critical need for schools and districts to make intentional changes at the system level. If system-level changes aren’t made and opportunities to heal are not provided, we’ll continue to see resignations, teacher shortages, retention difficulty, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, post traumatic stress disorder, behavioral concerns, learning loss, learning gaps, and more.
