#blog: What About Teaching Actually Matters?
by Trinity Wilbourn
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
What can teachers look for in a K-12 education system of urgency, efficiency, and transactional outcomes to know they are keeping students' and their own humanity at the center?
I used to have a blog with the tagline, “All I have to give is who I am.” Dramatic, yes. Also, true.
The only thing unique amongst all the books, all the social media, all the online content, all the A.I., is me.
I’m the only me there will ever be.
When I first started teaching high school, back when I was 22, I brought passion but little sense of my “me-ness” (or what my therapist calls my “ish.” As in, when I’m being most myself, I’m being my most Trinity-ish self). I didn’t know my “ish,”—my voice, my needs, or my boundaries. I was trying to be a “good teacher,” something I could not define but felt certain I was missing. With each passing year, the students schooled me in the truth that what they needed, more than my knowledge or good teaching skills, was to feel heard and seen, to feel connected to someone who could hold the line when they forgot how.
I spent 11 years in public education, teaching online, brick-and-mortar, and blending learning courses before I lost my job last year due to lack of funding. It’s been a year of reflecting on what about this all-consuming career felt so good and what felt so hard.
Teaching is a difficult job for many reasons, but it’s also rewarding in all the ways that matter most, and I think that’s why teachers stay.
We have big hearts.
We get into teaching because we care to care for kids with our whole hearts. And then our hearts get exploited, and we end up saying yes to everything, at the expense of our well-being. We end up too burnt out to get the help we need to not be burnt out. And if we do admit we need help, we risk undermining our qualification to do our job.
It feels like an impossible barter: keep our jobs and lose ourselves, or keep ourselves and lose our jobs. Keeping the job means we can’t listen to our needs because that means less time spent on our students. If we do something for ourselves, we navigate a backlash of guilt. Whoever stays longest after school doing unpaid labor wins points, and whoever leaves their classroom to go pee loses. Teacher dehydration is a thing.
Education is not a system that favors those it purports to serve. It profits off of teachers’ willingness to not take care of ourselves, and then offers professional development on how to take care of ourselves.
This is what sucks about reading teaching advice with words like “balance” in the title. We are trying, but the ground is not level.
The odds are not stacked in our favor, nor is our labor compensated the way it should be. As teachers, we deal with bureaucracy, institutional abuse of power, endless workload, endless paperwork, inadequate resources, poor physical space, looming threats to our safety (cue the active shooter drills), large class sizes, lack of mentoring, student behavioral challenges, increasing demand to be all things to all people while navigating parental criticism and watchdogging, curricular censorship, high stakes testing expectations, lack of recognition and celebration, and incongruence between what we are told will happen and what actually happens (or doesn’t).
We work in a system where it’s not okay to name that things are not okay. A system where it’s not okay to not be okay.
And yet, if we are not ok, how can anything really be working?
Our students learn from us what it looks like to be human. We have this incredible chance to be in this baffling business of becoming more alive, more aligned, more in our “ish” together. When it’s working, there’s nothing quite like it.
When it’s not, it’s a recipe for burnout.
When we get out of tune with our “ish,” the students can feel it—they can feel the dissonance and their nervous systems interpret the dissonance as a potential threat (like the way your brain feels when you hear an unresolved chord). The reasoning and relational centers of their brains shut down and they move into dysregulation. A human in dysregulation cannot learn.
Plus, we co-regulate each other, so if we get dysregulated, we impact the students because they are attuning to us, the guide in the room (for more on how attunement affects educational success, read about Dr. Bruce Perry’s neurosequential model of the 3 R’s: regulate, relate, and reason).
Anytime we teachers choose to care for ourselves, to treat ourselves like we are the thing that matters most, we’re able to then show up in ways that help our students know they’re also what matters most. Together we create mutual care and co-regulation, learning and teaching in this infinity loop of reciprocity. It’s the best feeling—this sense of being curious readers of each other’s lives, a devoted band of humans committing to the work of exploration and growth alongside each other.
It’s easy to forget about what really matters in teaching.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer responsibility of the job and the demand to produce quantifiable results. It can feel like swimming upstream to keep the students at the center, to not be sucked into the whirlpool of urgent efficiency and transactional outcomes. And even when we do manage to keep the students at the center, the job can still feel thankless and results-less, like swimming in circles. The lack of confirmation that what we’re doing is working makes us feel like it’s not working, so we work harder. The students deserve our very best, and the needs are endless. And around and around we go.
This is what I’ve been reflecting on: when do we know if what we’re doing is “working?” The long-game of teaching makes it hard to know, so if we can’t know if what we’re doing matters, then what matters?
To sustain myself in this career, I had to redefine when something was “working.” Working became things like: A student who normally didn’t show up to class, showed up. A student falling in love with their first book. A student wanting to eat lunch with me because they felt safe to talk in a smaller environment and they knew that about themselves, and then they knew how to advocate for what they needed. A student risking writing their first poem and then reading it in front of the class, and the whole class clapping, like they were saying, “Yes, we see you doing a brave thing. You are not alone. Your voice matters.” So many tiny things. So many pieces of what matters.
I think the work is “working” when we, as teachers, create the kinds of classrooms where it’s okay to risk seeing and being seen, where it’s okay to practice becoming more human.
Remember that Maya Angelou quotation, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel?”
When we are resourced and in our “ish,” we can be present to see our students, to hold the line for them, to hold their gaze. We can help them feel seen because we know how to do it, because we’ve been practicing.
When we teachers treat ourselves like we are the thing that matters, we model for our students the most important lesson we could ever offer: they are the thing that matters.
And when a student learns that they are the thing that matters, guess what happens? They treat other people like they are the thing that matters.
It’s love. It’s community. It’s taking care of each other. It’s treating every living thing like they are the thing that matters. It’s making this world more joyful, loving, and free.
And around and around we go.
About the Author
Trinity Wilbourn, M.Ed.
Facilitator and Coach
Trinity is a Denver-based educator and independent consultant with over 20 years combined experience creating and presenting curriculum, training facilitators, and coaching individuals, classrooms, and peer support groups, including 11 years teaching in online, brick and mortar, and blended learning environments.
Trinity works at the intersection of social emotional learning, mind/body coaching, mindfulness, and the science of nervous system regulation. She has taught humanities, world lit, U.S. lit, creative writing, drama, reading recovery, philosophy, advisory/life skills, integrated services, as well as running her school’s GED program and founding one of the first mindfulness programs in her school district. Additionally, she has over a decade of experience building a community organization focused on identity exploration, resiliency cultivation, and long-term holistic health for educators, activists, and community space-holders called Arkitekt. She is a mind/body coach trained through The Embody Lab, a Mindful Schools-trained mindfulness instructor, and a SourcePoint Therapy holistic healing practitioner.
Her passion is to equitably and inclusively coach educators to reclaim their joy, move from the relentless pace of burnout to a generous rhythm of work and life, and co-create vibrant communities of learning that act as humanized practice rooms for people to become more congruent and fully alive.
#blog: Turning School Libraries into Discipline Centers Is Not the Answer to Disruptive Classroom Behavior
by Stephanie McGary
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
A proposal in Houston to replace school libraries with discipline centers fails to address the root causes of student misbehavior. A more constructive response can repair harm and address the underlying issues.
School libraries should be places where students can learn independently and think creatively outside the traditional classroom. But that won’t happen under a new plan proposed for Houston, the largest school district in Texas. Instead, spaces once reserved for quiet contemplation of books will now be transformed into disciplinary spaces for troubled students.
This summer, the Houston Independent School District decided to close school libraries and replace them with discipline centers. Parents and educators are concerned that this might harm struggling students in a state with the country’s fourth-lowest literacy rate, and fear that the new policy will do nothing to address some of the root causes of student misbehavior, which often include difficulties with literacy.
Superintendent Mike Miles, who was appointed by the Texas Education Agency to lead the district after it was taken over by the state, is pushing the policy. In an NPR interview, Miles explained that disruptive students will be sent to these discipline centers and then rejoin their classmates virtually.
Schools have attempted to address misbehavior with stricter discipline practices for years, but resorting to virtual participation—and virtual problem solving—is not the answer.
Districts should examine why a student chooses to communicate an unmet need by disrupting the classroom. All behaviors are a form of communication; misbehavior specifically is sometimes the only form of expression available to a student at the time.
If Houston’s plan is truly a systemic reform, as its proponents claim, why aren’t we also holding these larger systems responsible for the impact they have on student behavior?
More times than not, misbehavior is a response to a perceived stressor in the child’s environment hindering them from making more “appropriate” choices in the moment. Learning how to read, write, speak and listen—communication—requires more than understanding phonemic awareness, spelling or vocabulary. It requires the activation of the frontal lobe, which is responsible for reading fluency, speech, grammatical usage and comprehension.
In their book The Whole-Brain Child, Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson refer to this area as the “upstairs brain.” They explain that the lower and mid parts of the brain (the “downstairs,” or survival, brain), must feel cool, calm and collected before access is granted upstairs. Many things can contribute to the downstairs brain hijacking everything and revoking access to the part our students need to control their impulses, problem solve and excel in communication.
Traumatic experiences are the main culprit. They include not only the difficult childhood events we often hear about but also detrimental community and environmental experiences, such as structural racism, low pay, a global pandemic and climate crises. All can have negative effects on growing and learning. If Houston’s plan is truly a systemic reform, as its proponents claim, why aren’t we also holding these larger systems responsible for the impact they have on student behavior?
Feelings of anger, frustration or stress, which can be caused by struggles with reading or other comprehension, can also lead to the downstairs brain hijacking the upstairs brain. When this hijacking happens, it can look like students are highly anxious or behaving aggressively toward themselves or others. Struggling with any academic skills can bring feelings of shame, which is a vulnerable emotion often hidden under challenging behaviors, many of which could get a student sent to the proposed “team centers.” A library and supportive librarian would benefit them more.
Not every misbehavior is the result of an issue with literacy, but every misbehavior communicates a need. While discipline is necessary, it should not end there.
Districts and school administrators need to recognize that a student’s behavior might be a trauma or stress response, and they need to learn how to respond constructively. This is known as a trauma-informed approach. Concurrently, restorative discipline practices focus on repairing any harm caused, while sparing the dignity of the student without excluding them from their community.
Not only does student behavior deserve to be fully understood and supported, but our educators, including our librarians, deserve to be allowed to work in their areas of expertise. When students are feeling unmotivated or defeated and communicate this through disruption, they should be met by individuals who not only understand the function of that behavior but also use their unique skills to quiet the downstairs brain to better attend to the upstairs brain, putting students in the best place to learn and grow. This is true system reform.
Educators cannot do this alone. Caregivers can also integrate trauma-informed and restorative practices at home. Parents know their children better than anyone and have a responsibility to advocate and assist schools in understanding the child behind the behavior.
Infusing trauma-Informed and restorative practices into schoolwide policies and procedures will help schools attend to the root causes of misbehaviors without the risk of re-traumatization.
Protecting learning, literacy and libraries and addressing discipline issues are not mutually exclusive. Our school systems can and should do both.
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: 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: Building the Bridge through Courageous Conversations: An Interview with Shomari Jones and Paul Sutton
by Shomari Jones, Bellevue School District, and Paul Sutton, Pacific Lutheran University
Cross post from the NGLC blog.
Educational equity leaders (and podcast hosts) Shomari Jones and Paul Sutton examine courageous conversations, what they are, why they are important, and how to have them.
Could you introduce yourselves?
Shomari: Sure! I'm Shomari Jones. I am the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District [Washington].
Paul: I'm Paul Sutton. I'm associate professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University [Washington].
How did you meet and start working with each other?
Paul: I've been working with Shomari for several years now. We work on various projects together, but mostly, the thing that we do together is this podcast, this little project that we started. Coming out of COVID, we started having conversations with each other just about stuff that we are noticing and just issues that were surfacing, and so we decided to start recording it. That turned into this podcast that we have called Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream, which is Shomari and I talking about all things related to equity and education; we bring on guests, and it's fun.
Could you talk about your work around engaging in courageous conversations? What are they?
Shomari: Courageous conversations are opportunities for us to engage with each other, seeking opportunities and ways to learn and grow within ourselves and within relation to one another. We start with this compass.
Credit: Creative Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools and Beyond by Glenn E. Singleton
The compass in and of itself is just a tool that we utilize to express that sometimes when we come to the table, we're coming to the table from a different space than the person who we may be engaging with. And we really boiled this down to four spaces in which you traditionally come from. You don't have to only come from one specific space. You can have a couple of different spaces that you react to immediately. But most often we gravitate to one. So for example, I tend—specifically, when engaging in conversations that are complicated—I tend to show up a lot of times in my emotional space. After some practicing, Paul, I’m actually seeing that I no longer hardcore die in the emotional space. It's interesting to see how I've progressed through my continual practice. Instead of landing in emotions, we want to evaluate and assess where you are in each one of these categories so that you can be centered. Because centered is a way that we will most achieve opportunities to build bridges and build relationships with other individuals.
And so just looking around the compass, oftentimes we either fall into the feeling or the emotional quadrant, the believing or the moral quadrant, the thinking or the intellectual quadrant, and the acting or the relational quadrant. And there's nothing wrong with any of them. We want you to experience all of them, but just note this example from my personal experience:
I was in conflict with the community in which I serve around building a body of work, specifically equity, that I thought was really important to the success of our students. This particular part of the community was not in agreement with what my beliefs are. They were operating from and coming to the conversation in their feelings quadrant. I was operating from and coming to the conversation in my head or in my thinking/intellectual quadrant. And when we engaged in discussion, we were not seeing eye-to-eye. We were planes crossing in the air, without having any opportunity to build relationships or build bridges.
So, what would have been best served for me is to maybe show up in my thinking and take time to think about my beliefs a little bit, then explore my emotional quadrant, and then proceed to my action quadrant. Because if I’m seeking to transform someone else's belief, I need to meet them where they are.
Paul: Courageous conversations really revolve around coming to the table with people who think differently than you, revealing needs, shining light on fears, identifying preconceived beliefs or understandings, and spending time building a pathway to better comprehend each other’s perspectives, creating an atmosphere of patient listening that blends the elements of mercy and truth. I really want to know where you're coming from and why you're coming from there as much as I want you to know where I'm coming from and why I'm coming from there.
The goals of courageous conversations are to:
Gain wisdom to see from a bigger perspective.
Gain understanding that will help establish truth in relationships.
Build bonds and bridges, and a lot of times, cross-sectional with individuals who may not come to the table believing what we believe.
Ultimately, if we continue to share or shirk our responsibility to involve all different perspectives and all different voices, we will not be moving together.
Shomari: These conversations can sometimes be challenging, and they can sometimes be revealing and make us vulnerable, so these three guidelines kind of provide us with some rules or norms about how we can be in that space:
Stay engaged.
Be authentic by sharing honest feelings.
Maintain confidentiality.
Remember these five anchors to take care of yourself during difficult times in courageous conversations:
Quiet your mind.
Notice the sensations, the vibrations. What's going on in your body?
Accept the discomfort.
Stay present.
Safely discharge the energy that remains.
Paul: I hope that folks who are reading this just find some small part of their life to lean in and just give it a go and see what happens. Enjoy the wallowing and enjoy the awkwardness and know that every time you do that, you just get a little bit better at it.
Shomari: Yes, that's awesome, Paul. To gain wisdom to see from a bigger perspective, I involve myself in conversations with others, especially those who I don't see eye to eye with for a multitude of reasons. I was told once that I am not going to be ever capable of changing who you are. You have to change who you are. I can provide you with a perspective. I can take you on a journey alongside me. I can show you the way, but until you make the decision that you are going to be the one who changes for you, it just won't happen. And so to gain wisdom, to see from a bigger perspective—to me, [this] involves me walking and taking a journey with you to a place where we can both come to an understanding and an agreement. And I want to gain some understanding that will establish trust in the relationship; relationships are built on trust. That trust is going to allow me to continue to come back to the conversation with you.
Because of that established relationship, I can pause and not be salty [laughing]. And start off from a space of listening and then engaging, which would help to lead to a quicker bridge to the other side and to gain knowledge so that you can take the next steps, right?
I want to encourage you all who have the opportunity to read this, to reach out to us if you want to practice, to find pathways to try this and practice this at home with your loved ones or with—let's not try it on your boss first. Let's practice a couple of times before you take it off, and then suddenly, you don’t have a job anymore [laughter]. Let's practice in some spaces where you feel the least amount of negative impact as possible so that you can continue to build up that courage to engage in courageous conversations.
About the Authors
Shomari Jones is the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District. He is a co-host of the Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream Podcast.
Paul Sutton is an associate professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University and co-host of the Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream Podcast.
#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.